Buddhist Devotion to the Russian Tsar : The Bicultural Environment of the Don Kalmyk Sangha and Russian Orthodox Church in the 1830s

Inoue Takehiko’s paper analyses how the close and long-lasting relationship between Kalmyk Buddhists and Don Cossacks (in the Don Cossack province) developed during the nineteenth century. This relationship was mediated both by Kalmyk Buddhist monks and the requirements of military and religious services to the Tsar, leading to transformations in the identity of this Kalmyk group. He uses the example of the ceremony surrounding the opening of a Kalmyk Parish school in 1839 to demonstrate how both parties sought to combine their socio-religious cultures in furtherance of the alliance of their interests.

The Role of Dayah Salafiyah in the Development of Religious Culture in Langsa

Dayah sustainably transmits religious, intellectual, and spiritual traditions (Islamic Boarding Schools). Several Dayah Salafiyah in Langsa City, for example, are also involved in implementing and developing strategies for the cultivation of such religious cultures. To conduct a deeper examination, this phenomenological study examined the involvement, implementation, and strategies used in those Dayahs. Observations were used to collect data. Meanwhile, the data were organized using Miles and Huberman's qualitative data analysis framework. The findings indicated that religious activities based on religious culture at the Dayah Salafiyah in Langsa City were always developed in collaboration with the dayah's leaders, teungku dayah, santri, and community. To begin, the dayah's leader serves as a facilitator, motivator, and mediator in the students' and community's religious activities and a controller of the dayah's activities. Additionally, it is critical to remember that the most fundamental form of salafiyah dayah implementation promotes good behaviour. To ensure that the religious culture development program is carried out as planned, salafiyah education incorporates religious culture into all aspects of its operations. This strategy for religious culture development is carried out by establishing policies, habituation, and student awareness, exemplary behaviour, discipline, and civilization. The dayah's leaders have absolute authority to monitor and evaluate all efforts made by teachers and students to foster a strong religious culture in the school.

PREPARATION OF TEACHERS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SUBJECT AREA “FOUNDATIONS OF SPIRITUAL AND MORAL CULTURE OF THE PEOPLES OF RUSSIA”: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Рассмотрены проблемы подготовки учителя к преподаванию предмета «Основы религиозных культур и светской этики»: выделение ценностных основ, управление подготовкой педагогов на региональном и местном уровнях, осмысление эффективных вариантов решения острых вопросов в его реализации. Выявлена ключевая проблема неготовности педагогов к эффективной деятельности в данной области, связанная с недостаточностью научного осмысления традиционных российских духовных ценностей, лежащих в ядре культуры каждого народа, для освоения которых необходимо теологическое знание, не изучаемое в процессе базовой профессиональной подготовки. Сделаны выводы о том, что эту функцию сегодня принимает система повышения квалификации. Установлено, что под теологическим знанием понимается результат процесса познания и личностного осмысления религиозной традиции и его аутентичное отражение в сознании педагога на культурологической основе в виде понятий и ценностно-смысловых жизненных ориентиров. The purpose of the study is to consider the problems of teacher preparation for teaching the subject “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics”: highlighting the value foundations, managing teacher training at the regional and local levels, comprehending effective options for solving acute issues in its implementation. The key problem of the teachers’ unpreparedness for effective activity in this area is revealed, connected with the lack of scientific understanding of traditional Russian spiritual values that lie at the core of the culture of each nation, for the development of which theological knowledge is necessary that is not studied in the process of basic professional training. Conclusions are made that this function is now accepted by the system of advanced training. It has been established that theological knowledge is understood as the result of the process of cognition and personal understanding of the religious tradition and its authentic reflection in the mind of the teacher on a cultural basis in the form of concepts and value-semantic life guidelines. An analysis of scientific sources and practice of spiritual and moral education of the younger generations gives grounds to assert that in modern Russian society, the cultural role of traditional Russian spiritual values is beginning to be more deeply understood, by which we mean the primordial, chosen by distant ancestors, axiological guidelines – peacefulness, sympathy, acceptance of the other, empathy and others that form the spiritual world of a growing person through an appeal to the deep foundations of the national mentality, which have passed a long way of approbation from generation to generation. However, when conducting advanced training courses for teachers in this area, one should choose an extremely correct position, focusing on cultural meanings, and not on religious dogma.

