Religious Communities in Russia’s Secular State

Abstract

The article focuses on not just on relations between particular believers and their environment, but on relations between religious communities and Russia’s secular state as proclaimed in the Constitution of 1993. The notion ‘religious communities’ is one of the wider ones from the list of several definitions of legal organization institutions in the religious life of contemporary Russia (articles 6, 7, 8 of the Federal Law ‘On the freedom of conscience and religious comminutes’ as accepted in September 1997 and very much renovated since then; this article fully relies on the version of June 1st, 2007). Under ‘religious community’ one should understand a voluntary community of Russia’s citizens or other lawful permanent residents, whose purpose is to confess and to spread a certain sort of beliefs and who have all the appropriate features: a confession, worship services, other religious ceremonies, as well as teaching and training of the followers. Religious communities may emerge in the form of religious groups (acting without state registration and a legal body) and religious organizations, which are registered in accordance with the established procedure as a legal body. In this article a notion ‘religious community’ will be used, unless specified otherwise. The outlined problem has many aspects and can be studied in political, social, demographic, financial, proprietary and other aspects. Although in the current article I decided to focus on the two most disputable subjects: (1) the Secular state and the Church (the relation of the state to religious communities), and (2) the Church and the Secular state (the relation of the church to the secular state).

E-mail: socioecon@hse.ru
Key words: state, religious entities, confession, everyday practices, church