Cult practices of conversion to Orthodoxy: The experience of modern Russian youth

This article is the author`s logical continuation of a number of publications by devoted to the analysis of the features of the process of conversion to Orthodoxy of modern generations of the Russian Orthodox Church. The article offers a multi-level and multidimensional approach to the definitions of the concepts of “religious conversion” and “conversion to Orthodoxy.” The article describes the results of an empirical sociological study of the peculiarities of the process of conversion to Orthodoxy of modern Russian youth, which took place from April to September 2024. The respondents were church-educated young people, parishioners of urban and rural churches of the Russian Orthodox Church (n=18), 1990’s (n = 13) and 2000’s (n = 5) years of birth. The geography of the study included young people from Saratov, Cherepovets, St. Petersburg, Leningrad Region, and Rostov region. The subject of the empirical research was the conversion trajectories of the converts, the practice of their conversion to Orthodoxy, the channels of conversion communication and interaction. The results of the conducted research allowed: to identify four main trajectories of conversion to Orthodoxy by modern Russian youth – “conversion-deepening”, “conversion-return”, “independent conversion”, “conversion-transition”; to identify three groups of conversion practices – cult, cognitive, solidifying, to describe their composition; to identify the structural and functional features of cult conversion practices.