Athenian Ideology Research Articles

Viable Cooperation or Unscrupulous Service? Motivations for Albert Bereczky’s Activity in Church Governance

Albert Bereczky is one of the controversial figures in the 20th-century history of the Hungarian Reformed Church. Bereczky was a genuine and authentic leader of those who fought for the inner spiritual renewal of the church between the two world wars, a church organizer, a well-known and respected preacher, who saved many by risking his life during the deportation of Hungarian Jews to extermination camps, for which he was posthumously awarded the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations” from the Yad Vashem. However, the communist state apparatus established after World War II found in him the person who, by placing him at the head of the Reformed Church, could bring about a radical reduction of the public and social role of the Church almost without any resistance. So, the question arises: how and why could Bereczky, whose Christian commitment was hard to question, become the servant of the dictatorial state apparatus with its atheistic ideology? Our study attempts to record the possible intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that might explain this dilemma, while also providing a general insight into Albert Bereczky’s life. Keywords: Bishop Albert Bereczky, Zoltán Tildy, Church–state relationship, communist persecution of Christians, collaboration

Özbekistan'da Bilimsel Ateizm Gelişiminin Retrospektif Analizi (XX. Yüzyılın 30'larında)

The article provides a retrospective analysis of the ways, mechanisms, and methods of development of atheism in Uzbekistan in the 30s of the twentieth century. It is explained how in the complex process of the formation of the communist worldview it influenced the consciousness of people and what an important role the atheistic education of the peoples of the former states of the USSR played. The struggle against religion is a necessary circumstance for building a socialist society. Modern Soviet atheist literature included studies aimed at a deeper understanding of the issue of scientific atheism and a precise definition of its place in the system of social and natural sciences, especially in the system of philosophical knowledge. Currently, the study of the connection between the theory and practice of atheism and the development of general problems of communist education is intensifying. Soviet philosophers who study the problems of the theory of scientific atheism face a difficult consequently: to find out how the content of scientific atheism, the forms and methods of its dissemination reflected those profound transformations in all spheres of people’s lives that took place in a developed socialist society. One of the results of the development of our country along the socialist path, which predetermined enormous socio-economic and cultural transformations, is the formation and steady growth of mass atheism. The disappearance of antagonistic classes in Soviet Union has led to the fact that the edge of the class struggle is turned outward. An enormous role in the spread of scientific atheism is played by the ideological activity of the Communist Party. Finally, the nature of the development of mass atheism, the content, forms, and methods of its propaganda has been and is being exerted and continues to be exerted by the political position of religious organizations. Questions of the formation of the Marxist-Leninist worldview are constantly at the center of the Party’s ideological and educational work, an important part of which is atheistic education. During the development of atheism, it? was associated with the activities of the Union of Militant Atheists, which arose from the cells of the society of friends of the newspaper "Bezbozhnik". The Union of Militant Atheists made a great contribution to the development of the theory and practice of anti-religious propaganda. Problem statement: The article focuses on the main question: what was the goal of the Communist Party for the development of atheistic ideology? With the help of what methods and mechanisms did they want to degrade the ideological worldview of the peoples of Central Asia? What role did the intelligentsia of Uzbekistan play in the spread of atheistic ideologies? Goal: study and analysis of the socio-political consequences of the spread of atheist ideology in Uzbekistan. Investigating the psychological impact of atheist ideology on the consciousness of the people of Uzbekistan. The aim of the study is to determine the concept of Atheism itself and to establish its relationship and mutual influence with the concepts of secular and religious culture, science, philosophy, religious tolerance, free thought, humanism, skepticism, and materialism, which have not been studied sufficiently to date. Method and outputs: Analysis with the help of what methods and mechanisms the leadership of the Communist Party propagated the ataxic worldview and ideology. To clarify this, methods of analysis, synthesis, generalization, induction, and deduction were used.

