Religious Landscape at the beginning of 21 st century: essential characteristics

Abstract

The religion and church turned out to be at the center of social and political attention in
modern conditions of post-bipolar world. An intensive religious and institutional development
and the growing role of the religious factor in the political, social and cultural life of the the
countries are observed. There is an influence of the religious factor on the world politics. It is
connected with the increasing importance of cultural factors in world policy-making because
of a particular ideological vacuum that emerged after the crisis of communism. If during the
Cold War world was divided into ideological groups, then in the post-bipolar period comes
the formation of diverse identification characteristics that takes into account such important
values like the historical retrospection, religion, language, membership in a particular cultural
group, nation, civilization, and so on. There is a «return of religion» against the background of
serious crisis of secular processes. Globalization presupposes the irreversibility of the meeting of cultures and religions. In particular the main trends of religious dynamics in the globalized
21 ^st century are considered in the article.
Keywords: religion, globalization, tendencies, world politics, religious landscape