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Religions Nowadays the hopes for spiritual rebirth, consolidation of ideas and world nations, and mental renewal of the world community are closely interrelated with the processes referred to as religion revival. At the same time, world nations pin their hopes and social expectations on rebirth of traditional culture-forming religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and some others. On the one hand, such expectations seem to be well-grounded and justified. There is an opinion that nations, devoted to the secular ideology of progress and secular elite can pin their hopes on their great traditional religions.
These living religions become the core of the normative and value space of the world civilization, where the archetypical matrix of society is embedded in. As one can easily notice, the role of these religions is especially visible during the so-called transitional periods of the historical development and progress of the world society, when the peripheral components of the value system are devaluated. On the other hand, the real progress and the real results of religious revival in the modern world leave a two-fold impression on the average researcher. Thus, despite the fact that a relatively great progress occurred during the past few decades and despite all trust and positive attitude to religion and traditional beliefs, the world society seems to be too far from finding the way out from the crisis.
One can claim that all these expectations that were addressed to religion, Church, and national and religious issues, to a great extent remain a project, with no visually shaped terms of accomplishment. Conditionally speaking, so-called investments into religions that were made by the world society (in every sense of the word) in the end of the 20 th century, and are continued to be done, turned out to be a long-term project, thus ruining many social expectations that foresaw the results 'here and now'. Living Religions Nowadays religion is the integral part of the modern society. Religion, in its general meaning, serves three major social functions. First of all, religious institutions accomplish intellectual education of the faithful, as it manifests itself in the organization of a so-called connection 'man - God'. Religious institutions educate and teach religiosity and civility, the concepts of good and evil, virtues and sins.
Secondly, religious organizations accomplish spiritual, religious, and special education, mercy, and charity. Thirdly, the representatives of religious organizations and religious movements actively participate in public activity, being conductive to normalization of political, economic, and cultural processes, international and intergovernmental relations, and making decisions concerning global problems of the world civilization. In order to understand the importance of religions and their impact on modern society, it is necessary to understand the meaning of religion. Religion comes from Latin word reli gare, and means to unite, to join, to commune. Religion is the belief in supernatural; it is the way how the person understands global world connections and events that occur or occurred in the past in accordance to his spiritual beliefs.
Religions can be classified into two major categories: world religions and nationalities' religions. Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and others belong to the world religions (i. e. religions, which are above-national by character and develop beyond the specifics of mono-national self-consciousness of a given ethical group). Judaism, Confucianism, Sintoism, and other nationalities religions can be formed only on the basis of mono-ethical society (the society that consists of no more than 10 - 15 percent of members of religious minorities in the given society) due to the presence of a given ethical group (Huge, 1999).
Living religions form living religious systems. There systems, accordingly, have the following structure: the belief in God, dogmatic theology, moral theology and moral and theological imperative of behavior (mode of conduct), historical theology, the system of religious and cult practice, churches (religious temples, mosques, etc), priests, and preachers, to mention a few. Definitely, all living religions correspond to these demands. In such a way, as it was already mentioned above, there are three major world religions - Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism.
Apart from that there are some more religions, which are also quite popular (although they are not as widespread as these three basic religions), such as Judaism, Mandeism, Zoroastrism, Jesidivism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Davis, and Sintoism, to mention a few. Probably, Korean shamanism can also be related to this category. It is important to understand that not all of these religions are unanimously accepted by students of religion in the capacity of the religious beliefs of the supreme hierarchical level. For example, Mandeism is often referred to as Early-Christian sect or an isolated sect of Judaism. Jesidivism is often referred to as a branch of Zoroastrism, and Jainism - as a branch of Hinduism, to mention a few.
Apart from that, there are so-called new religions, which appeared in 19 th or 20 th century. In their majority, these modern religions are a synthesis of the earlier religions (Fisher, 2001). Bahaism is one of the most famous and widespread modern religions (as it makes up above 6 million members). Bahaism originated from Islamic Shiite environment in the mid- 19 th century in Iran, and absorbed separate elements of Christianity and some other religions. The number of new religions takes its origin from Japan. For example, Term (about 2 million members) is one of the most popular Japanese religions.
Syncretism takes its origin from Japan (Chondoge has about 2. 5 million members); Vietnam gave birth to Kodak (about 2 million members), and many others. The total quantity of members, belonging to so-called modern religions exceeds 112 million persons (Beckerlegge, 2001). It is difficult to find exact quantity of the representatives and members of the living religions in the modern world. The subject at issue is that many religious organizations tend to report bigger quantity of their faithful on purpose.
What concerns Asian region, the situation is additionally complicated by the event of polyconfessionality, as Asians are usually allowed to belong to several religions and to participate in various religious celebrations (Beckerlegge, 2001). Therefore, the data from official religious sources is far from exactness. Living Religions: Religion Revival There is an impression that religious aspect, probably, for the first time in the world history, experienced difficulties in working out, as it hardly can be examined as an incentive force for bringing revival to the world society in general (Cousins, 1980). Moreover, there is an opinion concerning a harmful influence of religious expansion, from the viewpoint of values of enlightenment, education, and democracy.
Some critics speak about lucrative impulse peculiar to religious institutions (especially it relates to the Orthodox Church), about the number of destructive processes and tendencies peculiar to religious organizations themselves along with their positions related to religious ideology, and other important issues, to mention a few. At the same time, it should be taken into account that this kind of criticism comes from various persons and organizations, ranging from the extreme right to extreme left representatives of the ideological and political spectrum of public opinion. In this respect the recent discussions concerning the introduction and implementation of religious doctrines and religious sciences in various world educational systems (especially what concerns the so-called Third World countries) are very demonstrative. It is interesting to note in this connection whether the world society should stake on religion, what the world countries should expect from so-called religion revival processes, what is the role of religion in our modern life, what are the most important issues in relation to the living religions, and, finally, what is the optimal strategy of relationships between the world society and religions (and vice versa), to mention a few. To all intents and purposes, all these issues can be reduced to the following: what kind of benefit the religions are able to give to the modern society, if any?