The Influence of Soviet Ideology on the Worldview of the Orthodox Clergy and Laity of the Ukrainian SSR (the Second Half of the 1980s)

This study examines concrete examples of the formation of a utilitarian view of Orthodoxy among the Orthodox clergy of the Ukrainian SSR in the second half of the 1980s under the influence of Soviet atheistic ideology. Three aspects of the church's worldview are considered: comprehension of history, patriotism and attitude to the union and uniates. The publications in the central periodical of the Ukrainian Exarchate «Orthodox Bulletin» are taken as a source. The conclusions about the significant influence of the Soviet atheistic ideology on the format of interaction of the Orthodox clergy of the Ukrainian SSR with society are substantiated.

Archaeological Antiquities of Church and Archaeological Museum at Kyiv Theological Academy (1872-1919)

The purpose of the research paper is to study the formation history of the collection of archaeological antiquities of the Church and Archaeological Museum at Kyiv Theological Academy, the ways of their acquisition by the Museum, the content of the archaeological collections, the personalities of the collectors, and the historical fate of the holdings.
 Scientific novelty. The history of the formation and content of the collections of archaeological antiquities is separated from the general issue of the activities of the Church and Archaeological Society and the Museum at Kyiv Theological Academy.
 Conclusions. The Church and Archaeological Museum at Kyiv Theological Academy, founded in 1872, was the largest and most significant in the territory of modern Ukraine in terms of the number, variety, and value of the objects stored. Despite its initial focus on collecting mainly church objects, during the existence of the Museum, its collection accumulated a lot of other archaeological and historical artifacts. Accumulation of antiquities in the Museum contributed to their preservation and scientific study.
 Among the archaeological antiquities of the Museum were objects of the Stone, Copper, and Bronze Ages, ancient Egyptian, antique Greek and Rome, Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea region, Hellenistic, Scythian, Sarmatian, Gothic, Slavic, Byzantine, Kyivan Rus, Lithuanian era, period of 1569-1795, and the items belonged to the Cossacks of the 18th century, etc.
 Objects came from the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Palestine, etc. Mainly, there were artifacts from excavations and accidental finds. Collections were given to the Museum by private individuals. Among them, the greatest contribution to the enriching of holdings belonged to Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin), Bishop Porfyrii (Uspenskyi), M.O. Leopardov, V.Z. Zavitnevich, V.I. Hoshkevich, numerous donators from the clergy, teachers, and archeology enthusiasts. The greatest contribution to the preservation, research, scientific description, and publication of the Museum’s collections belonged to M.I. Petrov.
 Disasters of the 20th century (two world wars, the revolutions of 1917, and the dominance of atheistic ideology in the USSR) negatively affected the preservation of the rich collections of the Church and Archaeological Museum at Kyiv Theological Academy. Many museum objects disappeared, were stolen, or were simply destroyed; the Museum itself also ceased to exist. However, part of the collections survived, and some items from them are still stored in some Kyiv museums.

Основные тенденции изучения православия в научной периодике Украинской ССР второй половины 1980-х годов

The present research focuses on the analysis of the main trends and approaches to understanding the role of Orthodoxy in the historical past, state and public life, which developed and were formed by the scientific and public intelligentsia of the Ukrainian SSR in the second half of the 1980s. It was during this period that those approaches to understanding the role of the Church and religion in the life of the country were formed, which later found its embodiment in the state policy and public rhetoric of independent Ukraine. Modern historiography emphasizes the need for a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet religious narrative, identifying internal factors of Soviet society that determine the direction and nature of secular trends of the late Soviet period. However, the number of specific case studies of the Ukrainian late Soviet narrative is very limited. The present work is intended to fill a historiographical gap in this context. Based on the analysis, it was found out that the understanding of the role of Orthodoxy in public life among the late Soviet scientific and public intelligentsia of the Ukrainian SSR was characterized by an interweaving of complex and contradictory trends. On the one hand, it was characteristic of a rather strong desire to preserve atheistic ideological narratives when considering church-historical and religious studies issues. On the other hand, there is a clear tendency to a critical understanding of atheistic ideology, which, however, very rarely went beyond the protection and protection of "true" Marxism-Leninism. Based on the materials of scientific and popular science periodicals, the process of ideological registration of atheists-religious scholars as the advanced intelligentsia is traced. The increased interest in national issues in church history and culture was combined with the use of old methodological tools in relation to religion. Church periodicals were characterized by the significant influence of the historical features of the perestroika era on the worldview of the clergy and church authors.

