o:34319 The Relationship between the Level of Religiousness of the Christian Orthodox Female Students of Teachers’ Education Faculties in Serbia and Their Attitudes towards Orthodox-Moral Issues en Abstract: Religion is a complex construct that defines not only the historical and social identity of a nation, but also the personal identity of an individual. The attitude towards religion can be conditioned by tradition, political ideology, true faith, education, etc. In our research, we have tried to establish the level of religiousness of the female students of teacher education faculties in Serbia, belonging to the Orthodox Christianity as the dominant confession in Serbia. We examined their attitudes towards some of the moral challenges encountered by believers, including abortion, prostitution, same-sex marriages, the use of cannabis, and euthanasia. Using a snowball nondiscriminative online sample of 336 female Orthodox students, we found that the students assessed themselves as above-average religious and that out of three dimensions of religiousness measured in the questionnaire, the lowest scores were recorded for the dimension of the effect of faith on their behavior. The study showed that the level of religiousness is a good predictor of attitudes towards abortion, prostitution, and same-sex marriages, but not towards the use of cannabis. Moreover, religiousness and attitudes towards prostitution are positively correlated, which is directly opposite to religious teachings. This is why a question arises as to whether we can speak about a return to faith or merely a return to the traditional model of manifesting the religious as an antipode to the secular organization in force until 1989. The results of our research point to the latter conclusion. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/7/809 Keywords: Orthodox Christianity; religious tradition; Serbia; religious rites; spirituality; postsocialist transition 1552099 10.3390/rel15070809 1552101 2077-1444 2024-07-15T09:54:54.337Z 44 yes 46 Petrović Jelena R. 0000-0002-5344-5770 Uroš V. Šuvaković Faculty of Education, University of Belgrade person 0000-0002-2141-8698 Ivko A. Nikolić Faculty of Education, University of Belgrade person 0000-0002-1899-4424 application/pdf 413436 https://phaidrabg.bg.ac.rs/o:34319 no yes 1 70 92000001 11A42 Religions 15 7 1 18 MDPI [Commercial Publisher] 2024 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/7/809