RELIGION, SCIENCE AND 'RELIGIOUS EDUCATION' IN RUSSIA THE PECULIARITIES OF DIFFERENTIATIONS

Explicitly the term 'religious education' enters the Russian language only in the second half of the 19th century, whereas implicitly such education, being understood as the transfer of knowledge and practical skills of the relationship with the 'unknown' from generation to generation, has existed throughout the history of mankind. There are three radically different typological forms of social reality that stand behind the term 'religious education' in its implicit meaning: the ancient Slavic 'oral tradition', 'Greek law' ('the science of the fear of God') and 'the era of the USSR' ('religion is the enemy of science'). 'Religious education' in its explicit form begins in Russia as 'Ushinsky project', when Konstantin Dmitriyevich Ushinsky (1824-1871) published an article 'On the means of spreading education through literacy' ('Son of the Fatherland', St. Petersburg, 1858). Ushinsky separated the new project of 'religious education' for everyone, from the 'science of religious law teaching', which was taught in schools ('The Law of God') since the 18th century. Since 1989, in Russia there have been three forms of understanding of 'religious education': 'religious instructions', 'religious studies' and 'culture studies education' that have their own peculiarities of relations with science.