Quasi-religion: the main approaches to the definition of the concept

This article is devoted to the definition of the concept of “quasi-religion”, the interpretation of which varies in modern humanitarian knowledge. First, the authors trace the etymology of the words “quasi” and “religion”, stop at the main functions of religions as one of the ways of cognition of being, analyze the concept of “faith”. Further, the characteristic of the modern state of society is given; the reasons for the transformation of its socio-cultural organization (in particular, the processes of migration, industrialization and urbanization, the active development of science) and a sense of religiosity are indicated. The authors note that the secularization of the consciousness of modern man and the marginalization of religious ideas did not lead to the final loss of religiosity, but only to its modification. All these circumstances have generated the actualization of quasi-religions, where the object of worship can be a variety of phenomena and phenomena. In conclusion, the essential differences between quasi - and pseudo-religions are specified, the basic approaches in the study of modern religious trends, both traditional and non-traditional (in particular, non-theistic) are considered.