Church-state relations in conditions of social and political transformation of Russia (by the example of tatarstan)

Abstract

© Serials Publications.The subject is relevant due to the very formulation of the problem and consideration of the church -state relations in conditions of social transformations at the end of 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries. Moreover, this issue has been studied from the point of view of the impact of ethnoconfessional situations and religious traditions of a particular region on the formation of religious policy and methods of its implementation. The article aims to study the legal basis of functioning of religious organizations in the course of democratic changes and relations between the state and religious associations in Russia. The basic approach to the study of this problem is a systemicfunctional approach, which allows to define the general patterns of functioning of a modern political system and the influence of these patterns on the formation and development of stateconfessional relations. The main results are: key milestones of the process of understanding spiritual values of society have been analyzed; typical features of legislative activity in the regions of the Russian Federation concerning the issues of freedom of conscience and religious organizations, as well as the epoch-making events in the religious life of the country have been studied; the main directions of improvement of normative acts regulating the sphere of church-state relations have been defined. It has been stated that the above mentioned legal acts shall meet the requirements of universality and reflect the specifics of each of the legally existing religions on a certain territory, without violating the constitutional principle of separation of religion from state. The findings may be used when writing generalizing and specific articles on the history of Russia and Tatarstan and church-state relations.