The Biographical Research of Personal History (Re-)interpretation among Orthodox Believers

Abstract

The peculiarities of Russian religiosity, characterized by the high level of self-identity of the Russian citizens with Orthodoxy and relatively low level of participation in religious life, determine the significance of the analysis of the correlation between religious behavior and consciousness. This circumstance appeals for the clarification of the modern sociological tools for studying religiosity and individual spirituality, as well as for a search and foundation of other indicators. Usually the research on believer’s consciousness is focused on religious values, beliefs, views, knowledge and other components, with little attention to investigating the believers’ religious self-reflection. This article represents the believers’ religious self-reflection as one of the key phenomena of religious consciousness, demonstrated through the (re-)interpretation of individual’s personal history. The religious life-world as the inter-subjective essence changes the daily reality of a person and forms a new religious daily life. The biographical research of the believers’ life-world allows to establish individual’s (re-)interpretation of events and phenomena of daily life from the perspective of his/her religious worldview, within certain rationality system. The empirical data of biographical interviewing and questionnaire survey of the Orthodox Christians allow to demonstrate the peculiarities of biographical narrativization of personal history and the respondents’ evaluation of how their own religious beliefs influence them. The data shows the correlation between the level of religious self-reflection and peculiarities of religious behavior.