RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF CARE FOR THE ELDERLY IN ARCHATIC AND TRADITIONAL CULTURE
Urgency of the research. Today it is necessary to increase the attention to the spiritual life of the elderly and to study the problem of the worldview’s reasoning of elderly people's care. Target setting. The historical attitude to old age and the elderly becomes an important object that needs careful rethinking. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Some philosophical and religious causes of elderly care were highlighted in historical studies of L. Simmons, T. Parkin, K. Cokayne, P. Thane, А. Smolkin and other. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. There is a lack of the holistic research that would focus on clarifying the conceptual foundations of the institution of caring for incapacitated old people. Therefore, this publication is devoted to the analysis of the religious-ideological aspects of elderly care. The research objective. The subject of the publication is highlighting the religious nature of elderly guardianship in archaic and traditional cultures. The purpose of article is to identify the worldview and religious components that have prompted members of the archaic and traditional communities to take care of the incapacitated elders. The statement of basic materials. The forms of support for the elderly depend on specific historical conditions. They are rooted in primitive religious beliefs (animism, the cult of ancestors, etc.). The system of care develops in the period of the emergence of archaic states, where the communal and tribal forms of support for the elderly were for the first time laid down in law. In most traditional cultures, children were required to take care of aging parents; disregard for the elderly was regarded as a punishable crime that broke the norms of social and religious morality. Conclusions. Taking into account the millennium experience of interaction with aging members of the society will improve to select appropriate cultural strategies for solving current socio-gerontological problems. Pastoral help should be an important component of social work with the aging population.