Abstract
The article focuses on the reclaiming of militaristic ideas and the emergence of specific “militant piety” and “theology of war” in the Orthodox discourse of post-Soviet Russia. It scrutinizes the increasing prestige of soldiering in the Church and its convergence with the army. This convergence generates particular hybrid forms, in which Church rituals and symbols interact with military ones, leading to a “symbolic reception of war” in Orthodoxy. The authors show that militaristic ideas are getting influence not only in the post-Soviet but also in American Orthodoxy; they consider this parallel as evidence that the process is caused not only by the political context—the revival of neo-imperial ideas in Russia and the increasing role of power structures in public administration—but is conditioned by socio-cultural attitudes inherent in Orthodox tradition, forming a type of militant religiosity called “militant piety”. This piety is not a matter of fundamentalism only; it represents the essential layer of religious consciousness in Orthodoxy reflected in modern Church theology, rhetoric, and aesthetics. The authors analyze war rhetoric while applying approaches of Karen Armstrong, Mark Juergensmeyer, R. Scott Appleby, and other theoreticians of the relationship between religion and violence.
Highlights
We will begin with discursive rehabilitation of war, which we find in many Russian Orthodox authors
Attempts to justify and reconsider the way the Orthodox believers perceive war are reflected in official documents and public declarations adopted with the Russian Orthodox Church participating
We tried to conceptualize some developments in post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy as the emergence of the relatively new “militant piety,” which takes place in both theory and practice
Summary
Attempts to justify and reconsider the way the Orthodox believers perceive war are reflected in official documents and public declarations adopted with the Russian Orthodox Church participating. The theological rethinking of military service in favor of its sacralization in Orthodoxy led to the emergence of hybrid forms of church-military interactions on structural, institutional, or aesthetic levels, as well as, as we will show, on the liturgical level We can observe this process on publications in media, which were reflecting the public discussions on the subject and depicting the new inventions throughout this period. Regarding the issue of hybrid church and military symbols, the issue of a special uniform for military priests arose: Whether they should wear vestments, battle dress uniform or civilian clothes In this respect, an ordinary priest’s cassock would (and for a long time did) mean that priests are “outside” persons, “guests” to the Armed Forces.
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