Interpretations of Traditional Family Values in a Post-Secular Society
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2026.3.3200Keywords:
traditional family values, demographic policy, Russian Old Believers, post-secular society, family rolesAbstract
Since 2013, a policy of supporting traditional values, including family values, has been launched and gradually intensified in Russian official discourse. This study compares the state secular understanding of this concept with the meanings that representatives of traditional religion put into it. Differences in interpretation may influence the implementation of traditional values and the potential response to them. The study is conducted within the analytical framework of a post-secular society, which allows for the presence in the public sphere of concepts that secular and religious actors assign different, even opposing, meanings. As these interpretations collide, the concept itself is transformed. The author suggests that traditional family values is one of such concepts. Empirically, the study is based on an online survey with open-ended questions distributed among young parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church (N = 65). A corpus of analyzed statements was compiled based on the central question of understanding traditional family values. Then, semantic processing of natural language was conducted using artificial intelligence (DeepSeek), identifying the most frequently occurring words, a semantic core, and thematic groups of words. The study shows that Old Believer Christian youth's understanding of the concept of traditional family values is composed of five components, namely: continuity and tradition, religion as a foundation, hierarchy and clear roles, reciprocity and harmony, and defense and crisis. An analysis of regulatory documents revealed that the secular interpretation circulating in public discourse makes no reference to a religious foundation and does not include assertions about the consolidation of roles within the family. The discrepancies in these positions may indicate emerging post-secular conflict.
Acknowledgements. This article has been prepared as part of a research program under a state directive to the RANEPA.
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