Abstract

An unquestionable achievement of contemporary Ukrainian religious thought is the return from oblivion of Arsen Rychynsky's creative heritage, which is made by his main work, "Problems of Ukrainian Religious Consciousness." As the founder of the ethnology of religion in Ukrainian religious studies, he has filled the nearly three hundred-year gap in Ukrainian Orthodoxy, organically combining the historical origins, status, and tasks of the ethno-confessional existence of the Ukrainian people. If for the time of Peter Mohyla the idea of ​​the national Church was the basic factor of the national idea, then in A.Richinsky's time the national idea became the vital core of the national Church until the revival of the state, which is an unambiguous concept "for faith and the people of Russia" (XVII and nowadays the "Ukrainian State - the Ukrainian Church".