The article deals with the problem of identifying and realizing the managerial capacity of religion in a secular society and the requirements of extreme rationalism in managerial activity. The author offers methodological schemes from the field of religious studies and sociology of religion, which can serve as a basis for analyzing the possibilities of religion in the field of social management: M. Weber (religious motivation for non-religious action), the theory of secularization (the fact of the modification of religion), R. Bellah (the theory of “civil religion”), N. Smart (comparative analysis of religious and secular ideologies). The interaction of religious and other social institutions is the most representative field of application of these schemes. It is possible on the basis of a functional and structural analysis of religion to establish its characteristics, which in theory and practice can be presented as conditions and tools of management activity. Religion, as an instrument of social management, is used with different intensity, in different forms and in different cultural “packages” within the framework of the difference in the perception of religious faith by different people. The author proposes to consider the features of corporate culture as a specific sphere of fusion of religion and the management system as an example of such a situation. It is proposed in modern theory and practice of organizational culture to single out the logic of building corporate culture according to the patterns of religious culture: corporate culture, brand, advertising, a system of communication with the consumer are built within a system that contains too many analogies with religion.