Religion in Russia - Sociological Approaches

Sociological Approaches

The ethnic approach is primarily useful when applied towards ethnic religious communities that are small and/or compact enough to be "left out" of normal public opinion polls. It based on an assumption that 100% of population of every ethnic minority are adherents of their group's traditional religion. A good example of such a religious community is Assyrian Church of the East, represented in Russia by ethnic Assyrians. With the body of followers of less than 15,000, it wouldn't show up or would fall within the margin of error on any reasonable religious self-identification poll, and its size can only be reasonably inferred from census data using the ethnic approach.

The ethnic approach is sometimes misused to artificially "inflate" prevalence of certain religions. For example, according to the Russian census of 2002, at least 14 million people in Russia belong to traditional Islamic ethnic groups, including registered migrants (Tatars, Bashkirs, etcetera). Consequently, it is often claimed that Islam has 14 million (or even 20-25 million) adherents in Russia. However it should be noted that Russia does not have birth-right citizenship, and the children born to immigrants are not granted Russian passports. Also, among the traditional Islamic ethnic groups, there are large number of people who no longer practice Islam.

One can get radically different results by estimating the number of observant followers of every religion, the reason being that members of many ethnic groups often choose to self-identify as adherents to a certain religion for cultural reasons, although they would not fit any traditional religiousness criteria (church attendance, familiarity with basic dogmas of their faith). For example, even though a majority of ethnic Russians self-identify as Russian Orthodox, less than 10% of them attend church services more than once a month and only 2-4% are considered to be integrated into church life (воцерковленные). It is difficult to estimate observance of self-identified followers of other religions. The only faiths which are likely not to suffer from this phenomenon as strongly are those without ethnic basis in the country: most branches of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism and Krishnaism.

Yet another way of comparing relative popularity of various religions in Russia is to look at the numbers of registered local congregations (Christian parishes, Muslim mosques, and so on). According to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), there were 21.664 registered religious organizations in Russia as of January 1, 2004, including 20.403 local congregations. 10.767 were Russian Orthodox; 3.397 were Muslim; almost 5.000 were various Protestant organizations and groups; 267 were Old Believers; 256 were Jewish; 235 were Roman Catholic; 180 were Buddhist. However, religions can vary significantly in numbers of followers per congregation, and some religions may be somewhat "under-registered" for various reasons.

One experiences similar problems when trying to determine the number of atheists in Russia. As discussed above, the majority of Russians are non-observant, and more than 50% never attend church services of any kind. On the other hand, numbers of those self-identifying as "non-religious" are much lower, and, further, vary wildly from poll to poll (from 14% to 36%).