CC BY
10
DOI: 10.24234/wisdom.v21i1.586 Sergey ASTAPOV, Alina KRASNOVA
RELIGIOUS VALUES IN MODERN RUSSIAN SOCIETY: A PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLICATION
Abstract
This article analyses the results of sociological research on value orientations in modern Russian society, based on the philosophical explication of the concept of 'value'. The analysis allows us to recognize that the significance of religious values in the value system of modern society depends on both - the goals of research and their methodological foundations. A philosophical understanding of the essence and nature of values is, therefore, central. Values are principles of a meaningful human life that give ideas about what is significant and important in one's life, legitimising one's activities as the realisation of one's being. This article emphasises that the majority of respondents to the study, who belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, do not separate the confessional values from the moral values of traditional society. This tendency is also seen in the documents defining the social activities of the Church, although the division between confessional and moral values exists in the theology and religious philosophy of the Russian Orthodox Church. The authors of the article consider the essence and nature of values presented in Russian religious philosophy relevant to a religious worldview and assert the ontological, not moral, nature of values.
Keywords: religious values, sociology of religion, value system of society, Russian Orthodox Church, Russian religious philosophy.
Introduction
Research on value orientation in the context of social changes has received a lot of attention in the last few decades. This is because value orientations can influence both the individual and the collective consciousness of social groups, making them important for social forecasting. Indeed, values are the basis for desired actions and events - they determine the direction of the social activity of individuals, and in this sense, they determine the social future. For this reason, most social research includes them. The largest projects for the study of values are the international sociological programmes, World Values Survey and European Values Study, which have been operating since 1981.
Among the value orientations of modern society, religious values are highly important, alt-
hough several modern social theories substantiate the idea that society (mainly European) has entered a post-secular era. Consequently, we would expect that the value system of society undergoes certain transformations because of the interaction between religious and secular values as well as the influence of values from different religions.
Despite a significant array of publications devoted to religious values, most publications have a normative and speculative nature, representing arguments (mostly well-founded and fruitful) about the spiritual crisis of modern society. Furthermore, the existing literature highlights the importance of spiritual, moral, religious, or confessional values for individual, societal, cultural, educational, and historical development. Such publications express the results of specific sociological research dedicated to the value orienta-
tions, or even individual values, of specific social groups or religious associations.
This study aims to develop an understanding of the philosophical basis for research to determine the significance of religious values in the value systems of modern society. Before discussing the place of religious values thus, it is necessary to understand what values will be discussed and in which system. In other words, it is necessary to determine the meaning of those concepts that, when applied to a specific resource of sociological research, will become the basic elements of a theoretical construction that determines the place, role, or significance of religious values in society.
The results of this study will allow us to comprehend what determines the value system of society and what influences its change. Since the research is mainly based on the publications of Russian authors, this study will focus on the value system of Russian society. In the future, the conclusions of this analysis will make it possible to compare the studies on religious values by Russian sociologists with similar studies by their foreign colleagues. In another research area, the results of the article will lead us to a better understanding of the place and role of religious values in the social life of modern Russia.
To determine religious values, it is necessary to correlate them with non-religious values. In this correlation, a lot depends on what is considered religious. In most Russian publications that are not dedicated to specific faiths, religious values are understood as the values of the Russian Orthodoxy by default. This is quite understandable for three main reasons. First, Russian Orthodoxy has played a historical role in the formation of Russian culture; many of its elements are contained in various symbolic systems of Russian culture, such as art, literature, and philosophy. Second, most Russian citizens nominally consider themselves as Russian Orthodox. Third, the Russian Orthodox Church actively positions itself in the public space, both as a guardian and defender of traditional values. Therefore, when
considering specific religious values, this article takes into account Christian values in their context, which is presented in the doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Differences Between Sociological and Religious-Philosophical Definitions of Religious Values
Like most philosophical concepts, "value" is a concept with an ambiguous definition. More precisely, it depends on how the nature of values is understood and how they are related to meanings, experiences, and needs. Therefore, in the history of philosophy, we will encounter various teachings on values, and we can even define the paradigms of these teachings. Moreover, an analysis of scientific articles on the values of modern society demonstrates that, in most cases, authors give a definition of "value" without referring it to any direction of philosophy or philosophical teaching. While some construct their own definitions, and some provide no definition at all, each approach can be justified. If an article is devoted to the field of sociological or anthropological research, the author, most likely, considers the understanding of the value that is formed through everyday use. Alternatively, the author gives a personal "working" definition, which is suitable to solve the problems that are set in the study. The problem is that there are bound to be distortions in the interpretation of these research results since the representatives of the scientific community who interpret these results will most likely not analyse how the definitions of value correlate with each other; they are unlikely to verify if these meanings belong to 1) themselves, 2) the author of the study, or 3) the respondents.