In such a way, speaking about living religions, we come to understanding that there exist two aspects of religion revival. The very concept of religion revival, within the frameworks of living religions in the modern world, enters the number of concepts which, in their key importance for analysis of the religious situation in the modern world, are still interpreted in a figurative and voluntary sense of the word (Huge, 1999). No wonder that so many people experience difficulties in interpretation and social estimation of the event they try to understand. Therefore, it is very important to give a concise interpretation of internal differentiation that provides a reference point in corresponding social processes. Being based on the logic, it is possible to differentiate two major aspects. Firstly, it concerns the processes of immanent nature, which occur directly in religious environment, and, secondly, these are the processes, which as if outline the limits of religion and imply the influence of religion on society.
We can paraphrase Immanuel Kant and call these processes a religion in itself and religion for society. However, how do these processes relate to the topic of the given discussion? The processes, which relate to the first aspect, enlist quantitative growth of religious initiatives and institutions that supposes increase in quantity of both these religious organizations and the members of these religious establishments. It also embraces such concepts like restoration and further development of confessional ian structures, broadening of the social and demographic contingent of the faithful, assimilation of new experience, and development of new forms of social (out-of-cult) activities by religious institutions and organizations.
The achievements are significant, as many scientists report considerable increase in growth of religious organizations, and, among other indexes of religion revival in the world countries, great number of religious institutions, parishes, churches, religious temples, monasteries, religious schools, colleges, and universities, to mention a few. As it is claimed by Beckerlegge (2001), the level of religiosity significantly increased within the last few decades. Along with the level of religiosity of the world population the revival of religious confessional ian structures and the rapid growth of religious organizations took place. Various monasteries and churches, which represent traditional and non-traditional religions came into existence and got the second breath.
Missionaries, religious educational centers, confessional ian charity foundations and institutions, educational establishments, and religious mass media started to appear. Next, the second aspect of religious revival in the modern world relates to the changes in the way of life and mode of conduct peculiar for those people, who were influenced by living religions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam, to mention a few. The subject at issue relates rather not to the quantity of churches and temples, which belong to one or another religion; but, to the fact that religion, finally, starts to have a great impact on all aspects of social and political life in many world countries. In case we speak about a real influence of religion on society and public life, the discussion should touch some sort of shifts in the public spheres, which relate to the basic life values in considerably representative and important social groups.
The attention should also be focused on the fact of appearance of new (and evolution and development of the old) cultural and ideological movements; and, finally, on transformation of public ideal in general. Following the logic of religion revival (speaking about the living religions in the modern world and the impact they have on the modern life) these changes should inevitably be characterized by distinct socially positive effect, as these inevitable changes are stipulated by the influence of specific religions (for example, Christianity). It is important to notice that sociologists usually agree in what concerns the inter-religious aspect of the processes of religion renaissance. At the same time, there is no common opinion concerning the corresponding changes in the conscience and the life of modern society. Some researchers consider that the impact of living religions (and, especially, the Christian religions) is relatively great and continues to increase (Coogan, 2003). Yet, other scientists are more skeptical and claim that modern religion revival is over.
Those scientists, who support the hypothesis of religion revival, base their conclusions on connection between its internal and external aspects. At the same time, they often have the tendency to accept this connection as non-biased, unique, and one-valued, as, according to their opinion, religion revival has definitely a positive character. What concerns those scientists and sociologists, who oppose the concept of religion revival, they tend to consider that strengthening social positions of religious organizations in the secular society cannot have the direct relation to the mainstream of the development of the modern society, and, moreover, such tendency contradicts to the social development. Therefore, they consider that religion revival of the modern society cannot originate from the revival of religion in itself. In order to understand these viewpoints more clearly, lets revert to the methodology of the cultural analysis. When we speak about living religions in the modern world, and try to provide the analysis of the socio dynamics of religion revival, we should take into consideration the fact that nowadays the religion, conscience, and public life are interconnected by a specific 'mediator' - a secular culture (Cousins, 1980).
Several centuries ago secularization not only pushed the religion away from the public life to social and cultural peripheries, but also contributed to rapid development of the new cultural system - a secular system - that started to play a key role in the life of the world society. Namely, this culture formed the completely new type of the world society the society of modern culture with all its pros and cons. As far as secular culture developed as a logical continuation of traditional religious cultural system, and formed an independent cultural space, it gradually monopolized the major public institutions and occupied the supreme position in society. However, secular culture was unable to suppress or assimilate religious cultures. Conclusion In this connection it can be said that the main contribution made by secularization processes was formation of cultural space, where two cultures coexisted at the same time. To a great extent, this situation determined not only the development of religions, but also, to a considerable extent, the socio dynamics of modernized society in general.
In this context the modern religion revival, when speaking about living religions and their impact on the modern world, can be examined as a specific stage of development of some sort of an intercultural secular and religious interaction. Therefore, it is very important to explore living religions and their impact on the modern world more thoroughly, but, anyway, the importance of living religions cannot be underestimated. Bibliography Beckerlegge, G. (2001). World Religions Reader. New York: Routledge. Coogan, M.
D. (2003). The Illustrated Guide to World Religions. New York: Oxford University Press. Cousins, E. (1980).
World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest. New York: Crossroad. Fisher, M. P. (2001). Living Religions: A brief introduction. Prentice Hall.
Huge, F. V. (1999). The Mystical Element of Religion: As Studied by Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends. New York: Crossroad.
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Research essay sample on 20 Th Century Religious Organizations
