Practices of religious participation in the context of positive ageing project

Abstract

The article discusses the religious participation practices in the context of the positive ageing project. It is shown that the formation of a positive old age project, adequate to the challenges of the time, is based on the analysis of diverse and inclusive experiences, not limited to ideas that boil down only to health, wealth and comfortable leisure. The experience of various social groups of the population is interesting and useful for designing a positive old age project. In this article, we combine ageing and the experience of religious participation, the analysis of which was carried out via in-depth interviews as part of a field study of the process of conversion to Orthodoxy. Based on interviews with elderly parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church, the authors show how habitus (cognitive, emotional, motivating structures) functions with elderly people converted to Orthodoxy in different types of religious participation, reproducing and changing values, identities, inner experiences at the gerontological stage of their life path. The analysis of in-depth interviews with religiously converted people permitted to identify a variety of socio-religious solidarity practices, as well as to show positive effect of religious involvement for maintaining trust, participation, activity, and for “capitalizing hope” for a better outcome in difficult life situations at a late age.