Moreover, these interpretative biases apply to religious values. Secular and religious (traditional or post-secular) views of social relations provide different ideas about values. In addition, without an initial definition of value, it will be difficult to draw lines of demarcation between
'value' and related concepts such as norms and commandments in the sphere of religious ethics and personal meanings and preferences in the sphere of religious psychology.
Therefore, in modern Russian sociology, values, in their most general understanding, are "generalised goals and means of achieving them, which serve as fundamental norms. They ensure social integration by helping individuals make socially acceptable choices about their behaviour in life-changing situations" (Lapin, 1996, p. 5). This definition corresponds to the understanding of values in Western sociology and is based on the theory of Milton Rokeach. As noted by Braithwaite and Scott (1991), "Rokeach set about measuring values by asking respondents first to rank-order 18 instrumental values (modes of conduct) and second, 18 terminal values (end-states of existence) in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their lives. A value was defined as "an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence" (p. 662).
Furthermore, value orientations play a special role in social relations, as the essential elements of goal setting, the expediency of behaviour, and meaning-making. In fact, value orientations are those values that an individual or social group explicitly implement. Moreover, they are a complex hierarchical system that is built under the influence of life experience, depending on the subjective significance of a particular value. The top of this system is occupied by ideals that function as an overarching vision: the ultimate goal that determines the meaning of an individual's life, and moreover, represents something that is subjectively more important than one's own life. A goal is an image of the desired future that a person seeks to achieve. Usually, an individual has many goals, and they are organised hierarchically, depending on the value that a particular goal is associated with. Thus, the individual proceeds from their ideals, from what they consider
to be the meaning of their life, set certain goals for oneself and organises one's behaviour in accordance with them, and this gives meaning to one's life.
The analysis of the value systems of various social groups suggests that all of them contain some invariant values, which, depending on socio-cultural factors, may have a different location in the hierarchy of values, be interpreted differently, and differ in relation to other values. These invariant values are called basic values. Nevertheless, there are not many of them: Rokeach settled on 36 and Braithwaite and Law (1985) identified 54 goals in life and 71 ways of behaving, which was reduced through factor analysis to 19 basic dimensions corresponding well with the Rokeach Value Survey.
The sociological approach to defining orthodox values (as well as values in general) is based on the social functions of values, such as socialisation, social identity, and social regulation. From this point of view, values appear as regulative guidelines that determine social activities and social relations. They assume a system of social needs and interests, but their main purpose is to establish an image of what is normal and proper, which, in turn, ensures the unity of society and gives its members certain orientations and motives for action. Thus, in the book "Russian Society and Challenges of the Time", value orientations are actually identified with behavioural and evaluative maxims. Fomicheva (2012), who analysed the concept of value in sociology, notes that values appear "in the form of patterns of preference, choice and evaluation, so they act as normative phenomena that regulate activity" (p. 69). In the sociological research of Pesetsky (2015), values and norms are directly identified as follows: "Value is understood as a set of norms (content component) and goals (instrumental component) that form the choices (requirements) that address the will of the individual and determine the process of his social interaction. Value is a norm that is significant for a social subject" (p. 330).
It should be specially noted that sociological studies that include a psychological component add a connotation of personal meaning to the definition of value as a norm. As a result, the concept of value gets a subjective component and is defined as an object of the external (material or social) world that has significance or importance for the individual. Thus, Magun and Rudnev (2010) write that values are defined as the beliefs of a person in the significance of a certain object or phenomenon for them, personally. Kuznetsova (2010) notes that values in the structure of personality perform the function of orientations based on evaluation, and value orientations, in turn, function as a motive and motivation. Likhatskaya (2014) concludes the same, "values and evaluation are linked and function as guidelines for human activity" (p. 126). Religious values are considered by sociologists in the same way. Hence, Alekseenko and Abramov (2012) write, "Religious values associated with belief in the supernatural are also real values that serve as a guide in the life of believers, determine the norms and motives of their behaviour and actions" (p. 174).
