The Relationship between the Level of Religiousness of the Christian Orthodox Female Students of Teachers’ Education Faculties in Serbia and Their Attitudes towards Orthodox-Moral Issues

Abstract

Religion is a complex construct that defines not only the historical and social identity of a nation, but also the personal identity of an individual. The attitude towards religion can be conditioned by tradition, political ideology, true faith, education, etc. In our research, we have tried to establish the level of religiousness of the female students of teacher education faculties in Serbia, belonging to the Orthodox Christianity as the dominant confession in Serbia. We examined their attitudes towards some of the moral challenges encountered by believers, including abortion, prostitution, same-sex marriages, the use of cannabis, and euthanasia. Using a snowball non-discriminative online sample of 336 female Orthodox students, we found that the students assessed themselves as above-average religious and that out of three dimensions of religiousness measured in the questionnaire, the lowest scores were recorded for the dimension of the effect of faith on their behavior. The study showed that the level of religiousness is a good predictor of attitudes towards abortion, prostitution, and same-sex marriages, but not towards the use of cannabis. Moreover, religiousness and attitudes towards prostitution are positively correlated, which is directly opposite to religious teachings. This is why a question arises as to whether we can speak about a return to faith or merely a return to the traditional model of manifesting the religious as an antipode to the secular organization in force until 1989. The results of our research point to the latter conclusion.

Keywords

• Orthodox Christianity
• religious tradition
• Serbia
• religious rites
• spirituality
• post-socialist transition