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Religion and Internet in Russia in the XXI century  

Nobody will deny the fact that human consciousness has radically changed with appearance of Internet. Internet has not only become an integral part of our everyday life. Our spiritual life has changed because of it. It is this very spiritual constituent that I am going to turn to in my report.

I view the new forms of religious life – the ones that got an opportunity to exist thanks to the Internet. In my report I will pay special attention to such themes as: 1.Internet-church as special features of prayer service in a virtual cathedral. 2. Missionary work and Internet-sermon.3. The Internet as a means of religious education. 4. Internet as a means of exchanging information (informational sites of Churches, cathedrals, communes, prayer houses; forums created for believers’ communication; religious and spiritual libraries etc.)

I will illustrate my report with various examples from Russian practice. Not only traditional religions but new religious movements that have appeared from 1960-ies also will be subjects of my research.

Fictional religions in existent world  

This paper deals with such untypical for Russian religious studies subject as fictional religions. Using this term we mean all religions, produced in creative act, especially literature, but religions created in films, television shows, computer games.

The content of fictional religions often doesn’t yield to one of the traditional religions, and sometimes is even more developed and rich. Formal signs of religion are present too: followers of the fictional religions come together, provide some cult activities, they use specific “religious” lexica. We can se, how mass-culture and massmedia form not only secular or scientific, but also religious views of modern young people.

Internet-church and cyber-religion: Experience of understanding  

This article is devoted to the analysis of terms «Internet-church» / «cyber-religion» and the concepts connected with them of a context of evolution of forms of religion of the modern world. The detailed bibliography on a theme is specified, the history and a modern condition of a problem «Religion and the Internet» is described, interactive innovations in religion are subjected to the analysis. A result of the report became the certain conclusions and forecasts in occasion of the further possible development of a situation.