The VALUES research-theme is a continuation of research conducted by the Postsecular Conflicts Research Group under the theme MORALIST INTERNATIONAL. Our research highlighted the impact of the globalization of the American Culture Wars on Russia and on the Russian Orthodox Church and focused, methodologically, on the meso-level of sociological analysis: on institutions, organizations and actors with a strategic function in what we called “the moralist international”. VALUES expands the methodological design in order to study, first, the effect of the globalization of culture-war-type of conflicts on “simple believers” (the micro-perspective of sociological analysis) and, second, the impact of culture-war-type of norm mobilization on values and opinions in entire populations (the macro-sociological perspective). Furthermore, VALUES wants to develop a systematic comparison of the impact of culture-war-type of conflicts on Russian Orthodoxy and other churches and religious traditions (ex. Protestantism, Catholicism).

VALUES research is currently in the fieldwork phase and first research results will be available shortly. The Postsecular Conflicts Research Group is open for expressions of interest by researchers who want to join the research group under this theme and has co-sponsored several applications under funding schemes like the FWF Lise-Meitner or ERC Marie Sklodowska Curie fellowships.