НЕКОТОРЫЕ ФАКТОРЫ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ РЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ УКРАИНЦЕВ-ПРОТЕСТАНТОВ УРАЛЬСКОГО РЕГИОНА

Abstract

This article examines the factors related to the formation of the religious identity among Ukrainian Protestants entering Protestant religious organizations in some regions of the South, Middle and Polar Urals: impact of other people or their own existential quest, as well as the religious identity of the respondents before they adopted Protestantism. More than sixty percent of Ukrainian Protestants were born outside of Russia; they are the most "foreign" in origin ethno-religious group among the Protestants of the Urals. Data on them are compared to similar evidence in the general sample. The greater role of family continuity in religious choice than among Russian Protestants, and also the greater percentage of former representatives of "other" or "non-traditional" religions among Ukrainian Protestant are explained by the historically more substantial presence of Protestantism in Ukraine and diversity of its religious field. Before acquiring the Protestant identity under the influence of their parents, Ukrainian respondents manage to gain experience of an atheistic or other religious worldview, which fact testifies to their conscious existential quest.