Mutual influence of religion and politics in modern political space

The interaction of politics and religion is a complex of phenomena occurring in thearea of intersection of the two specific systems of social regulation. The inconsistency and ambiguity of this process is caused by theobjective reasons. These are a direct social strategy of religion, the nature of relationships in multi-confessional environment, the socialstatus of the established religion, the characteristics of a form of government and type of political regime, as well as numerouseconomic, cultural and other factors. Now it becomes clear that a peaceful coexistence of religion and politics is impossible, sincesooner or later there will be subject to massive changes in one of these two systems, or in both at once. As history shows, political andreligious institutions began to work only when it is necessary either to fight against any action within the country, or resist externalthreats. Religion and politics (despite a certain similarity between the functions) use different methods of regulating human behaviour,as well as evaluation of their actions. Politics is often guided by the principle of expediency, while religion demands moral preceptsguide, recorded in sacred texts. Religion can legitimize some of the socio-political elements before they have been fixed at the statelevel. However, politics also affects religion. Politics forms the legal framework for its operation, regulates the legal status of religiousorganizations that protect the rights of citizens to freedom of conscience, creates a climate of mutual tolerance and respect betweenreligious communities. Currently, there is a surge of religious activity in the political sphere. The reasons for this surge is the immediaterealities of globalization: the blurring of many cross-cultural barriers, mass migration, mixture of different ethnic groups with theircultural and religious traditions. These circumstances are the cause of deep resentment, insults; acute conflict situations provide fertileground for extremist activities. Religion can also cause conflicts associated with its existence in a secular society. For example, there arecases when the system of religious values is contrasted to the system of secular law. Now we can see that the interaction of religion withthe political sphere of society comes in various ways. As part of a national political process the confessional factor may be disclosed asone with the destabilizing or the consolidating potential. Religious and political cooperation is particularly important for our country.Multi-ethnic and poly-confessional Russian society during the social and economic instability are most under threat of rising interfaithand inter-ethnic contradictions.

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