MOSCOW, Dec 6, 02 (CWNews.com) - Most of Russia's people believe in God or at least a supreme being, according to a nationwide poll. But only a minority reported an active prayer life.
Approximately 60 percent of the Russian people believe in God, according to the results of an opinion poll just published by the Romir Research Center. Another 21 percent of the Russians who answered the survey said that they believed in a «supreme force, spirit, intelligence» while just 16 percent said that they had no such belief.
Acting on that belief is, however, another matter. Of the 2,000 adults surveyed, 46 percent said that they had «no time to pray.» Some 14 percent said that they pray on a daily basis, 10 percent pray once a week, 9 percent once a month. Around 7 percent claimed to pray «twice a year» and 10 percent «even less frequently.» (It seems likely that some, at least, of the respondents interpreted «praying» to mean taking part in formal worship services.)
Reporting the survey, the Interfax news-agency cited, without comment the official figures for religious adherence throughout the Russian Federation. These were: Orthodox Christian, 69 percent; other Christian denominations, 3 percent; Islamic, 2.5 percent; Buddhist, 0.4 percent, other religions, 1 percent, and atheists, 22 percent.
In fact, a number of discrepancies between the two sets of data can be observed: the figures for the various faiths give both the total percentage of believers and that of atheists higher than in the Romir survey. This seems likely to be due to a difference in criteria. The breakdown by faiths makes no provision for agnostics or believers in an undefined «supreme force.» Of the 21 percent who reported such a general belief in the survey, if pressed to define their specific allegiance, some might classify themselves as atheists, while others-- out of a consciousness of Russia's cultural and historical roots in Eastern Christianity-- might claim an allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church.
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6. desember 2002