Ancient Wisdom, Stigmatised Knowledge, and Sacred Landscapes: Ontologies and Epistemologies of New Age Culture in Post-Soviet Russia

The four articles in this section deal with anthropological study of New Age beliefs and practices in post-Soviet Russia. They are in part the result of a joint German–Russian research project titled New Religious Cultures in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Ideology, Social Networks, Discourses, supported by the German Research Foundation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. In this introductory paper I will briefly discuss the principal outcomes of this research as well as general analytical issues related to the field of New Age studies both in global and local (post-Soviet) contexts.

Improving compliance with physical distancing across religious cultures in Israel

Background Physical distancing contains the corona virus, but compliance with physical distancing across religious minorities in Israel has been shown to be relatively poorer than in the majority population. This study tests the power of messages as drivers of willingness to comply with physical distancing across religious minorities in Israel during the first wave of the COVID-19 from March till June 2020. Methods 896 Israeli Muslims, Druze, Bedouins, Jewish Orthodox, Christians, and Jewish Seculars participated in this conjoint-based experimental design. The size of the total sample and of the subgroups is consistent with the suggested size in conjoint analysis studies, particularly when aiming at stability of coefficients rather than stability of means. The dependent variable was ‘willingness to comply’. Independent variables were known contributors to compliance: perceived risk, practices of physical distancing, ways to assure compliance, and the agent communicating the policy. Results A regression analysis indicated minor differences in the power of messages across groups despite dramatic cultural differences amongst them. We identified three distinct mindsets that transcend religious cultures from the responses of the study subjects to various messages and named them “pandemic observers,” “obedient followers,” and “sensitive interpreters.” Compliance of "Pandemic Observers" (n = 306) may be improved by messages such as, “Dangerous virus spreading wildly” and “Health experts suggest what to do but the government is reactive rather than proactive” (β = 14, p < .005). Compliance of "Obedient Followers" (n = 242) may be driven by the messages “Socialize and work only from home, using the internet, e.g. zoom/Skype” and “Everyone should stay 2 m. (6 ft.) apart” (β = 16, p < .0050). Compliance of "Sensitive Interpreters" (n = 249) may be improved by messages such as, “Only people who are 60 and over are to be allowed to buy groceries during first 2 h from opening” and by using the media to publicize the official health policy (β = 8; p < .005). Conclusions Mindset-assignment reflects how people think rather than their religious affiliation. A personal viewpoint identifier was developed to predict mindset-assignment and enable health authorities to enhance compliance through mindset-tailored messages for members of each mindset segment. We recommend that health authorities and policy makers consider these different personality types, which range across religious minorities and emphasize the messages that each type responds to in developing and implementing a communication plan to improve physical distancing as an important public health measure.

Video and media technologies in the educational space as a form of mental representation of students of different cultures

The search for conditions to create a developing learning environment, methods and means of teaching is the main objective of psychological science. The relevance of the problem under study is due to the active development of intercultural communication processes, in which advertising plays an important role. This circumstance requires the inclusion of video and media technologies in the training of specialists in the field of advertising. The purpose of the paper is to describe the course and the results of the study of imaginal representations in advertising aimed at promoting goods in different cultures. The leading method in the study of this problem was the semantic differential which allows one to identify the difference in the semantic content of the commercial of a popular drink produced by an international company. Fifty students who are representatives of religious and non-religious cultures, aged between 18 and 30 participated in the study. The authors of the paper put forward the assumption that since social representations are formed and depicted in different cultures which are different from the social representations of other cultures, the content of the advertising text will be interpreted in different ways. This can affect people’s behavior of different cultures. The content of imaginal representations was studied in the process of perceiving the advertisement of a popular drink. The results of the study showed a significant difference in the content of imaginal representations of the experimental groups. However, the study showed that this difference did not influence consumers’ behavior. The materials of the paper may be useful for psychologists studying intercultural differences, as well as specialists in advertising psychology, when developing advertising texts for multicultural goods and services. Keywords: video and media technologies, imaginal representations, advertisement, culture, types of cultures, behavior.

