Secularization and Postmodernism: Religious Processes among the Young in Today’s Russia and Europe and Their Social and Theological Reflection

The article is devoted to the burning issue of religiosity among contemporary Russian youths. Methodologically, the research is based on a comparative analysis of the religious processes among young people in Russia and Germany during the last ten years. The author maintains that the beliefs of young Russians are a refl ection of the general religious processes currently underway in Russia. At the same time, there is an obvious correlation between these processes and the ones in post-secular Europe: Russian religious landscape is actually becoming as varied as the European one. This fact is connected with the peculiarities of the «new faith», characterized as something personal and always in search, as illustrated by studies on religious symbolism in social networks. Moreover, religiosity among youths presents well-defi ned traits that German researchers have noticed long ago: the «new faith» is characterized by the absence of dogmas, the transformation of the concept of sin, and a deep mistrust for every kind of authority. At the same time individual experience acquires great, if not paramount, importance, becoming a universal criterion of truth for any phenomenon, including religious ones. This experience is described by three key options — «subculture», «patchwork religiosity » and «singularity» — which taken together form the mode of religious identity among contemporary Russian youths