CONATIVE ASPECT OF CIVIL IDENTITY: AN INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS AND CONFESSIONAL FACTORS

Abstract

Religious processes play an important role in the life of human civil society. Although there are a lot of works dedicated to the study of the relationship between religion and politics, between religion and the state, far less attention has been paid to the study of the influence of religion on the formation of a civil society. The main purpose of this article is to study the influence of religion on the development of the conative (pragmatic) aspect of the civil identity of countries in Western and eastern Europe. The author of the article has used the Index of Civil and Political Activity (ICPA) and the figures of declared religious identity according to the 6th round of ESS. As a result, the author has reached the following conclusions: 1) the pragmatic part of civil identity – civil practice – has been growing in most countries in Western and Eastern Europe, while the proportion of citizens identifying themselves with any religion or confession has been declining. 2) There exists a relationship between the religious affiliation and the level of civiland political activity (ICPA is higher in protestant countries) Keywords: civil society, civil identity, political activity, religion, Index of Civil and Political Activity