When Religious Folk Practice Meet Karl Marx: Courts’ Response to Ghost Marriage in Modern China

As religious folk practice is regarded as a radical departure from Marxist atheism, the abnormal existence of ghost marriages under the Chinese socialist regime has attracted wide scholarly attention in anthropology and sociology. However, few scholars have focused on how Chinese courts treat religious folk practices, such as ghost marriages, despite the official socialist ideology. Based on the typological analysis and case study involving 260 ghost marriage cases, the authors argue about the judicial activism of Chinese courts towards atheist ideology in religious folk practices. The findings of this study are twofold. First, the Chinese courts’ attitudes toward ghost marriage cases are pluralistic, reflecting the Chinese legal system’s selective obedience to the socialist ideology. Through the application of different legal interpretations of relevant laws, Chinese courts have shown three attitudes towards ghost marriages: encouragement, tolerance, and suppression. The first two attitudes can be regarded as supportive supervision of religious folk practice. Three factors tended to affect the courts’ attitudes towards ghost marriages: courts’ hierarchical level, parties’ claims, and whether ghost marriage rituals are performed. Second, further analysis suggests that RPC’s guerrilla-style governance strategy in the Chinese legal system allows it to deal with ghost marriage with more flexibility, even overriding its fundamentalist ideology. The guerrilla-style tactic is often used by the Chinese courts to handle matters of religious folk practices in a pluralistic manner. Overall, the courts’ pluralistic attitudes towards ghost marriage is that of modest tolerance and cooperation of religious folk practices based on the RPC’s model of governance.

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts

Allison Glazebrook. Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts.

Allison Glazebrook’s monograph, Sexual Labor in the Athenian Courts, is the product of the author’s expertise on sexual laborers in ancient Athens. The book comes at a time when several monographs dedicated to sexual labor have appeared, but it carves a notable space for itself in the literature. Glazebrook distinguishes her work from that of, for example, Konstantinos Kapparis and Edward Cohen, both by topic and form. She is not interested in writing “a social history of sexual labor” (5) but rather in using the figure of the male and female sex laborer in forensic oratory as a means for exploring Athenian ideas and attitudes on gender, the body, the household, and citizenship. Counting herself among historians such as Josiah Ober and Matthew Christ, she differentiates her method by eschewing the tendency to mine the orators for historical data at the expense of the text’s literary character. Glazebrook “is interested in how speakers manipulate the attitudes and practices in their discourses around sexual labor to cement and problematize social and civic boundaries” (4). Thus, she embraces the literary quality of the texts in the service of revealing Athenian ideology. To do so, each chapter treats a single court speech holistically. As opposed to the clever and privileged hetaira of other genres, oratory presents a broad range of sex laborer types that threaten the stability of the household and the city. Her readings make use of the anxieties revealed by the orators to shine a light on broader questions of, for instance, women’s status and pederasty.

