ABSTRACT
The crisis of overproduction, the energy and financial crises, the degeneration of institutional authority, organized crime and drug addiction, and a homogenized mass culture lacking spiritual content engender a dissatisfied, sick consciousness and a complex of social inferiority. In some publications one can meet the notion that religion had a positive impact on the historico-cultural process, particularly on the development of national cultures. As evidence that the Orthodox Church supposedly was a champion of enlightenment and culture will be cited, for example, the fact that the Christianization of Rus' was accompanied by the spread of literacy. Christianity in general and Orthodoxy in particular made every effort to keep the people in bondage and servitude. In the theological interpretation of the role of religion in cultural history much is made of the proposition that the religious and national components of culture coincide, or, more precisely, that religion underlies national culture as its deep structure.
