The Influence of Religious Principles on the Formation of Legal Ideology

Abstract. The article clarifies the influence of the religious factor on the formation of the legal ideology of Ukrainian society in modern realities, which often has an ambiguous and contradictory character in the formation of the newest mechanism for the realization of human and citizen rights and freedoms. The approach to the religious factor based on the principle of political theology makes it possible to use the factor of religious organizations and the church in the process of building a nation-state in Ukraine, which is of great importance for the formation of a strong, democratic and legal state, which is capable of protecting national interests and resisting threats to national security. This approach also makes it possible to consider Ukrainian religious organizations and churches as an element of Christian civilization, where there is a place for Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants. This approach creates a platform for cooperation within Western institutions (EU, NATO) of states dominated by different Christian denominations. It has been proven that Christian norms and religious legal awareness are formed in objective conditions and closely interact, and thus influence legal awareness, shape the perception of members of society about their rights and obligations, about the proper legal order. From its side, legal consciousness affects religious norms, determines the practice of their application in the interests of believers, religious communities in the realization of their religious interests by the latter, determining the nature of law enforcement, rule-making activity, the mechanism of legal regulation, etc. That is, Christian norms act as the most important regulators of various social relations, factors in the formation of legal norms, the attitude of individuals to legal institutions and the manifestation of illegal or lawful behavior. It was noted that the influence of religious organizations and churches is changing and transforming into new ideas, legal and political. The structural component of ideology is the religious basis, and this does not apply exclusively to theocratic and clerical states, since religious norms have become the basis of the moral foundations of society. Despite the fact that in the digital age, religious values, although they lose their former meaning as a "sacred image" of the world, and even if they do not have a direct impact on the legal system, they still play an important role in legal life, because the European legal culture was created under the influence Christianity, the Christian view of the world. And modern European legal systems function in a social system that has absorbed Christian religious values. Keywords: law; religion; ideology; legal ideology; religious ideology; religious factor; religious norms; Christian principles; human rights and freedoms; religious organizations; church; legal order; functions of religion; functional similarity of law and religion; state-religious relations.