The Russian paradox of religion and fertility. Specification of the problem and development of an explanatory hypothesis

Abstract

This article focuses on the specification of the hypothesis of the relationship between religiosity and fertility in Russia. On the surface, the situation looks like a paradox: (1) Churches and religions are generally known to support childbearing values; religious people are believed to have more children than non-religious people. (2) In Russia, however, religiosity has been growing in recent years, but fertility rates have been falling.Despite the fact that in contemporary Russia a large part of the population identifies with Orthodoxy and the number of such people is growing, family and marriage norms characteristic of Orthodoxy, in particular those related to the ideal of large families, are not actually being realized. This article proposes to consider mechanisms that might explain this circumstance. In order to specify the hypothesis of the potential influence of religion on fertility, a literature review was prepared, followed by the identification of key potentially important variables. Three approaches (and correspondingly three groups of texts) were identified that analyzed the relationship between religion and fertility: reduction of religion to individual religiosity; reduction of religion to a set of extra-religious variables; and analysis of religion as environment and community. Using the resources of the first two approaches does not allow us to formulate a hypothesis to explain today's Russian paradox of religion and fertility. It is possible to formulate an explanatory hypothesis based on the third class of texts. Kevin McQuillan's study is used to construct a hypothesis and to specify a vocabulary of variables about the Russian paradox. He identifies three aspects of the religious situation (pro-natalist doctrine, strong religious institutions, strong religious identity), which, in his opinion, can only work together to ensure that the principles preached by religion are actually realized. Based on the distinction made by C. McQuillan, as well as on the research of the third group of authors mentioned above, we show that contemporary Russian Orthodoxy cannot fully rely on any of these mechanisms of influence on believers, which, presumably, can explain the lack of an appropriate influence on their decisions in matters of family and marriage.