Abstract
This paper adapts a glocalization framework in a transnational, anthropological exploration of liturgy in the Orthodox Church of Finland (OCF). It draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants of liturgy from Finnish, Russian, and Greek cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The main argument of the paper is that generic processes of nationalization and transnationalization are not mutually exclusive in practitioners’ experiences of liturgy in OCF, but rather generate a glocal space that incorporates Finnish, Russian, Karelian, and Byzantine elements. Individuals artistically engage with glocal liturgy on sensorial, cognitive, social, and semantic levels. What is important for the participants is a therapeutic sense that comes from a feeling of ‘being at home’, metaphorically, spiritually, and literally. People’s ongoing, creative work constitutes Orthodoxy as their national and transnational home.
Highlights
Most contemporary Orthodox churches across the world are divided into national or diasporic churches; the latter of which is often organized alongside ethno-national and linguistic lines
‘cultural marker’ that implies belonging to a certain national or ethnic group, whether Greek, Serbian, or Russian versions of Orthodoxy ([2], p. 122). This is the case in Western Europe, for instance, in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway [3,4]. This situation led to the scholarly categorization of national vs diasporic Orthodox churches in contemporary research [2,4,5,6]
The argument here draws on Roudometof’s account of Orthodox Christianity, as as historical glocalization that comprises processes of indigenization, vernacularization, historical glocalization that comprises processes of indigenization, vernacularization, nationalization, nationalization, and transnationalization. These glocalizations of Orthodoxy emerge as concrete and transnationalization [2]
Summary
Most contemporary Orthodox churches across the world are divided into national or diasporic churches; the latter of which is often organized alongside ethno-national and linguistic lines. The Orthodox Church of Finland (OCF), for example, is an interesting case, suggesting that the processes of nationalization and transnationalization are not mutually exclusive, but together constitute a glocal manifestation of Orthodoxy in Finland. This paper unpacks this argument by focusing on individual experiences of liturgy in the OCF, a Eucharistic church service of the Byzantine rite that has been central to Eastern Christian practices since the time of late antiquity, and remains so today amongst Orthodox populations across the globe [7,8]. The paper concludes with a section that summarizes the findings, as well as opens avenues for future exploration
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