American Conservatives and the Allure of Post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz

doi:10.3390/rel12121036

Abstract

This article explores the growing affinity for the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church by far-right Orthodox converts in the United States, highlighting how the spiritual draw to the faith is caught up in the globalizing politics of traditionalism and a transnational, ideological reimaging of the American culture wars. Employing ethnographic fieldwork from the rural United States and digital qualitative research, this study situates the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church in the international flows of conservativism focused on reclaiming social morals and traditional religiosity. In doing so, this article sheds light on how the post-Soviet Orthodox Church is viewed politically by a growing contingent of American religious and political actors who are turning to Russian Orthodoxy and Putin’s government during this New Cold War moment of tension between the United States and Russia. I argue that the allure of the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church for conservatives in the West offers us a window into how the institution is situated imaginatively within transnational politics, thereby providing us insights into the rapidly transforming culture wars fomenting globally.

Highlights

In 2007, under the sharp gaze of President Vladimir Putin, the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), headed Patriarch Alexey II, signed documents of reconciliation withMetropolitan Laurus, the hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), a diasporic satellite of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) that had not been in canonical communion with its former ecclesiastical hub for nearly eighty years.1 A historic moment of global transformation in the fragmented body of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, the event signaled something more than just the reunion of two Christian factions—it heralded the growing global power of the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church that was and is intimately linked to Russian state power, to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin
Aligned with the Moscow Patriarchate, focused on home missions rather than those abroad, ROCOR was a religious community steeped not just in tradition but seemingly traditionalism—something that appealed to far-right actors looking for a strident form of religiosity removed from what they understood to be the usual trappings of American conservative politics
In addition to each person having their own theological or spiritual reasons for converting and self-selecting ROCOR as their spiritual home, they were largely aligned in several ideological viewpoints, including the idea that Russia, and by extension, the ROC, was a geopolitical savior that might have the power to rescue them from the mires of American secularism

Summary

Introduction

In 2007, under the sharp gaze of President Vladimir Putin, the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), headed Patriarch Alexey II, signed documents of reconciliation with. As the post-Soviet ROC began to expand in power and scope within Russia, in the 2010s, Patriarch Kirill, alongside President Vladimir Putin with his Russkiy Mir initiative, looked outward to points on the globe where they might spread the religious and nationalistic ideals of Russian life One such place was the United States, where American citizens converting to ROCOR began to embrace the ROC and the political ideals of. Orthodox Church has become the social moral face of Putin’s continued regime, with the church and state seemingly locked in a reciprocal exchange of power and privilege This provocatively close alignment between the increasingly autocratic, authoritarian, and some scholars argue, fascist politics of Putin, and the socially conservative and antiWestern Russian Orthodox Church has become as point of interest for far-right actors outside of Russia.

ROCOR: The Prerevolutionary Incubator

American Converts to Russian Orthodoxy

The Culture Wars Go Traditional

Family Values and Morality Discourses

The Putin–Trump Effect

Conclusions