Study Points to Religious Revival in Russia

A religious revival of historic proportions may be under way in Russia, with one-third of all Russians who once called themselves atheists now believing in God, a new study has found.

Two out of five Russians believe in life after death, half believe that God is personally concerned with each human, 40% believe in miracles and one-third believe in heaven and hell. Moreover, although only 9% of Russians grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church, 29% of them are now affiliated with it.

“The data provide evidence of an astonishing revival,” Father Andrew Greeley, a Catholic sociologist affiliated with the National Opinion Research Center, said in an interview from Chicago.

The conclusions are based on a new analysis of 1991 data collected in a 17-nation study of religion by the International Social Survey Program, which is affiliated with the Chicago-based National Opinion Research Center. The survey received responses from 2,964 Russian-speaking people in the Russian Federation.

The findings are particularly startling in view of the seven-decade reign of atheistic communism, Greeley said.

“Never before in human history has there been such a concerted effort to stamp out not merely a religion but all trace of religion,” Greeley said in a new analysis of the 1991 data made public earlier this month.

“Despite 70 years of socialism, God seems to be alive and well and living in all Russia and not just Moscow,” Greeley said. “Perhaps St. Vladimir may have triumphed over Karl Marx after all.”

By contrast, the percentage of religious residents of another former communist country, the former East Germany, is decidedly smaller than those in Russia. While 48% of those polled said they were affiliated with the Evangelical Church as youths, by the time they became adults only 25% remained churchgoers.

That may be partly related to the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is 500 years older than Germany’s Lutheran tradition and is rich in liturgy, art, mysticism, monasticism and popular devotions, all of which Greeley said are suspect in the Protestant tradition.

Greeley conceded that some commentators believe the Russian revival is a flash in the pan that will ebb within five years.

“It’s always possible that some of it is a political statement,” Greeley said. “But I think it’s essentially a religious statement.” He noted that half of all young people under age 25 say they will rear their children as religious.

Although communism did not destroy the Russian religious heritage, it may have broken the link between religion and sexual morality. Only 13% of Russians believe premarital sex is always wrong and 38% believe that extramarital sex is always wrong, the study found.

“The new believers are especially likely to be young and to have had decisive turning-point experiences which led them to believe in God again,” Greeley wrote. One-third of men under 25 are new believers and one out of 10 reported some kind of pivotal experience that led them to faith.

Greeley said half of Russians under 25 believe in life after death, as do half of Russians older than 65. Only one-third of those between 25 and 65 hold such beliefs. “It’s a case of grandparents and grandchildren agreeing against parents,” Greeley said.

In an interview, Greeley said the much-publicized evangelistic efforts by U.S.-based churches and denominations do not appear to have had much impact on the religious revival in Russian.

“I suspect that in a country of 200 million people, I wouldn’t think they’d be more than a drop in a bucket,” Greeley said. “They can have a 500% increase from 1,000 to 5,000 members, but they’d still be small,” Greeley said.