Digital Orthodoxy in the Post-Soviet World E-Book
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- Herausgeber: ibidem
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
- Sprache: Englisch
This volume explores the relationship between new media and religion, focusing on the WWW’s impact on the Russian Orthodox Church. Eastern Christianity has travelled a long way through the centuries, amassing the intellectual riches of many generations of theologians and shaping the cultures as well as histories of many countries, Russia included, before the arrival of the digital era. New media pose questions that, when answered, fundamentally change various aspects of religious practice and thinking as well as challenge numerous traditional dogmata of Orthodox theology. For example, an Orthodox believer may now enter a virtual chapel, light a candle by drag-and-drop operations, send an online prayer request, or worship virtual icons and relics. In recent years, however, Church leaders and public figures have become increasingly skeptical about new media. The internet, some of them argue, breaches Russia’s ?spiritual sovereignty? and implants values and ideas alien to the Russian culture. This collection addresses such questions as: How is the Orthodox ecclesiology influenced by its new digital environment? What is the role of clerics in the Russian WWW? How is the specifically Orthodox notion of sobornost’ (catholicity) being transformed here? Can Orthodox activity in the internet be counted as authentic religious practice? How does the virtual religious life intersect with religious experience in the ?real? church?
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Seitenzahl: 530
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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ibidemPress, Stuttgart
Table of Contents
Acknowledgement
Parts of the Introduction and Chapters 1, 3-6, 10-11, and chapter 7 (in Russian) were first published in the special issue of the journalDigital Icons,no. 14 (2015), available athttp://www.digitalicons.org/issue14/. Ithankthejournal editors Andrew Chapman (lead editor), Pedro Hernandez, Gernot Howanitz, Natalia Konradova, Maria Sidorkina, Henrike Schmidt, and Vlad Strukov for their work on these papers and their many valuable suggestions. I also acknowledge the enormous efforts of the guest sub-editors of the aforementioned issue, Maria Engström and Greg Simons. Our continuous and almost daily collaboration has turned the idea into a concrete publication, and a call for papers into a network of scholars. I am sincerely thankful to my current employer, the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, for the generous financial support of this venture.
MikhailSuslov, 30 May 2016
Foreword
Cyril HovorunStockholm School of Theology/Sankt Ignatios Academy
This editedcollection deals mostly with the Russian localization of the eastern Christianity.Most of thepapers first appeared in the journalDigital Iconsand focus on the attitude of the Russian Orthodox sub-culture to the global web-culture. The conflation oftwotopics:icons and the internet, hasproducedan intriguingstory aboutencounter of tradition with modernity. There are many such stories. This one, however, has become particularlytopical in the light of the recent developments around Ukraine andofthe relations of Russia with the rest of the western world. These developments can be interpreted as a conflict between progress and inertia,or betweenlooking forward and looking backward. It does not necessarily mean that looking backward is bad. In the case of modern Russia,however,it is myopic. This means that when Russia and its church look deep into the centuries ofthehistory, theydo notseemuch further thanthe Soviet past.The Soviet pastalienates thedeeperpast from the present of the church. Or, better to say, it alienates the present of the church from its pre-Soviet past. It makes theveryconcept of tradition abusive.Although the past was not digital, it conditions the digital present.This present would have been different if the non-digital past, on which it relies most,were not so much Soviet, but pre-Soviet.
The iconic part of the storyin this volumeis easy. This isbecause eastern Christianity is iconic.Particularly its Russian edition always preferred to express itself in icons—more than inconcepts.In this sense, the today’s digital culture is more resonant with the iconic Russian psyché.At the same time,to identify yourself with iconsis notaseasyin our timesas it seems to be, because the modern idea oficon/image has dramatically changed since the Middle Ages, when image was equal to icon.Modern culturerides on theantagonismbetweenimage andtext, something that the iconodulic era did not know. Of course, there were iconoclasmsin the past, when those who were for the textfought againstthose who were also for the images. Nowadays,the texts and images cannot annihilateeach other—theyhave to compete.In thiscompetition, the text and the image imitate one another. The texts tend to be narratives,which is an iconic genre,and the images try toanimateallkinds of text: novels, poems, manifestos, chronicles, and news. One can read the images, argue with them, or accept some of theirstandpoints. In the past, the images edified. In our time, they mainly entertain, deceive, or tell nothing.Somevarietiesofthe moderniconsof this sorthave been presented in the current volume.
