Modern Model of Church-State Relations in the Lower Volga Region as a Mechanism for Ensuring Religious Security
The article analyzes modern models of church-state relations in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation of the Lower Volga region as a mechanism for ensuring religious security in a post-secular environment. The issue has been studied basing on the research array formed by regional scientists. The data obtained during the author's expert interview (spring 2020) of the representatives of the establishment, public figures, and ministers of religious worship have also been used. The authors assume that church-state relations are a set of conditions and factors designed to create a direct or indirect impossibility for religiosity to harm national interests and religiosity itself. The study focuses on the practical, institutionaland organizational, normative and legal, and ideological and value components of the model of church-state relations. The paper also gives reason to the assumption that a partnership model is being formed in the Lower Volga region at the present stage, which is characterized by a differentiated attitude of state and municipal authorities to religious organizations, bilateral agreements, the presence of permanent and recurrent institutional practices involved in the regional political process.