The article examines church architecture in modern Russia. The historical processes of the development of church architecture are analyzed and systematized not only from the point of view of formal stylistic but also global significance. For this purpose, for the first time, a wide range of sources containing information on the sacred component of church art and on the monuments of temple architecture was studied. At the same time, many fragments of sources were first translated into English. The article uses historical and retrospective research methods that allowed to study the theoretical legacy of the modern period in the history of Russia and at the same time to generalize the place of Russian church architecture in the general context of European architectural development.

Formation of the methodological basis of the data set is conditioned by the goal-setting attitude and is determined by the integrative nature of the culturological field of knowledge. The methods of comparative-historical, historical-typological, structural-systemic and semiotic methods are applied in the work.

Comparative and historical-typological procedures in the analysis of facts on a long stretch of historical time made it possible to reveal patterns in the relationship between the state, government, society and the church as a spiritual institution, as well as those general trends that determine their specifics.

It is important for us to move on to the characteristics of the religious picture of the world and the place in it of a person, the system of values and ritual practice with regard to the non-Orthodox church (culture) and new faiths.

The methods of the structural-system method allowed us to consider the structure of the church as a relatively stable set of relations of elements.