This functional-normative approach to understanding values differs significantly from a religious understanding of them, which is based on the recognition of the absolute value of God, and the formation of a value hierarchy in the religious consciousness, in accordance with this absolute value. The specifics of religious axiology can be found in the works of Russian religious philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. For example, the definition of value given by Nikolay Lossky in the book "Value and Being" is as follows: "The concept of derived value can easily be defined: it is in its meaning for the realisation of absolute completeness of being or removal from it. The whole difficulty lies in determining the primary super-world absolute positive value: this is God as Good itself, the absolute fullness of being, which has a meaning that justifies it, makes it an object of approval, gives it an unconditional right to exercise and prefer-
ence for anything else" (Lossky, 1931, p. 78).
Lossky, Frank, Berdyaev, and other Russian religious philosophers associate the concept of value exclusively with the spiritual life of a person. The value appears as an objective phenomenon - a divine being realised in human existence and revealed as a real being. In other words, according to Russian religious philosophy, value is an ontological, not a moral, category. Therefore, according to Frank (2000), value is the on-tological basis of the meaning of a person's life; it gives people a reference point to the ultimate goal of their own existence, makes their life meaningful, and gives them an idea of what is significant, desirable, and important.
However, if we divide values into terminal and instrumental values, only terminal values would be considered true values in the religious and philosophical sense. Moreover, terminal values express the ultimate foundations of human existence and serve as the ultimate goals of life -as ideals. Instrumental values, however, are related to everyday activities and the transitory world, and they gain significance only in correlation with terminal values. This understanding of values should be reflected in confessional literature, so its analysis is a necessary point in the study of religious values.
Value in the Confessional Understanding: The Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church
In the analysis of Christian or, rather (and more narrowly) the Orthodox Church values, the difference in the understanding of the theological and social doctrines of the Church is noteworthy. According to the theological doctrine, the highest value is God. Since theology finds the most powerful argument in the words of the Holy Scripture, the gospel becomes important for understanding the hierarchy of values, "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and goodwill toward men" (Lk. 2:14). The Creed containing dogmas about God the Father, God the Son (Je-
sus Christ), God the Holy Spirit, the Church, baptism for the remission of sins, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal life creates a certain hierarchy. God is at the pinnacle of this hierarchy, followed by the Church; at the bottom of the order is salvation, as the ultimate goal and meaning of humanity. The values of human existence are at the bottom of the hierarchy and are derived from the Christian understanding of God and God's relationship with humanity. Moreover, the resurrected dead and their life in Paradise (or salvation) are related to eternal life, not to temporal, earthly life, and only salvation and eternal life appear as value-goals - those that provide perspective on and act as a focal point for, actions. It is also important to note that these values are both individual and collective. The Creed begins with the words, "I believe...", that is, it presupposes a personal confession of faith and ends with the words, "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen", that is, affirming the value of the common good for all the people who will be resurrected in the future and be worthy of salvation.
The Russian Orthodox social doctrine is set out in "The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" and "The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights". Neither of these documents explicitly defines the concept of "value", although the word is widely used in them. These documents have certain theological grounds, which are reflected in their preambles. The first is based on the orthodox doctrine of the Church, orthodox ecclesiology, and the second on the doctrine of the human being, that is, orthodox anthropology. Accordingly, the values referred to in these documents are derived from these spheres of theological knowledge and are generally recognised as the values of the Russian Orthodox Church.
"The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" substantiates the values of the Church itself and its participation in the socio-political aspects of society. Furthermore, it
is stated that "the unity of the Church as the mysterious body of Christ (Eph. 1:23), on whose undamaged existence the eternal salvation of humanity depends, is the highest value for it" (The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2008). State power also has value, provided that "the limits of its purely earthly, temporary and transitory value are recognised, due to the presence of sin in the world and the need to contain it" (The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2008).
