Happiness and religiosity during the military realities in Ukraine

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National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Institute of Philosophy

Department of religious studies H.S. Skovoroda

Happiness and religiosity during the military realities in Ukraine

Kulahina-Stadnichenko Hanna

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (PhD)

Senior Research Fellow

Ukraine

Summary

In this article, the author explores the correlation between happiness and religiosity in Ukrainian society during the Russian military invasion. It is shown that the level of happiness of Ukrainian respondents is quite high, but the dominant emotions are hope, optimism and anxiety. At the same time, the indicators of religiosity in Ukrainian society have increased. The peculiarities of the Christian approach to the concept of happiness are explained, in particular, in view of the theory of the ambivalence of the sacred.

Key words: happiness, religiosity, faith, hope, ambivalence of the sacred.

Резюме

Счастье и религиозность в условиях военных реалий в Украине

Кулагина-Стадниченко Анна,

кандидат философских наук, Старший научный сотрудник, Национальная академия наук Украины, Украина, Отдел религиоведения, Института философии им. Г.С. Сковороды, Украина

В этой статье автор исследует взаимосвязь между счастьем и религиозностью в украинском обществе во время российского военного вторжения. Показано, что уровень счастья украинских респондентов достаточно высок, но доминирующими эмоциями являются надежда, оптимизм и тревога. В то же время показатели религиозности в украинском обществе выросли. Особенности христианского подхода к понятию счастья объясняются, в частности, с учетом теории амбивалентности священного.

Ключевые слова: счастье, религиозность, вера, надежда, амбивалентность священного.

It would seem that war and happiness are incompatible. In the extreme conditions of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, which has been going on for 9 years and a full-scale invasion for more than a year, it is increasingly difficult for a person to find inner balance. Sometimes, life satisfaction seems meaningless and causes feelings of guilt. Nevertheless, recent opinion polls show a fairly high level of happiness among modern Ukrainians: in September 2022, 68% of them considered themselves happy, which is slightly different from the situation in December 2021, when 71% of respondents declared themselves so. At the same time, the rate of unhappy Ukrainians decreased to 13% compared to 15% in December last year.

The highest rate of happy people lives in western Ukraine - 77% vs. 4% of those who do not consider themselves so. In central Ukraine, it is 68% vs. 15%; in the south - 62% vs. 15%; in the east - 59% vs. 22%. At the same time, the self-assessment of happiness is also high among internally displaced persons (64% vs. 17% of those who do not consider themselves happy), i.e. those people who evacuated from the areas of active hostilities and left the occupation. Many of them may have lost their homes: "Even among internally displaced persons, we see that most consider themselves happy. This is another evidence of the unity and strength of Ukrainians in repelling the enemy," the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology emphasizes [5].

Apparently, the subjective feeling of happiness self-presented by Ukrainians in a sociological survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted on September 7-13, 2022, correlates with the three leading emotions according to a survey conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center. According to the latter, the three key emotions of Ukrainians today are hope, optimism, and anxiety. These emotions take place when our compatriots think about their own future or the future of Ukraine: regardless of the level of material security, both the poor and the rich think about the future of Ukraine with hope. Moreover, Ukrainians living below the poverty line are 10% more likely to feel hopeful about Ukraine's future than those with higher incomes. In addition, young people (18-29 years old) are more optimistic and confident about the future of Ukraine than those over 60 years old [8].

Despite the special context, the statement "where there is hope, there is religion" by E. Bloch seems not far from the truth [7]. Thus, in Christianity, the virtue of hope is part of the triad of "faith-hope-love." The latter two are associated with endurance, defined as passionate desires aimed at the good. Hope is manifested in long-suffering, waiting, inspiration, and elation; it necessarily requires the future, because there is no hope for the present or the past. Among the conditions for the realization of hope are usually difficulties related to the likelihood of the desired changes: after all, when people hope, they often hope for changes that are not always in their power.

Faith is the basis, the foundation of sacred connection, of joining the "mountainous" world. It has sensual and rational roots, initial foundations, and ultimate goal, and is explicated as the basis of the expected. At the same time, hope appears as a clarification, supplement, and strengthening of faith. Theologians argue that Christians can always be happy because, even with very little from this world, they receive spiritual blessings that God gives them. Sometimes Christians associate happiness with life satisfaction.

Difficult circumstances significantly increase the level of people's religiosity. This is confirmed by the results of a survey conducted by the Razumkov Center sociological service with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Ukraine from November 4 to 11, 2022. Indeed, since the beginning of full-scale Russian aggression, the level of religiosity has increased from 68% to 74%, approximately to the level it reached in 2014 (76%). While in 2020, 40% of respondents noted the positive role of the Church in Ukrainian society, in 2021 the share of such respondents increased to 49.5%, and in 2022, after the start of Russia's full-scale aggression, an even greater increase was recorded - up to 59%, which is the highest since 2000 [2]. At the same time, international studies show that believers feel much happier than non-believers. The Washington-based Pew Research Center tried to find out the happiness index among atheists and believers from 36 countries. In 2019, in its report, it noted that actively religious people were happier than non-religious people in half of the countries that participated in the study [3]. Unanimity in self-presentation as happy not only indicates a significant religiousness of Ukrainians, or is determined by the ability to enjoy simple things, but also mentally consolidates the nation. Today, being happy means achieving justice in the face of extreme sensitivity to the concepts of good and evil, which is strongly associated by the faithful with the ethical guidelines of religion and the inviolability of religious truths. Thus, tolerant Ukrainians, traditionally brought up in the spirit of religious freedom and multi-confessionalism, are categorical in their position on the aggression of the "Russian world", which is represented by representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Today, almost 80% of Ukrainians believe that the state should intervene in the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) to some extent. In particular, 54% of them believe that this church should be completely banned in Ukraine. This is evidenced by the results of an all-Ukrainian survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology on December 4-27, 2022. [9]

