According to a survey conducted in October 2022 by the Institute of Demography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the level of religiosity among young people has halved over the past 14 years (from 60% in 2008 to 30% in 2021). The number of young people without religion has quadrupled.
Twenty-one percent of the youth group (ages 14 to 29) changed their worldview to support atheism. “I wasn’t a believer before, but I’m an unbeliever now.” Scientists point out that actual religiosity is even lower.
Over the years, religious activity has fallen to statistical error levels (1-4%) for almost all indicators of religious behavior (confession, communion, fasting). In 2021, frequent church attendance among young people of all ages was recorded at 6-7%.
This was a period when the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed freedom from state, popular influence, and power, and enormous financial and political support, hundreds of new churches were built, and the church leadership reported missionary programs for young people every year. Since 2010, all Russian schoolchildren aged 10-11 have studied religion in the form of a subject called “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics.” Most students studied secular ethics (about 40%) and Orthodoxy (about 30%).
The main idea in the concept of a successful mission of the Moscow Patriarchate is that if you provide state support, funding and public influence, people will become interested in faith and convert to the Church. The most active church activity is in Moscow and the central regions, as the RAS study notes, and the largest resources are concentrated there. In reality, this did not contribute to the recognition of young people in the Church message and Christ in the public eye. On the contrary, even those who were religiously interested in it lost interest. In the regional regions of the Russian Federation, the atheistic attitude of the population is even stronger.