The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past by Matteo Barbato

Reviewed by: The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past by Matteo Barbato Christine Plastow (bio) Matteo Barbato, The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past. Edinburgh, GB: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. 252 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4744-6642-4. Barbato's book offers a new analysis of Athenian ideology through the application of a New Institutionalist approach to the city's democratic institutions as demonstrated by their use of stories from the mythical past. He argues for a middle ground between Marxist and culturalist understandings, characterising Athenian ideology as value-neutral, flexible, normative, constructive, and bidirectional. This is illustrated through an analysis of the varied presentations of four myths across several institutional contexts: particularly the epitaphioi logoi, but also tragedy, Assembly and forensic speeches, and private genres. An introduction lays out the structure of the book and summarises previous approaches to Athenian ideology; there is a particular focus on the Marxist approach of Nicole Loraux and others, and the culturalist approach illustrated by the work of Josiah Ober. The second chapter explores Athenian knowledge of mythology, identifying the theatre as its main source but also noting the importance of religious festivals such as the Panathenaia, public institutional contexts, and private learning. The third chapter establishes Barbato's theoretical approach, drawing on New Institutionalism to argue that the different democratic institutions of Athens had their own discursive frameworks and that discourse within them was necessarily structured by these: the need to create an imagined community in the funeral speeches; the requirement to argue in favour of justice in the law courts; the principle of advantage for the Athenians in the Assembly, and both justice and advantage in the Council; and the ability to play with the ideological frameworks of other institutions and the need to appeal to a diverse audience at the dramatic festivals. The subsequent four chapters examine the use of four stories from the Athenian mythic past in these institutional contexts and in private genres: the concept of Athenian autochthony, the sheltering of the Heraclidae, the Amazonomachy, and the assistance provided to Adrastus against Thebes. A short conclusion summarises the book's arguments and contextualises its contributions to the study of Athenian ideology, democracy more broadly, and interactions between Classics and political science. [End Page 88] There is much to commend Barbato's book. His analysis of Athenian ideology highlights two important points that are not prominent in the work on the subject to date. First, he emphasises that Athenian ideology was not fixed but fluid and dynamic, and that the presentation of ideological material necessarily differed based on the context in which it was delivered. This is an important point to grasp to understand the Athenians' apparent tendency to contradict themselves from source to source. Barbato successfully illustrates the appropriateness of different perspectives in different institutional contexts. For example, his nuanced analysis of the various versions of the myth of Adrastus presented in Lysias' funeral oration, Euripides' Suppliant Women, and Assembly speeches convincingly shows how the emphasis on or exclusion of certain narrative features—such as the hybris of the Thebans—can be manipulated to evoke aspects of the democratic ideology suitable to the setting. Second, he is right to draw attention to the fact that ideological material not only describes the audience's viewpoint but also moulds it by demonstrating a norm to which they are expected to conform, touching implicitly on an important point regarding the cognitive effects of rhetoric. Indeed, this methodology in combination with a cognitive approach could produce a particularly strong reading: for instance, how was the ideological result affected by the movement of audience members between the institutions and their memory of the different versions they had heard in other arenas? Barbato is working within a particular school of thought in the study of Athenian oratory that proposes that strict expectations of acceptability were in place in the various contexts of public speaking. Indeed, in his conclusion he summarises that the institutionalist reading of fixed discursive parameters in the institutions "corroborates the view that Aristotle's subdivision of the discipline into three genres was based on the observation of actual oratorical practice" (219). While the...

Свет и тени украинского советского религиоведения второй половины 1980-х гг. (по материалам журнала «Философская мысль»)

The subject of the research is the main directions of intellectual search in the field of religious studies among Ukrainian scientists of the second half of the 1980s. Publications in the central academic journal of the republic in the field of philosophy are considered. With the help of historical-genetic, typological and idiographic methods, the publications of Ukrainian scientists of this period con­cerning the issues of understanding the essence of religion and its place in public life are analyzed. The undertaken analysis makes it possible to identify the ideo­logical foundations in the question of understanding the social significance of re­ligion among Ukrainian researchers and public figures. The conclusions about the formation of several directions within which the authors tried to comprehend the role and place of religion in society are substantiated. The first approach, designated as a conservative direction, was closely related to the Soviet atheistic ideology. The authors, who wrote within the framework of a relatively “renova­tionist” approach, sought to rethink the attitude towards religion and believers, but in methodological terms they did not reach the critical analysis of the scien­tific tools of the Soviet scientific school. Publications that offered a historioso­phy understanding of the religious past of the country are singled out separately.

