Since the end of the Soviet Union, Christian Orthodoxy has regained importance in Russian society. Considering the religious dynamics in the decades after 1990, scholars working in the field have been debating about a reliable measuring tool for religiosity. The present study provides a validation of two short forms of the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS), the CRS-5, and CRSi-7 in Russia, as well as its corresponding translated items. Therefore, data from two large-scale sociological surveys from 2008 (N = 894) and 2019 (N = 1768) were used. A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis with restrictions on the variance and covariance structure of the model shows good results in terms of absolute, parsimony, and relative model fit for the CRS-5 and CRSi-7. Moreover, the models indicate time-invariance, which is a consistent psychometric characteristic of both short forms. The time-invariance is accompanied by the good internal consistency of the scales: The CRS-5 with α=0.85 and the CRSi-7 with α=0.84. The results of the analysis encourage the use of the CRS-5 and the CRSi-7 for research on religiosity in Russia. While the CRS-5 is especially suitable for the Orthodox-dominated religious landscape, the CRSi-7 should be used if non-monotheistic private religious practice and religious experience are the focus of the scientific investigation.
Weber's famous work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has been widely applied in sociological research. Weber formulated the question of the relationship between religion and the economy in the sense that certain types of Protestant denominations fostered the development of capitalism. One of the main factors which Weber paid attention to was the "Protestant ethic" concept of calling/vocation. The authors of this research have integrated these findings and extended the original Weberian approach in which ethics plays the central role in the analysis of the elective affinity between religion and the economy. It can be shown that humility is the second component of the ethical variable used by Weber in his sociology of religion. This approach makes the concept of economic ethics relevant for studying all major Christian denominations, that is, not only Catholic and Protestant, but also Orthodox. The aim of the current article is to develop an empirical research method based on this theoretical approach. We propose a scale measuring the ethics of calling and humility which can be assessed in quantitative surveys. The scale was pre-tested in October-November 2017 in four countries (233 respondents in Russia, Switzerland, Georgia, and Romania). After corrections based on the pre-test results, the scale was applied in a survey of parishioners of four Christian denominations in Russia (1262 respondents), those of the Orthodox, Catholic, "traditional" Protestant (Lutheran, Baptist, etc.), and the "new" Protestant (Pentecostal) denominations, in 2017-2018.
Most of the current approaches to measuring religiosity operate with indicators of individual religiosity. One of the central ideas of the current paper is that religiosity is a social phenomenon. The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) developed by S. Huber is applied to measure the individual component of religiosity. A modification of the CRS (CRS-SOC) has been developed to include the social component of religiosity with two aspects: social connections with lay members of religious communities and with the clergy. The analysis is based on the data of two surveys conducted in Russia: an on-line survey with a general population sample (1768 respondents) and a survey of parishioners of four Christian denominations: Orthodox, Catholic, “traditional” Protestant (Lutheran, Baptist), and the “new” Protestant (Pentecostal) (1192 respondents). The structure of religiosity among parishioners of different Christian denominations is discussed. The results, which revealed that the level of religiosity among Orthodox parishioners is slightly lower, are interpreted using the theory of religious economy.
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