Abstract

The majority of world religions have developed in the course of overcoming tribal and clan identity. The idea of "One God" carries the implication, overtly or not, of uniting mankind on basis of religious belief. The rise of world religions was associated with rise of huge empires and states where various ethnic groups coexisted, not only on the basis of force alone, but also on basis of common religious belief and value systems imposed by religious ideology. Governing polyethnic territories, developments in economy and trade and consistent humanization of human spirit resulted in the development of common human values.Mankind started perceiving itself as a single species sharing a common world history. The concept of 'mankind' came to unite people irrespective of their race, religion and nationality. Objective of our study was cross-confessional investigation of value systems in religions spread in Russia and establishing to what extent they are spiritually acceptable to Russians. We used the semantic space technique for the analysis of religious mentalities.