Cyclical movement of religions: from unity to... unity

Abstract

It has been established that the formation and development of a confessional space, influenced by competition between religions, are cyclical. Due to the weakening of the monopoly and growth of religious competition, once-prevailing religions begin to lose their position either to another religion (the R-cycle of religious competition) or to secular ideologies (such as social secularization, the S-cycle, or political secularization, the SP-cycle), a hallmark of the 19th–21st centuries. Moreover, the research revealed long inter-cycle stages in religious saturation. All three types of cycles are non-periodical. The S- and SP-cycles are also intermittent and reversible, and they may proceed in parallel with each other and with R-cycles. The diffusion of these cycles is wave-like but differentiated within the confessional space structure: the occurrence of the R-cycle is confined to countries and their administrative–territorial units, while the SP-cycle appears in world macro-regions, and the S-cycle does not appear to be constrained.