Lived Religion in Latin America

This book is about religion and modernity, how religion interacts with modern culture, and how modernity influences religion. “Modernity” signifies not only technological developments, but also the dynamics of capitalism, the differentiation of social functions, specialization of spheres of knowledge, and expansion of human rights. By religion is meant the cultural practices people use to connect with a suprahuman power that they experience as influencing their lives. The thesis presented is that in Latin America there is an interaction between modernity and religion, but the result has not been religion’s diminishment (secularization), but its transformation. Exploring religion as ordinary Latin Americans practice it, the research presented in this book discovered that there is more religion than secularists expect, but of a different kind than religious leaders would wish. The difficulty in assessing religiosity as it exists in Latin America is due in part to the continuing use of categories that were not designed for religious cultures outside the North Atlantic world. Those categories point us toward a different kind of dynamics, which in fact obscure Latin American religious dynamics. If we look at religion from the perspective of Latin America and of the people who practice it there, we will find a different definition and different conceptual tools for understanding the religious experience of Latin American people, and these new tools help us to look at religion in a different way.

THE HISTORY OF IMPLEMENTATION AND EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING A COMPREHENSIVE TRAINING COURSE "FUNDAMENTALS OF RELIGIOUS CULTURES AND SECULAR ETHICS" IN SCHOOLS OF THE UDMURT REPUBLIC

The article is devoted to the history of implementation and practice of teaching a comprehensive course "Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics" (ORCSE) in educational organizations of the Udmurt Republic. The authors are convinced that the study of the ORCE course carries not only great educational, but also educational potential, and in combination with other humanitarian subjects (history, literature) will be one of the key elements in the system of spiritual and moral education, prevention of manifestations of xenophobia and extremism. in the children's and youth environment, contributing to the strengthening of the national security of our country. The paper provides a brief overview of the regulatory legal framework for the implementation of a comprehensive training course, provides a chronology of the implementation of the course in Russian schools, indicating the experience of the Udmurt Republic. The main difficulties that educators had to face in the course of testing and teaching in the general educational organizations of the country of the comprehensive training course of the ORCSE are noted. Summing up their arguments, the authors propose to resume a broad expert and public discussion about the possibility of creating a single integration course within the framework of the existing module "Foundations of World Religious Cultures".

HAPPINESS AS A DOUBLE GESTURE OF A TRIGGER: BREAKING AND CONCEPTING

The background of the study is an existential psychological analysis of the phenomenon of happiness as a state of radical break with the dominant signifiers of symbolic hegemony and, at the same time, voluntary value filling of the formed vacuum in the symbolic structure of a split subject with new meanings corresponding to his self. Research methods: structural psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, semiotics of culture, hermeneutics, philosophical comparative studies, deconstruction and universal ethics, theological methods of correlation between secular and religious models of thinking. Research results: comparison of the positive ontology of happiness in the Eastern Slavic Christian classical thought and the negative ontology of happiness in the Western post-Lacanian postmodernity; the implementation of the synthesis of images of happiness in the ways of thought of the postmodern West and the modern East on the basis of the dialogue of universalism and particularism, traditionalism and neo-modernism, personalism and collectivism. Conclusions: confirmation of the hypothesis of the double nature of happiness as a unity of metaphysical rupture and dialectical synthesis, manifested through the chronotopes of secular and religious cultures, traditions and innovations.