ETHNO-RELIGIOUS IDENTITY IN THE SOCIO-CULTURAL SPACE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article analyzes the processes of religious identification in the countries of the Western tradition, which are accompanied by active secularization processes, the weakening of the institutionalization of religion and its transfer to the individual level of being a person. This opens up not only the possibility of choosing and constructing one's own religious identity, but the possibility of a radical change in religious affiliation. It has been determined that the established mechanisms and ways of constructing religious identity, which provide for the recognition of one's own religiosity, clear markers of identification with a specific religious community, and participation in religious practice, are becoming optional and blurred. It has been proven that in countries with a high level of secularization processes, religious identification practices are inferior in importance to socio-economic needs. The regular continuation of these trends is the declaration of traditional religions as detached from real life and not in line with the spiritual needs of the modern age. Globalization processes have become a factor in the activation of religious relativization in the direction of blurring the markers of socio-cultural identification both at the individual and societal levels. The relativization of moral norms and principles is associated with global informatization and an increase in the level of religious mobility as a result of increased migration processes. Probable trends in the development of religious identity are emphasized: in a situation of social and informational transitivity, the level of nominal rather than formalized belonging of believers to certain religious communities will increase; in states dominated by Christian denominations or a steady increase in the number of atheists, the number of interfaith marriages will increase, which can potentially prepare the conditions for interfaith understanding; in the plane of Western civilization, the trend towards a gradual decrease in the religiosity of the population and an increase in the number of non-believers remains constant; the trend towards an even greater separation of religious and ethnic identity in the modern world remains constant.