Research on Religiosity in the 1920s.

This is the second article dedicated to the history of the religiosity study in the first half of the XX century. It attempts to fill a gap in the currently available literature on the subject. The author analyzes the conceptualization of religion and religiosity and empirical research conducted in the 1920s, comparing them with the study of religiosity in the first half of the XIX – early XX century. As a result, he identifies ongoing trends and changes that occurred in this field. Similar to the initial stage of the history of Religious Studies, the concept of “religiosity” was understood in contrast to the term “religion” in the studied period. In particular, the latter was conceptualized as something objective, while religiosity was interpreted as a subjective characteristic. Such understanding was shaped by ethnographic research that demonstrated the diversity of religious experience across the globe and by the phenomenological approach to the study of religion. During the period under review, empirical research on religiosity continued within the framework of Statistics, Sociology, and Psychology. However, compared to the previous years, the 1920s stand out for the intense study of children's religiosity, a reinterpretation of the questionnaire method, and an active discussion on the principles of how a person's religious life can be studied. For instance, American sociologists began to call for an unbiased approach to the analysis of religiosity by the end of the 1920s. The rapid development of the study of religiosity and the increasing interest of researchers in this topic are evidenced by reviews of earlier works published in the 1920s. On the one hand, they carried on a tradition of sociological and psychological analysis of religiosity, established at the beginning of the XX century. On the other hand, a lack of published materials made the researchers of the given period initiate discussions on the methods and principles of the scientific analysis of religiosity. The American psychological tradition remained the most influential in that field. Research on education, child psychology, and the religious life of rural communities stands out from the bulk of publications at that time.