Virtualization of Religious Communities as a Key Tool to Understanding the Evolution of Sociological Concepts of Religiosity

Abstract

The article considers the evolution of the sociological vision of religiosity. The relevance of the topic raised is due to the demarcation between the religious and the secular the late Modern and personal identification. The purpose of the article is to outline the retrospective and perspective of sociological studies of religion in historical and socio-reflexive contexts, on pre-theoretical foundations. The main modern trend in religious studies and quantitative methodology is the virtualization of reference religious communities. The first stage of this process corresponds with a real-reference approach to the definition of religiosity, viewing religiosity mostly in the field of the normative behavioral and mental manifestations and mainly in majoritarian confessions. The second stage is associated with transition, which manifests itself in the unification of religiosity criteria, as in formalized multidimensional scales measuring religiosity. The third stage should probably be associated with the emerging virtual reference approach, when a social subject is engaged in the reflexive construction of one’s religious identity, and a sociologist, on the contrary, shifts the research optics to identify the boundless diversity of its manifestations. This implies a retreat of the methodological category of the religiosity degree and any measured religiosity, a deconstruction of a priori models of the latter, reshaping an analysis into one based on unbiased description of religious manifestations in situational contexts.