"The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" also affirms the value of enlightenment, moral education, and education, in which the Church is recognised as not only a possible but a necessary participant. Thus, it is noted that "crime prevention is possible primarily through education and education aimed at establishing true spiritual and moral values in society. In this case, the Russian Orthodox Church is called upon to actively interact with schools, the media and law enforcement agencies", because "from the Orthodox point of view, it is desirable that the entire education system be built on religious principles and based on Christian values" (The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2008).
Further, societal values such as freedom (including freedom of conscience), work, property, health, and science are not absolute values, according to this document, but are recognised as values only if they are considered in the context of serving God and others, that is, if they are embedded in the system of the other higher values of orthodoxy. For example, regarding science, it is noted that "today, to ensure normal human life, it is more necessary than ever to return to the lost connection of scientific knowledge with religious, spiritual and moral values" (The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2008).
Thus, from the analysis of the document, it follows that the Church offers its vision of a socio-political structure based on religious values, which are equated with moral values. Further,
the Church declares the need for its participation in all spheres of society: politics, culture, medicine, education and science, media, defence, and the economy, among others. However, the document does not indicate whether there are non-religious moral values in these areas of society, probably because the authors are convinced of the religious nature of all moral values.
"The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights", in relation to the previous document, recognises the relative value of dignity, freedom, and human rights. A person has absolute dignity, only potentially, as the image and likeness of God, but fallen (i.e. present) human nature does not have this dignity because it is exposed to sin. In the same way, the document considers human freedom, "while recognising the value of freedom of choice, and the Church asserts that it inevitably disappears when the choice is made in favour of evil. Evil and freedom are incompatible" (The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights, 2008). Similarly, in the document, the concept of freedom is expanded from the legal field to the moral field.
With regard to the Church's view on human rights, the document attempts to determine that there are values with which these rights should be harmonised, "from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, the political and legal institution of human rights can serve the good goals of protecting human dignity and promote the spiritual and moral development of the individual. To do this, the realization of human rights must not conflict with God-established moral norms and traditional morality based on them. Individual human rights cannot be opposed to the values and interests of the Fatherland, community, or family. The exercise of human rights should not be an excuse for encroaching on religious shrines, cultural values, or the identity of a people. Human rights cannot serve as a pretext for causing irreparable damage to the natural heritage" (The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic
Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights, 2008).
Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church proposes that the human rights system should not interfere with traditional spiritual and moral values and norms that are based on the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church. The values discussed in "The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights" are a system of moral orientations that the Church translates as requiring purposeful activity.
By analysing the social doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church, we can conclude that, like dogmatic theology, it considers God at the top of the system of values. However, the system which it built equates religious values with moral ones. Religious values are reduced to the level of moral regulators of social relations and are designed to perform certain functions in society: integrative, harmonising, protective, and educational. This view of values reduces them to a level where the distinction between morality and religion itself is lost. However, in modern society, secular ethical norms that are characteristic of the secular worldview can, and in some situations more successfully, perform the same functions as religious ones.
Religious Values in Contemporary Society: Data from Sociological Research
The results of sociological research on religious values give an ambiguous picture of the position of religious values in the system of social values due to the differences in research approaches. They allow us to detect a discrepancy between the real value orientations of the declared importance of religion in public life. This is evidenced by the analysis of the research data of a study that was conducted at approximately the same time (2014-2016) and only a few years apart from this study.
For example, the book "Russian Society and the Challenges of the Time" presents the results
of a 2014-2015 survey in which respondents assessed moral qualities that were important for them. The survey was conducted among representatives of four groups: Orthodox Christians, Muslims, non-confessional believers, and atheists. First, the researchers noted the similarity of moral preference scales in all groups. At the same time, as specific features, the following were most important and highly valued: for the Orthodox Christians, honesty and justice; for Muslims, diligence, solidarity, adherence to moral norms, national-cultural and religious tolerance, and religiosity; for the non-confessional group, initiative, love of freedom, being principled, pragmatism, and caring for local problems; and for atheists, responsibility for themselves and their loved ones. Nonetheless, qualities such as enterprise, law-abiding, initiative, love of freedom, and concern for local needs are valued equally in the Orthodox Christians and Muslim groups. Second, researchers have placed values that are related to the attitude towards religion among the moral qualities. The survey results showed the following: "As for the quality of national-cultural and religious tolerance, it is only in the Muslim group that it is in the top ten of the scale of value preferences... A similar situation is observed with regard to religiosity: this quality is not so important. Such qualities related to the religious component as adherence to traditional moral norms, solidarity, and patriotism, primarily in their non-religious forms, are gaining a more noticeable level. The same quality as humility is generally on the periphery of respondents' assessments. The absolute value, regardless of the religious and ideological orientation of respondents, is honesty, hard work, justice, responsibility for themselves and their loved ones" (Gorshkov & Tikhonova, 2016, p. 287).
