printRevitalization of Religion:
Toward an Understanding of the Perspectives of the Modern Religious Situation
Lebedev S.D.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Head of the Laboratory, Belgorod State National Research University, Belgorod, Russia serg_ka2001-dar@mail.ru
Blagoevich M.
PhD (Sociol.), Chief Researcher, Head of the Forum on Religious Issues (FOREL), Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia blagomil91@gmail.com
Shapovalova L.V.
Applicant, Belgorod State National Research University, Belgorod, Russia camerton27@yandex.ru
Lebedev S.D., Blagoevich M., Shapovalova L.V. Revitalization of Religion: Toward an Understanding of the Perspectives of the Modern Religious Situation. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2023. No 8. P. 60-75
The article discusses the issue of the prospects for religion in late modern societies. The concept of the progressive revitalization of religion is seen as a qualitative increase in its influence on the social system through the value and semantic transformation of the sociocultural mainstream. To achieve this, religious systems must go through the “razor’s edge” between maintaining their semantic and institutional core and maximum adaptation to the complex of deep societal demands formed by the Late Modernity. Several attitudes of mass consciousness are discussed as such predispositions, forming the niche of the “religion of the future”: request for “spirituality”; imperative of reflexivity; social expectations of intellectualism and focus on human relations. In terms of content, the mainstream of the revitalization of religion, according to the authors, is determined by the social demand for “spirituality”, understood as a conscious radical post-materialism. The main form of the revitalization of religion is set by the trend of reflexivity, which finds its expression in the ideological and semantic nature of religious everyday life and a significant degree of its virtualization. The perspective logic of the development of the religious mainstream is associated with the “construction of tradition”, determined by intellectualism and institutional orientation towards human relations.
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