Religious identity: “us” and “them” as global, local, and Glocal (Belarus, Germany, Russia)

Abstract

The history of the 19th and 20th centuries has highlighted a number of specific aspects of the phenomenon of religious identity, the roots of which can be traced back to the Reformation. The “language of respondents” (“language of the first order”) and “language of experts” (“language of the second order”) are distinguished, differing as observation of reality and observation of observers of reality. The study analyzes ideas about “us”, “them”, global, local, and glocal on materials from Belarus and Russia in comparison with materials from Germany. The article considers alternative forms of personal and group identification, which have gone through a number of historical stages of their relationships, having retained their significance to the present time, often interpreted as a relationship of absolute “good” with absolute “evil”, while in one case one religion is “good”, and in a friend – another.