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Religious Education and Religious Freedom in Russia

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International Handbook of Inter-religious Education

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Religion and Education ((IHRE,volume 4))

Abstract

As a part of Europe, however marginal in geographical and historical sense, Russia faces all new challenges generated by the rapid growth of new opportunities brought with scientific and technical progress. In education the progress is both blessing and curse. As knowledge and intellectual skills become high-valued commodity of postindustrial society, schools find themselves more and more drawn into the midst of the market and forced to define goals and achievements of their activity in utilitarian and consumerist terms and criteria too distant from spiritual dimension of human life. Today Russia shares with the other European societies the same anxieties concerning the sustainability of their school systems and asks the same questions regarding the role and the place of religion in these new educational contexts.

And here the question is posed, whether religion may be a remedy against social disintegration, consumerism, materialism, and individualism fostered by competitive neo-liberal models of education? In a sense the question is even more vital for contemporary Russian context than for the European West. Quasi-religious ideology of Soviet state suppressed all explicit forms of religiosity in education, but it also served, through its very emphasis on ideological issues, as a catalyst of spiritual search and devotions. In a post-Cold War context, with Communist ideology largely gone, a feeling of spiritual vacuum has emerged in Russia. Many among former Soviet citizens felt more comfortable within a consolidated national culture than in unsteady contemporary realm of pluralism of truths and beliefs. As a result, during the 1990s the idea of reconsolidating society with a new national ideology has gained a solid public support, and religion is seen as having a critical if ambivalent role in this process. This chapter critically engages with these issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Russian Christian Academy for Humanities, St Petersburg, Russia

    Fyodor Kozyrev

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  1. Fyodor Kozyrev
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Correspondence to Fyodor Kozyrev .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia

    Kath Engebretson

  2. National School of Religious Education, Australian Catholic University, Mair St 1200, Ballarat, 3350, Victoria, Australia

    Marian de Souza

  3. Graduate School of Religion &, Religious Education, Fordham University, Bronx, 10987, New York, USA

    Gloria Durka

  4. Digby Stuart College, Roehampton University, London, SW15 5PH, United Kingdom

    Liam Gearon

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Kozyrev, F. (2010). Religious Education and Religious Freedom in Russia. In: Engebretson, K., de Souza, M., Durka, G., Gearon, L. (eds) International Handbook of Inter-religious Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9260-2_54

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