The research seminar “Sociology of Religion” is a research project, which began in 2007 at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University’s Department of Theology. The seminar is devoted to the fundamental and applied sociological study of religious issues. Our team consists of sociologists, philosophers, theologians and mathematicians – graduates of Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics (Moscow), and St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University (Moscow). The project activities are funded with the support of private donations and grants from domestic and international foundations.

One of the seminar’s main focuses is to examine the effects of religiosity in societies where the mechanisms of inter-generational transmission of religion were destroyed. Existing Western approaches to the sociology of religion have been developed in countries faced with a non-coercive form of secularization. However, because their methodological and theoretical tools are not fully applicable to post-Soviet Russia, the available studies in the sociology of religion are not relevant to the reality here. This seminar is an attempt to evaluate the nature and dynamics of religion’s diffusion in Russian society, and the nature of its influence on the behavior of people in different walks of life.

In 2015 research laboratory “Sociology of Religion” was established at St.Tikhon’s University. The core team of the Seminar are research fellows of the laboratory.