АУТОР / AUTHOR(S): Svetlana G. Maximova 
, Daria A. Omelchenko , Oksana E. Noyanzina
DOI: 10.46793/CSGE5.76SM
САЖЕТАК / ABSTRACT:
It is presumed that religion in the contemporary world has ceased to fulfil its initial functions of explaining nature. Still, it preserves strong cultural and social dimensions, ensuring the diversity of modern societies, social integration, and spiritual development. In border territories connecting culturally divergent countries, religiosity takes on fanciful shapes, reflecting historically driven patterns of resettlement of peoples and having a natural relationship with ethnic and confessional identities. Based on the results of sociological studies in two regions of Russia (the Altai krai and the Republic of Altai, n = 941, structured interviews) and the Centrality Religiosity Scale (CRS) by Stefan Huber and Odilo W. Huber, the authors explore different facets of interdependence between subjectively defined and test-measured religiosity, compare them with confessional and ethnic self-identification, that allow not only to compare similar tools with different functionality, but also receive insights about conjugacy and divergence of religiosity, religion and ethnicity, taking into account two society with different ethnic composition. According to the results, the majority of the population in the two regions are rather “episodic” believers, whereas the level of high religiosity is more often found among women, residents of the national republic, and Buddhists. The highly religious Orthodox population is about 5.2%, and confessions differ not only by their dogmas and practices but also by the configuration of dimensions of religiosity. In comparison with the CRS index, self-evaluation gives smoother results, allowing non-believers to have higher degrees of personally defined religiosity.
КЉУЧНЕ РЕЧИ / KEYWORDS:
religiosity; religious identity; societal security; ethnicity; Asian borderland