Thus, not specifically religious values but general moral ones came to the fore in the value scale. If such data are expected from respondents who consider themselves to be atheists or believers outside of confessions, then in relation to Orthodox Christians and Muslims, they serve as
indicators of the weak influence of religion on the formation of their value orientations. According to the study, only 8% of Orthodox Christians and 16% of Muslims noted faith in God as a value; 5% of Orthodox Christians and 4% of Muslims consider humility to be valuable. The researchers noted that here "explanations can vary: the predominantly secular nature of public consciousness, the consideration of religiosity and faith as a private, personal element of human life, the exclusion of religious organisations from the dominant institutions of moral regulation" (Gorshkov & Tikhonova, 2016, p. 288).
Both explanations characterise society as secular, not post-secular, since it does not allow us to talk about changes in value orientations towards religion. Nor is the post-secularity in Russian society related to the desecularization of consciousness but to the increasing activity of religious organisations that proclaim traditional and useful moral values for society in the public space.
Similar results were provided by a sociological study on "Religiosity in the system of values of women", conducted among women who consider themselves Orthodox Christians in 2016, in Tambov. A total of 200 women were interviewed using the questionnaire method. The results were as follows: "Answering the question: 'What are the most important life values for you?', the majority of women chose such as love (53.5%), health (47%) and family (45.5%)... In general, the survey participants noted the importance of faith and religion. So, the answer options 'very important' and 'quite important' were expressed by 30% and 42%, respectively. 16% noted the answer 'not too important' and only 2% - 'not at all important'. Another 10% found it difficult to answer (Belinskaya & Za-donskaya, 2017, p. 275).
It is noteworthy that 28% of the respondents -Orthodox Christians - chose the responses that faith and religion are "not too important", "not at all important", or "I find it difficult to answer". The authors of the study do not explain this fact
in any way, but it can be assumed that a random survey conducted among the parishioners of the temple showed a certain percentage of those women who do not have a proper religious motivation to visit the temple - their motivations may be different. In support of this, we can point out the fact that according to the results of the same survey, women most often turn to prayers when they feel bad (37%) and almost the same (34%) when they remember; further, 18% pray every day, 8% pray very rarely, and only 3% of respondents do not pray (277). Thus, religious values may not have a place at all among the parishioners of orthodox churches.
Another research approach and different results are shown in the study by Pesetsky. He conducted a series of video interviews with representatives of the clergy and Orthodox Christian entrepreneurs about Orthodox Christian values as a system. Based on interviews with representatives of the clergy, the researcher compiled a list of Orthodox Christian values: "God as an absolute value, the Church, the family, Orthodox ethics, asceticism, the Decalogue (ten commandments), postulates and dogmas of the Christian faith" (Pesetsky, 2015, p. 331). However, having singled out the primacy of the value of God, the author could not systematise other values.
The study conducted by Riazantsev, Podle-snaya, and Kozlov among teachers of spiritual and secular universities is mostly devoted to clarifying the list of Orthodox Christian values and is an attempt to build their hierarchy. The respondents were asked to independently name a set of Orthodox Christian values as well as explain Orthodox Christian values (their semantic content) from the list proposed by the authors. The researchers concluded the following: "Our study found some differences in the set of values of Orthodoxy and how they were interpreted by representatives of two expert groups - teachers of spiritual and secular universities. In the first case, the emphasis was on the person of Christ and the person's mental health. In the second -repentance, humility, spiritual fortitude, and the
emphasis was on the historical significance of Orthodoxy in the development of Russian society and the state, as well as on the property of values, in particular Orthodox, to conduct the process of socialization" (Riazantsev, Podlesnaya, & Kozlov, 2014, p. 134).
