The problem of essence of the religious renovation phenomenon and its influence upon the society became a point of wide discussion as early as in the beginning of the 20^th century in connection with the rapid development of the social modernization processes in the Christian and Islamic countries. At the turn of the 20^th–21^st centuries religious renovation as theory and practice again takes on a special importance and significance. Under the conditions of growing social changes in culture and science and uncertainty in the moral markets modern politicians, scientists and theologians begin to assign religion being one of the most stable ethical forms a decisive role in overcoming the crisis of the modern culture (D. Bell, K. Dobbelaere). At the same time it creates new threats and risks, because the question of what one or another religion is like doctrinally and whether its institutions are able to take the responsibility for the legitimization of the changes is not less acute.

In this connection the article shows that modern religious renovation is conditioned by and grows out of the necessity of restoring “critical partnership” of theology and philosophy, the dialogue of religious and non-religious worldviews that are able to enrich religion and culture and at the same time to influence social relations (J. Habermas, M. Welker, J. Gray).

On the other hand, modern religious renovation is a product of the evolution of the religious fundamentalism and religious modernism which came out as ambivalent phenomena able to actively interact with each other and to come closer as regards to their content in the second half of the 20^th century (M. Marty, L. Caplan, M. Riesebrodt).

The author comes to a conclusion that modern religious renovation is both a form of religious reformation combining elements of different religious and non-religious ideologies and worldviews and a strategy of the social religious action growing out of this dialogic philosophy.