The article analyses models of church-state relations in our country that have been formed depending on changes of the state power and the Russian Orthodox Church historically from the ancient times. The author emphasizes the fact that the tendencies of rising dependence of the church from the state has been always accompanied by the experience of inner independence. It passes through all the Russian history and becomes clearly manifested in the XX century. An important conclusion of the article is an indication of the split of ecclesiologic experience of the XX century which led to formation of opposite tendencies in the life of the modern Russian Orthodox Church, which in its turn influences the interior schism.

Mary Douglas work “Purity and Danger” (1966) lies within the context of the Durkheimean ideas of British anthropology. Considering correlations between categories of order and disorder, existence and non-existence, shape and shapelessness, life and death in the symbolic structures of the primitive societies through categories of dirty, danger, and through understanding of the rules of purity the author comes to the conclusion about superficiality and inconsistency of the categorical contraposition of belief systems of primitive and modern societies. Inconsistency of such contraposition of these two systems is rooted in underestimation of metaphysical depth of the primitive beliefs. The difference between primitive and modern societies lies not in mental, but rather in social field.

The article considers views of famous sociologist Jose Casanova on secularization processes in the 2nd half of the XX century. Casanova criticizes current theory of secularization and forecasts made on its basis that predicts progressive decline of religious institutions influence and transfer of religion from churches to private life. After analyzing of various worldwide developments taken place in 80’s the author proves that in many countries we see a process of religion “deprivatization” that means refuse of traditional religion institutes to deal only with pastoral care of individual souls. Instead of it religion enters the public spheres preventing one or another secular institutes from conducting an autonomous policy without regard to extraneous ethical or moral considerations.

The article is dedicated to problems of correlation between two basic spheres of human experience — those of religion and culture. Among numerous religious practices depicted to a various extent in the XIX century Russian literature, Christianity and, in particular, Orthodoxy, hold a special place. The author describes both various “mechanisms” of Orthodox influence over Russian culture and reasons of the contradictions that separated representatives of the Orthodox
Church from the Russian educated stratum in the XIX century. The article describes four “models” of correlation between Russian literature and Christian tradition, developed during the XIX century: religious, mediatory, realistic and artistic.

The story of the monk Bahira who revealed in young Muhammad the future prophet and the champagne ballad about Mahomet the Cardinal. These two texts are separated by five centuries. However, the latter would have been impossible without the former. The article attempts to trace how young Muhammad of the Muslim legend about a monk-visionary turned into Mahomet the Cardinal in the “Latin West”. Study of the history of formation of the legend about Mahomet the
Cardinal allows us to raise the question of what was actually known about Islam in medieval Europe. Was this knowledge really limited only to an insignificant set of polemical stereotypes, as is often commonly believed today? Or we can speak of a system of quite well-ordered images of Mahomet, each of which performed a well-defined task.

The article deals with the legacy of the founder of Sikh religion Guru Nanak and of his son Shrichand as well as with their teachings’ and activities’ influence on the development of Punjab’s spirituality in XVI–XVIII centuries.

The article is an attempt to describe briefly the history of translation of the Bible into Sanskrit and give examples of how Sanskrit translations of Biblical texts were affected by the influence of Indian Religious and Philosophical tradition. As an example, excerpts of the Gospel of John have been used.