Thus, as in Pesetsky's research, the hierarchy of values here was not built into a unified picture. Besides, the interpretation of Orthodox Christian values by representatives of the secular worldview often turned out to be secular - the content of concepts in their interpretation was more social than religious in meaning. The authors of the study explain this situation by the fact that, unlike experts from spiritual universities, the approach of secular experts to Christian Orthodoxy and its values is primarily instrumentalist in nature.
The general conclusion from the studies analysed is that the concept of Christian 'Orthodox values' (as a representative of the concept of "religious values") is currently not clearly defined; its content is broad and vague. In this regard, it is not possible to talk about a certain universally recognised hierarchy of Orthodox Christian values.
Conclusion
Even though modern society has objectively made a turn from secularisation to desecuralisa-tion processes, this change was noticeable at the level of functioning of religious institutions and not at the level of mass consciousness. Regarding a positive attitude towards the activities of religious organisations and individual identification as believers, a significant number of individuals do not associate themselves with any religious organisation (the phenomenon of so-called extra-institutional religiosity). Among those who indicate their affiliation to religious organisations, there are many who do not share the entire value system of their denomination but choose from it only those values that correspond to their personal needs and orientations. Perhaps,
value shifts will occur in the next generation, some thirty years from now, when the public activity of religious institutions finds expression in the public consciousness.
This activity in the field of ideology is aimed at the desecularization of moral values and the return of their sacred sanction. Having confirmed the understanding of the religious nature of moral values, it will be possible to delve further -into the value of their religious foundations. However, post-secularism does not mean only desecuralisation and a return to a pre-secular society when the institution of the Church played a leading role in public relations. In a post-secular society, religious organisations perform their social roles in various spheres along with other institutions of society. When representatives of any denomination promote religious values, they should be aware that, first, in modern society, no religious organisation has a monopoly on faith, and second, for a modern person, values related to personal self-expression are more important than values about the preservation of existence.
This awareness is most important for historically traditional religions, particularly for Christian Orthodoxy. Christian Orthodoxy is characterised by the presence of dogmatised values of a traditional society, in which the preservation of existence in various forms was of primary importance: from survival to the reproduction of all its own genus, people, customs, way of life, and religion amongst others. However, the use of the institution of power to transmit these values creates significant difficulties for the Russian Orthodox Church to promote itself. Since personal and social orientations (individual and universal) coincide in the value relation to existence, the actualisation of the values of traditional religions is impossible without emphasising and resolving the key problems of existence, when religion opposes the meaning and purpose of existence to the absurdity and spiritual freedom and creativity to dependence on life conditions and circumstances and compassion and hope for immortality to illness and the fear of death.
Thus, we see that the results of this research to determine the significance of religious values in the value system of modern society depend on not only the goals of research but also their methodological foundations, among which, the philosophical understanding of the essence and nature of values is central. We believe that one of these grounds and prerequisites for sociological research is the division of values into terminal and instrumental values, in which religious values, as the ultimate meanings of existence, belong to terminal values. As a relevant understanding of the essence and nature of values, we share the point of view of Russian religious philosophers who claimed the ontological, and not the moral, nature of values and saw in them the principles of meaningful human life. This gave ideas about what is significant and important in one's life and legitimised one's activities as the realisation of one's being. Despite the fact that this understanding does not correspond to the functional-normative approach to values, which in some cases occurs both in research and confessional literature, we believe that it is the onto-logical approach to understanding values, and not the normative one, that allows us to see the specifics of religious values and not combine them with moral values in the category of spiritual values.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) under Grant number 20-011-00400.
References
Alekseenko, A. I., & Abramov, A. P. (2012).
Lichnost kak sub 'ekt i ob 'ekt religi-oznykh tsennostey (The individual as a subject and an object of religious values, in Russian/ Izvestiya Yugo-Zapad-nogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta (Proceedings of the South-West State
University, in Russian), 43(4), 172-175.
