An analysis of secularization in Russia from the supply side

In this article, we discuss religious supply in Russia. Evaluations of religious supply are based on the empirical study “50 Confessions”, conducted by the Sociology of Religion Research Laboratory in the fall of 2015. Consideration of religious supply provides us with new insights into explaining religious processes in contemporary Russia. Particularly, it suggests an alternative to the secularization theory explanation of the gap between religious affiliation (70% of respondents call themselves Orthodox Christians) and religious practice (3% of respondents receive communion regularly) for Russian Orthodox Christians. In this Article the religious supply model, developed on the basis of religious market theory (see the works of R. Stark, R. Finke, W. Bainbridge, L. Iannacone, and others), is briefly described. Ten this model is applied to the evaluation of Russian religious supply, with the variable being the number of priests in Russia. For the estimation of our model's parameters, empirical data from the “50 Confessions” study is used. Te model allows us to evaluate religious supply limitations, and this challenges general assumptions on the secularized nature of religious processes in Russia.