ԵՎՐՈՊԱՅԻ ՀԱՅԱԲՆԱԿ ԵՐԿՐՆԵՐԻ ՎԵՐԱԲԵՐՄՈՒՆՔԸ ՄԱՅՐ ԱԹՈՌ ՍԲ․ ԷՋՄԻԱԾՆԻ ԹԵՄԵՐԻ ՆԿԱՏՄԱՄԲ 1920-1930-ԱԿԱՆ ԹԹ․

This article aims at covering the use of the Mother See of St. Privileges and restrictions given to diocesan prefects of Etchmiadzin from 1920 to 1930․ We have set ourselves the task of presenting the development process of the attitude of the those countries towards the dioceses after the Armenian Genocide․ More specifically, it is of great significance to explore and define the, reasons for changes and their impact on the community life. In Historiography serious scientific studies on the above subject were not performed yet ․ This was the period when the Armenian Apostolic Church was disintegrating under the openly atheistic ideology adopted by the government of Soviet Armenia, and the ministers became victims of repression․ The research is based on archival documents, press and literature. The reliability of diverse, often contradictory materials was checked by historical-critical methodology, and historical-analytical methodology was used to compare facts, examine and comprehensively present realities. As a result of the study, we came to the conclusion that, although over the years an atmosphere of positive relations, respect and solidarity with the regimes of the considered countries was created, each country had a clearly defined relationship with the dioceses, which was enshrined in the constitution, with provisions regarding the spiritual structures of ethnic minorities. In many cases they contradicted the canonical legal system of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

ДЕСТРУКЦІЇ АНТИРЕЛІГІЙНОЇ СТРАТЕГІЇ РАДЯНСЬКОГО ПЕРІОДУ У ЦИВІЛІЗАЦІЙНОМУ ВИБОРІ УКРАЇНИ

In the conditions of building a Soviet society, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a decree on the separation of the church from the state, the school from the church. Since then, the decree has become the basis of legislative acts, which determined the relations between the Soviet authorities and religious associations of Ukraine. Having announced the separation of church and state, the Soviet government gave society/citizens the right to independently choose any religion, or choose none. That is, the attempt to build an atheistic ideology of the USSR began. The decree caused the indignation of religious communities of all denominations without exception, because it legitimized open persecution both against the Orthodox Church and against religious societies, Christian and non-Christian. The decree referred to the strengthening of measures with a bias towards scientific and educational and anti-religious propaganda. In this direction, a huge amount of work was launched to establish the publication of a variety of religious press, the study of fundamental Marxist historical and philosophical problems in religious studies was introduced, ethnographic expeditions and sociological studies were conducted, the works of the classics of bourgeois religious studies were translated. And what was remarkable was the appearance of a number of «talented» experts who interpreted all of this in a way favorable to Soviet atheistic propaganda. Primary attention in atheist education was given to women. The problem was that the woman-mother brought up the future generation and had a greater influence on the formation of the worldview of the child than the man. That is why the propagandists of atheism paid the main attention to the formation of a scientific and materialistic worldview in women, often individually. The situation with «legality» in the Ukrainian SSR was interesting. The law was interpreted arbitrarily and was frankly decorative in nature, as a rule, this was done in order to be able to keep in subjection the party leadership, officials, representatives of the Council, the average citizen, who had religious beliefs. The abnormality and duplicity of the situation in which religious communities, parishioners and part of the party leadership were found was a common phenomenon. The situation changed somewhat with the coming to power of M. Gorbachev and his policy of «perestroika» and the course towards glasnost. Whole layers of previously forbidden, unknown history were discovered, which received the name «white spots», the crimes of Stalinism, repression became known, nationalist movements, the issue of the national language, etc. became more active. Liberalization and democratization of society took place, which ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR.

