Transformation of religious identity in the conditions of modern information society

The article analyzes the problems of functioning and changes of religious identity in the modern information society. The issue of religious identity is extremely important for the understanding and self-determination of modern man, since religion and morality are the basis of spirituality as a property of personality. Both personal and social factors are involved in the formation of religious identity. Religions themselves have historically made and are making their own adjustments to the functional of religious identity as social institutions: monolithic religions originally had many different meanings depending on the differences in the interpretation of sacred texts; the historical conditions of life of believers inevitably changed. In response to the threat of erosion of religious identity in the history of culture, fundamentalism arose as a desire to return to the beginning. The current state of religious identity is characterized as a crisis. In the modern network society, the Internet space has become an effective means of mass popularization of both traditional denominations in the digital format and a variety of eclectic "teachings". Outbursts of fundamentalism, the phenomena of postsecularism and cyber-religiosity, the religious pluralization of centers, the unhindered proliferation of new religious movements, sects, unregistered religious groups, quasi-religious communities of new age sense, the phenomenon of “belief without religion” — these and other features of religious identity have both positive and negative aspects of the impact on the life of society, and therefore can be defined as a crisis, which will be certainly followed by a new stability, and as an apocalyptic chaos, followed by the destruction of the social forms of human existence — through obscurantism and fanaticism to complete soullessness.