The convergent processes of the religious life of our time

Abstract

The most common tendencies in religious life of the second half of the twentieth century, which I propose to call "convergent processes". The term "convergence" (from the Latin. Convergentio, convergo - converge, approach) was first used by German scholar Henry Frick in his work Comparative Religion. In seeking to approximate the terminology of the natural sciences and social sciences, begun by DF Schlemmacher, G. Frick used the term in the sense in which it was already used primarily in biology, where this concept characterizes the process of appearance of similarities in the structure and functions in distant the origin of the organisms as a result of their adaptation to the same conditions of existence. The term was used by the researcher to refer to similar processes in different religions