Church Music and Atheistic Ideology in the Last Decade of the USSR

Church Music and Atheistic Ideology in the Last Decade of the USSR

Azerbaycan’da İlahiyat Eğitimi

This paper examines the historical change in theology education in Azerbaijan after the modernization period, especially from the 19th century to the present. In the first half of the 19th century, with Russia's occupation of the region, the changes in theology education and the factors that were effective in this change are discussed. At the same time, the situation of theological education in Azerbaijan and its results are investigated during the Soviet period, which adopted atheist ideology after the tsarist Russia. Finally, the theological education policies in Azerbaijan during the independence period and the social, political, cultural, and ideological factors that shape these policies are examined. While the various scientific centers of the Islamic world had an indisputable authority in higher religious education before the Tsar's Russia invaded the region, the number of those who turned to these science centers gradually decreased with the policies implemented after the occupation. During the Soviet period, Azerbaijan's ties with the higher religious education centers in the Islamic world were completely severed, and only a very limited number of people were able to have higher religious education at the Tashkent Islamic Institute, which was under the control of the Soviet system. Since the first years of the independence period, Azerbaijan has struggled with the problems caused by the lack of a mechanism to train theologians to meet this interest, despite the increasing interest in Islam in the society. Although the Baku Islamic Institute was established under the Caucasus Muslims Spiritual Administration in the first years of independence, the Institute could not achieve success in educational activities that meet the needs. In the first years of independence, the theology faculty, which was established under the Baku State University with the support of the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation (TDF), was not accepted as an authoritative institution in the field of higher religious education by the majority of the society for some reasons. In this period, certain education centers in the Islamic world became intensely preferred for higher religious education. However, this situation brought along political, ideological, cultural, etc., problems, and the problems and contradictions of the Islamic world were imported to Azerbaijan by theologians who graduated from there. In 2018, by the Presidential decree, the Azerbaijan Theology Institute was established to realize higher religious education and training, taking into account the religious sectarian structure of the Azerbaijani society and aiming to operate in harmony with state policies. In the same year, the education and training activities of the Faculty of Theology which were established with the support of TRF and Baku Islamic University were terminated. Azerbaijan Institute of Theology continues its activities as the only higher religious education institution in the country that prepares religious officials. As a result, we can say that in the last two centuries, there have been serious changes and even breaks in theology education in Azerbaijan, and this process is closely related to the political and ideological processes taking place in the country.

Religion-Related Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Practices and Initiatives of the Contemporary Chinese State

This paper reveals the contemporary Chinese state’s active role in shaping the country’s religion-related intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding, through a systematic review of China’s official inventories of national representative ICH projects and extensive investigations of relevant local practices and initiatives. Although China is ruled by a political party officially embracing an atheist ideology, various elements of the contemporary Chinese state have been proactively involved in safeguarding religion-related ICH. The Chinese state’s involvement in de facto religion-related ICH safeguarding predates its adoption of explicit ICH safeguarding narratives. Still, the Chinese state’s practices and initiatives in safeguarding religion-related ICH flourished after ratifying the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004. Since then, China’s central government has established a nationwide framework to recognise representative ICH items, including religion-related ones. Beyond Beijing, various local state agencies have also developed noticeable enthusiasm for supporting the safeguarding of religion-related ICH. In addition to engaging directly with ICH safeguarding, the contemporary Chinese state has also shaped China’s religion-related ICH by working closely with some academics and religious groups.

Time to rehabilitate. A new reading of Nikolai Gogol

The article raises the problem of adequate understanding of the heritage of Nikolai Gogol. With regard to Nikolai Gogol’s works, the main problems of interpretation of the artistic image are analysed. The principles of text interpretation developed during the theological interpretation of the gospel parables in patristic practice, and certain provisions of the modern theory of the symbol of Aleksei Losev are formulated as basic ones. It is emphasised that the understanding of the ambiguity of the image does not contradict the idea of the presence in the work of art of the target “vector of meaning”, which expresses the author’s creative volitional intentions. In the scientific comprehension of the author’s intention, an important heuristic potential of a preliminary comprehensive study of the writer’s spiritual biography is noted. Almost a century-long dominance of radical atheistic ideology in Nikolai Gogol’s interpretations was reflected in the methodological helplessness and incompetence of science in understanding the legacy of that Christian artist. The process of scientific understanding of the artistic world of Nikolai Gogol, the development of objective criteria and methods of research is considered in the related context of important social processes of recent decades which are – wehope – the restoration of justice in the religious and legal spheres, the rehabilitation of numerous victims of previous political repression, the ongoing canonisation of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Официальная религиозная жизнь православного Прикамья в документах фонда уполномоченного по делам религий

