DOI:
10.18413/2408-9338-2014-1-2-31-37
THE CROSS-CONFESSIONAL MODEL FOR STUDYING RELIGIOSITY: ELABORATION AND IMPLEMENTATION IN BELARUS
To make studying religiosity of the poly-confessional Belarusian society constant and systematic, the model of research was elaborated based on the mixed qualitative-quantitative methodology, a wide (cross-confessional) concept of religion, a multi-dimensional model of religiosity, and a flexible scaling of parameters of individual religiosity in each dimension.
Religion is defined in the model as a sphere of society (individual) being an institutionally formed symbolical system of beliefs and activity focused on the meaning of the transcendent contents. The source and the channel for transmitting the transcendent meaning is religious experience understood in its both narrow the condition in which a person finds him/herself in a living and straight unity with the transcendent and broad any act of a person’s participation in the life of religious tradition sense. The transcendent is also understood broadly as the idea of self-sufficient and self-acting reality outstanding the actual world in its essence but appearing in it through actions symbolised as powers, spirits, demons, gods, God, world soul, etc. Thus, in the research, religion is modelled as a two-aspect phenomenon including religious experience (the inner, latent aspect) and a system of articulating and transmitting the contents of experience (the outer, measureable aspect). The outer system creates a unity of beliefs (expressing the idea of religion), activity (performs the religious ideal), institutes (fixes statuses and functions in the tradition of reconstructing the ideal). These dimensions may have different degrees of spreading in various religions, that’s why religions are traditions or movements.
Religiosity is understood as the combination of degrees of involvement into each of the named dimensions of religion. For each dimension the empirical parameters of involvement are set. The sum of the parameters of each dimension gives the corresponding characteristic: the certainty of religious position; the degree of religious activity; the level of integration into community. The combination of intensity of each of the named characteristics gives the integral characteristic of religiosity for each respondent. The hypothesis is that the degrees of religiosity of the respondents form a range from declarative through weak and moderate to deep involvement.
Keywords: religiosity,
multi-dimensional model for studying religiosity,
cross-confessional concept of religiosity,
dimensions of religiosity,
parameters of religiosity,
typology of religiosity,
religiosity in Belarus.
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