Currently, believers of the same Orthodox religion are on both sides of the military conflict. Considering this problem in historical retrospect, with the help of religious documents, catechisms (confessions of faith), theologians have found that the official doctrines of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have different perceptions of the sixth commandment of the Law of God "Thou shalt not kill" [4]. Thus, in the Catechism of Metropolitan Filaret Drozdov, which is currently the only official catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church, murder is not considered unlawful if it is committed "ex officio" and points to its necessity in the name of "the sovereign and the fatherland." The official Catechism of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) is based on borrowings from the Moscow Catechism, as stated in the annotation to the 2012 edition. Here, the sixth commandment of the Law of God emphasizes cases "when the deprivation of life is not a crime." These include, in particular: "1. The death penalty of a criminal by court order. 2. Killing an enemy in war for the defense of the Fatherland." Both cases are in direct discord with the legislative field of Ukraine, where the death penalty does not exist, and where waging wars of aggression is impossible. The Ukrainian Orthodox tradition offers a fundamentally different approach to understanding the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, which is reflected in a number of important church documents, namely: The Common Catechism of the Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Mykhailo, Introduction to Theology, edited by Kostyantyn Moskaliuk, Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, and the new social doctrine "For the Life of the World." Historically, Ukrainian Orthodoxy has not been characterized by strict pacifism, but it has never developed a doctrine of "just" or "holy" war, nor has it approved the state's use of violence or disregard for moral principles. Instead, the "Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church" refers to war as a necessary means of restoring justice, and thus the theory of a "just war" is being actively developed. However, it is silent and does not define what exactly should be understood as "justice."

Such a conflictogenic factor of religious dispositions can be explained by mentally different interpretations, different perceptions of the same theological sources. This only confirms the thesis of the ambivalence of the sacred, which was proposed in the book of the same name by Scott Appleby, director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Research and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame [1]. According to the scholar, the ambivalence of the sacred means that the same religion can promote political violence and conflict, and on the other hand, produce non-violent civic engagement. In other words, religious violence and religious peacemaking stem from the same religious dynamics. happiness culture christian ukrainian

The author denotes this dynamic by the term "militancy," which means a person's willingness, even desire, under certain conditions, to sacrifice himself, his family, his loved ones, and his most valuable possessions for a noble cause that is considered sacred and therefore exists beyond time and space, affecting deep human feelings. Such a believer will feel happy because he or she transcends the mundane, spatial and temporal, physical and conditional, deals with value-based, personally important orientations, and these, in turn, correspond to the guidelines of a particular religious system [6]. Thus, the feeling of happiness, which directly correlates with the level of religiosity of an individual, is determined not only by personal, but also by social, mental, and specific historical dimensions. In the context of the military aggression of the Russian Federation, Ukraine is undergoing a kind of semantic reset, a rethinking of the term "happiness".

References

[1] Appleby, R. Scott (2000). The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Вилучено з: http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/apple/frame.htm

[2] Війна і Церква. Церковно-реліг. ситуація в Укр. 2022р. (листоп. 2022р.) Вилучено з: https://razumkov.org.ua/napnamky/sotsiologichni-doslidzhennia/ viina-i- tserkva-tserkovnoreligiina-sytuatsiia-v-ukraini-2022r-lystopad-2022r

[3] Дослідники з'ясували, чи робить релігія і віра людей щасливішими. Вилучено з: https://focus.ua/uk/world/485951-issledovateli-vyyasnili-delayut-li-religiya-i-vera- cheloveka-schastlivee

[4] Коваленко, Георгій, протоієрей. Богослов'я війни і миру в Православній церкві. Відкр. Правосл. Універ. св.. Софії Премудрості. 10.02.2022. Вилуч. з: https://oou.org.ua/2022/02/10/bogoslovya-vijny-i-myru-v-pravoslavnij-czerkvi/

[5] Кречетова, Діана. Попри війну: скільки українців вважають себе щасл. Опитування. Вилучено з: https://life.pravda.com.ua/ society/2022/ 10/10/250768/

[6] Кулагіна-Стадніченко, Г. (2023). Релігійний діалог як чинник суспільної стабільності: особливості та виклики в контексті сучасних українських реалій. Філософська думка, 1,97-110. https://doi.org/10.15407/fd2023.01.097

[7] Одохівська І.О. Віра, надія, любов у філософсько-релігійній та етичній думці України та світова культурна традиція. Вилучено з: https://www.myslenedrevo.com.ua/uk/Sci/Culturology/uvuk/Faith.html

[8] Осадча, Яна. Надія, оптимізм, тривога: які емоції відчувають українці під час війни - опитування. Вилучено з: https://life.pravda.com.ua/ society/2022/09/15/250464/

[9] Укрінформ. Вилучено з: https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-society/3643164-bils-ak- polovina-ukrainciv-vistupaut-za-povnu-zaboronu-up

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