The author proposes to reconstruct the religious life of the Orthodox Kama region in the period after the Great Patriotic War through the prism of documents contained in the fund of the regional commissioner for religious affairs. To analyze the information, the method of historical criticism of sources is used. Reconstruction of the realities of local Orthodoxy is carried out taking into account the political context of the post-war period, government decrees of that time and the specifics of the profession and worldview of those who compiled the documents. The features of drawing up documents for official use are taken into account. The reconstruction was based on annual information reports, service notes and materials of participant observations in the temples of the region from 1948 to 1990, which made it possible to trace the dynamics of quantitative changes in participation in cult practice. The object of the research was the official ritual activities during the daily period and holidays. The main research issue of the article is to identify the specifics of the religious life of the local Orthodox community under constant pressure from atheistic ideology. This presupposes the identification of the most popular forms of participation of believers in ritual activities and the establishment of strategies for religious behavior that would make it possible to realize the faith under pressure from the state. To verify the data obtained, both the interview data contained in the fund and the author's modern research materials, characterizing the current situation in Orthodoxy, were used. The study revealed trends in the extinction of traditional ritual activities against the background of changes in the behavior of believers and the formation of new principles of attitudes towards religion and the church. The main factors influencing the transformation of religious behavior of believers have been identified. The available statistical data on the participation of Orthodox citizens in official religious practice are analyzed. The special status of Orthodoxy in late Soviet society as a position of the synthesis of religious and Soviet behavior for believers is determined. Two trends in the culture of the population of the region are highlighted: the success of the policy of atheization of citizens and the strengthening of cult activity at the level of individual forms of religious behavior.

Ритуальное поведение городского населения Дагестана

Introduction. The problem of religiosity and religious behavior is actualized in the scientific space against the background of the increasing role of religion, the desire of spiritual leaders to penetrate practically all social spheres and dominate there, which causes rejection and condemnation in the mass consciousness. Theoretical justification. The growth of the Islamic component in Russia was facilitated by change in the basic foundations of Russian society, sharp transition from the atheistic ideology that prevailed in society to other ideological attitudes. However, there was a powerful platform for such a development of Russian society, because the existing declaration of freedom of conscience could not be implemented in reality. Accordingly, the transformation of Russian society logically expanded the boundaries for the free functioning of religious institutions, provided the population with access to religious knowledge. Methods. The empirical study was conducted in 2020 by the method of random selection. The object of the study is the urban population. The subject of the study is the religious behavior of the urban population of Dagestan. The survey location is cities Derbent, Kaspiysk, Makhachkala, Khasavyurt, Kizlyar. The basis for the inclusion of these cities in the research sample is the territorial parameter, which allows to cover equally the northern, plain and southern administrative entities. N = 563. Results and its discussion. The analysis of the results of the author's sociological survey shows that the Islamic revival in Dagestan was accompanied by intensification of the ritual behavior of the population of the republic, however, an in-depth study of the cult behavior of the townspeople shows their characteristic formal religiosity: the existence of an inconsistency between the basic Islamic postulates in religious behavior and the real ritual behavior of the surveyed urban population has been established.

Understanding the Argument of Atheists in Pakistan (An Analytical Survey of University Students)

This research paper is an attempt to examine Atheist’s arguments in the context of Pakistan. Atheism is a growing phenomenon across the world; however, the factors which led the atheists to adopt atheism as their identity vary from context to context. Consequently, the goal of this research paper is to explore major factors which led the Muslim youth towards atheism in Pakistani context. This research is important, firstly to understand the arguments normally given to alienate the youth form their religion, and secondly to initiate a way forward to counter the arguments so the people of Pakistan remained intact to their inherited religion—Islam. This study focuses on answering two basic questions. How does one become atheist? What are the factors which lead towards atheism? Semi-structured qualitative interviews are used as a method of this study and 19 self-identified atheists from different universities have been interviewed on the bases of comprehensive open-ended questionnaire ranging from their diverse educational, institutional and their peer groups. A non-probability snow-ball sampling technique is used to find participants for interviews. Each interview is recorded and later coded and analysed the data in search of understanding the argument in the participants’ responses. This research concludes that there are both similarities and differences across countries in the way atheists conceptualize atheistic ideology and their evaluation of the arguments on atheism. The results also suggest that the debate of atheism is highly contextual and adaptation of research methodologies from country to country should be done.

RELIGION IN THE AXIOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF KAZAKHSTANI YOUTH

Together with independence, the Republic of Kazakhstan reacquired its lost traditional values; religion, controlled and suppressed by the Soviet atheist ideology, being one of the most important elements along with the growing number of religious communities and associations, as well as places of public worship. Today, religiosity is on the rise, especially among the younger generation: everyday religious practices are observed by individuals or groups of people at workplaces and homes and in the course of communication. The author has analyzed the role of religion in axiological orientation and the level of religious feelings of the young people aged 18-22 on the basis of sociological poll results.