Values and functions capacity of religious discourse

The article deals with the problem of religious values expressed in the festive Christian (Orthodox) and Muslim sermons and their functional features. The research is carried out on the Easter Epistles in 2009 and 2014 and the Uraza Bairam sermons in 2009 and 2024. The purpose of the article is to define the functions of the two confessions sermons, to compare and contrast the values expressed in the epistles/sermons. Having analyzed the results of scientific research aimed at religious discourse and the genre of a sermon we define the functions of the sermons as the following: introduction to religion, reinforcement of faith, information for an addressee, edification, value instilling, appeal to self-improvement, uniting into a single community, evaluation of the current situation, emotional appeal. Emotional appeal is an important element in building the value picture of the world. Emotional reaction of the addressee includes empathy which is created during religious communication process. We define the necessary conditions for empathy as belonging to "we-group" and sharing values of an addresser and an addressee. We came to the conclusion that the values expressed in the epistles/sermons are common for both confessions. They are God, faith, eternal life, sticking to the commandments, rituals, positive emotions (love, joy, hope), help and empathy, strength and patience. The difference between the values lies in the fact that Easter is dedicated to Jesus Christ’s feat and believers feel the gratitude for it, Uraza Bairam is the end of the Lent, which presents a certain difficulty for believers and believers have to pay mandatory alms, which is declared in the sermons as a value of self-control and brotherhood with co-religionists. The analyzed epistles/sermons enable us to make conclusions about the functional similarity of the two confessions sermons. Value capability is similar in their core component, which is expressed by different language units. Peripherical values of Christianity and Islam are different due to peculiarities of theology and rituals.

religious discourse, sermon, values, empathy, emotional appeal