RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS AS FORM OF PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS
RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS AS FORM OF PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Summary/Abstract: An article analyzes religious consciousness as one of the forms of public consciousness. The structural and functional method, the principle of integrity, the principle of historicism, the comparative method and some aspects of synergetic approach are applied as methodology. It was carried out the critical analysis of interpretations of public consciousness structure in historical materialism, and it was shown their insolvency. The author‟s understanding of this structure is offered. The traditional forms of public consciousness are marked out in the horizontal plan in the structure, and two levels of traditional forms-unspecialized (ordinary) and specialized are specified in it. It is noted that in religion as a sociocultural phenomenon the most significant structural element, its kernel, is religious consciousness, and in the last-an image-conception about the Absolute and specific faith in it. It is shown that religious consciousness and its kernel sets the nature of religious practice (and first of all, character of a cult) and also all other structural elements of religion. The structure of religious consciousness is presented in article in the form of level of ordinary consciousness and the risen hierarchy of the specialized forms, crowned by Theology. All these levels are penetrated by faith, interpreted on each of the levels in unusual way. The religion in modern Kazakhstan is balanced in the rights with all other spheres of culture but religious consciousness is still developed insufficiently. It is at the level of ordinary consciousness for the most of believers. However, the tendency of its improvement is amplified that is promoted by positive religious climate in the Republic of Kazakhstan: there is reigned the same consent between faiths, as well as between ethnoses.

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