Success Factors for the Religious Revival in Mongolia

The article reveals the main factors that contributed to the revival of traditional and emergence of new religious trends in Mongolia. Mongolia is a rare, if not exclusive, example of a rapid revival of Buddhist Sangha, Shamanism, traditional cults and Islam against the background of effective proselytizing activity of new religious communities. Over a less than 20 years Protestant denominations, the Bahai and Mormons could aggregate to their confessions no less than 4% of population according to various estimates. It should be noted that these confessions were not represented in Mongolia in the early 1980s. Democratic transformations of the late 1980s – first half of the 1990s were and still are the main factor of revival of the traditional and emergence of the new religious trends in Mongolia. Freedom of religion, announced in that period with some reservations, gave religion and religious organizations a chance not only to exist, but to develop.