Belinskaya, D. V., & Zadonskaya, I. A. (2017). Sociologicheskiy analiz otnoshenia zhenschin k religioznym tsennostyam (Sociological analysis of women's relation to religious values, in Russian). Social'no-gumanitarnye znaniya (So-cio-Humanitarian Knowledge, in Russian), 9, 271-280.
Braithwaite, V. A., & Law, H. G. (1985). Structure of human values: Testing the adequacy of the Rokeach Value Survey. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 250-263. https://doi.org-/10.1037/0022-3514.49.1.250
Braithwaite, V. A., & Scott, W. A. (1991). Values. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 661-753). San Diego, California: Academic Press.
Fomicheva, T. V. (2012). K opredeleniyu po-nyatia tsennosti: sotsiologo-istoriches-kiy aspect (Definition of the concept of "value": Sociological and historical aspects, in Russian). Uchenye zapiski Rossijskogo gosudarstvennogo social'-nogo universiteta (Scientific Notes of the Russian State Social University, in Russian), 107(7), 63-70.
Frank, S. L. (2020). The unknowable: An onto-logical introduction to the philosophy of religion. New York: Angelico Press.
Gorshkov, M. K., & Tikhonova, N. E. (Eds.) (2016). Rossiyskoe obschestvo i vyzovy vremeni (Russian society and challenges of the time, in Russian). (Vol. 4). Moscow: Ves' mir.
Kuznetsova, E. G. (2010). Lichnostnye tsennosti: ponyatie, podkhody k klassifkatsii (Personal values: Concept, approaches to the classification, in Russian). Vestnik OGU. Pedagogicheskie nauki (Bulletin of Orenburg State University OSU. Pedagogical sciences, in Russian),
116(10), 20-24.
Lapin, N. I. (1996). Modernizatsia bazovykh tsennostey rossian (Modernization of fundamental values of Russians, in Russian). Sotsiologicheskie issledo-vaniya (Sociological research, in Russian), 5, 3-23.
Likhatskaya, L. N. (2014). Definitsia perekhoda kak tsennost' v chrisianskoy kulture (Definition of transition as value in Christian culture, in Russian). Is-toricheskie, filosofskie, politicheskie i yuridicheskie nauki, kul'turologiya i is-kusstvovedenie. Voprosy teorii i prakti-ki (Historical, Philosophical, Political and Law Sciences, Culturology and Study of Art. Issues of Theory and Practice, in Russian), 40(2), 124-127.
Lossky, N. O. (1931). Tsennost i bytie (Value and existence, in Russian). Paris: YMCA-PRESS.
Magun, V. S., & Rudnev, M. G. (2010). Bazovye tsennosti rossian v evropeyskom kon-tekste (The life values of the Russian population, in Russian). Obshhestven-nye nauki i sovremennost' (Social Sciences and Contemporary World, in Russian), 3, 5-22.
Osnovy socialnoy kontseptsii Russkoy Pra-voslavnoy Tserkvi. Prinyaty na Archi-ereyskom Sobore 2000 g. (2008, June 9). (The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted at the Bishops' Counsil 2000, in Russian). Retrieved from http://www.pat-riarchia.ru/db/text/419128.html
Osnovy uchenia Russkoy Pravoslavnoy Tserkvi o dostoinstve, svobode i pravakh chelo-veka. Prinyaty na Archiereyskom Sobo-re 2008 g. (2008, June 26). (The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights, adopted at the Bishops' Counsil 2008, in Russian). Retrieved from http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/42861
6.html
Pesetsky, O. A. (2015). Religioznye tsennosti v sotsializatsii pravoslavno orientirovan-nykh rukovoditeley organizatsiy (Religious values in socialization of orthodox-oriented business managers, in Russian). Vestnik Russkoy khristian-skoy gumanitarnoy akademii (Review of the Christian Academy for the Humanities, in Russian), 16(1), 328-335.
Riazantsev, I. P., Podlesnaya, M. A., & Kozlov,
I. I. (2014). Fenomenología pravosla-vnykh tsennostey v otsenke ekspertov (Phenomenology of orthodox values assessed by experts, in Russian). So-tsíologícheskíe íssledovaníya (Sociological research, in Russian), 364(8), 128-135.
The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. (2004). London: Cambridge University Press, Trinitarian Bible Society.