The volume speaks not only of icons per se, but also of their environment. The place of a traditional icon is theinside of thechurch.Themilieuof the iconsdescribed in this volume is digital.This is the difficult part of the story.In the church, people come to talk to God. Iconstherevisualize the divine reality.To use the famous phrase ofFrPavel Florensky, ‘Icon is a window tothatworld.’In the digitalworld,however,there is nothat:peopleare not supposed toconnectwith the transcendental—theyloginto meeteach other, orto meet what the otherchoose to be.The innate immanence of the digitalworld obliteratestheattemptsofthe transcendental exodus through theicon.Apart of being iconic, the Orthodox tradition is also liturgical. It means it needs matter to purify, bless, and consecrate. This constitutes another difficulty for the Orthodox to rush to the matter-less domains of theinternet.Howthechurchcan deliver its message and function in theunblessableuniverse of theintangible?Does it make any sense to attend virtual chapels anddeliveronline confessions?Is theredigital evil, in the Manichaean sense of the word? If so, what the church should do about it? If not, is the internet morally neutral?The book tries to answer notthesequestions, but the question how the Russian church answersthem.
The church has made a long journey in understandingand appreciatingthe digital.I remember the discussions in the church in the 1990s about whether to go or not to go to theinternet. Attitude tothisleap to the unknownwas measured by openness of those who madetheirchoice.I remember how proud were the progressives tolaunchthe first website of a parish or of a whole church. And how theywere criticized by the conservativesforcompromising their faith.They continue their quarrels,nowonline. All sorts of ‘culture wars’ among the Orthodox Christians are waged now in the blogs and forums. These battlesare thoroughly and comprehensively analyzed in the present volumeas well.
The book presents in an iconic way the actual developments in the Russian church and society. Ithassucceeded tostretch overthe gap between deontology and actualityof the church. That is why its arguments are critical and sometimes even provocative, but never boring.
Introduction[1]
MikhailSuslovUppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University
The church, the state,and Russian society
In October 2015Runetheatedly discussed the leak of information about the (failed) attempt of the Russian Ministry of Communications to cut the country off the internet.[2]The crackdown on the freedom of the internet is the marked tendency of President Putin’s third term in power, which resulted in closing down thousands of webpages,[3]including oppositional news agencies. One of the most important sources of motivation for this prohibitive activity is religious ethics. For example, the League for Safe Internet, blessed by Patriarch Kirill, has been hunting for pedophiles in the social networks since 2011, as well as reporting online pornography, propaganda of extremism, LGBT, methods of committing suicide, and similar information, sinful from the Orthodox viewpoint. In spite of the very high level of the internet penetration in the Russian society (70.5% in 2015)[4], the idea of the state control over the digital environment has found a receptive soil among the broader public[5]and its ardent advocates in the political elite (e.g.PotupchikandFedorova2014).
This posits the question, how the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is impacting society and the state in their framing and making sense of the new media? Statistics says that only 2 to 4% of Russians keep the fast during the Lent, or take communion (‘Rossiianeoreligii’ 2013); the Ministry of the Interior (which since the Soviet times traditionally monitors churches’ attendance on the most important dates) reported 2,3million participants of the Christmas service in 2008 (i.e. 3,3% of the population, ‘Dannye’ 2008). So the number of regular church-goers is not very significant, and the ROC does not play an important role in the lives of the majority of Russians. At the same time, circa 70% (‘Rossiianeoreligii’ 2013) name themselves ‘Orthodox believers’. The phenomenon of ‘vicarious’ religion[6]is common in all Western societies, and it is present on a remarkably great scale in Russia due to the fact that Orthodox religion serves as a synonym for the Russian national self-identification. There are signs of weariness of the ROC’s assertiveness among the Russian population;WTsIOM’spress release displays that in 1990 61% of people approved of spreading of religion, whereas in 2015 it is only 36% (‘Religiia:Zaiprotiv’2015). Still, the ROC remains one of the most highly trusted social institutions on a par with the army and slightly behind the President. Moreover, during the period 2013–2015 the ROC has slightly gained in trust (48 and 54% respectively, ‘Rossiiane’ 2015), so the anti-ROC’s campaign and a number of scandals, connected with the ‘Pussy Riot’ affair and the lifestyle of Patriarch Kirill, have not significantly decreased the popularity of the ROC and its leader. This could be explained in the context of the recent turn towards conservatism in the Russian society, which entertains age-old images of Russia as a besieged fortress, morally superior to its geopolitical adversaries.
Speaking about ‘vicarious Orthodoxy’ it is important to keep in mind that the ROC was historically anationalchurch of Russia, and as any national church it has tight connections with the political and historical self-description of this community. A common trope for self-positioning of the Church is that the ROC is a ‘state-shaping’ religion (gosudarstvoobrazuiushchaiatserkov’), and as such it weaves its own historical narrative with the narrative of the Russian state. Thus,the Orthodox religion in Russia has anineliminablepolitical and geopolitical component(Engström 2014; Kostjuk 2005; Mitrofanova 2005; Papkova 2011; Simons & Westerlund 2015; Suslov2014), although, to be sure, it cannot be reduced to it. In the ROC’s intellectual history, the concept of ‘symphony’ is a very important one; it says that the church and the state should maintain harmonious relations of mutual support and mutual non-interference. As Patriarch Kirill argued once, it is not in the history, but here and now, in Putin’s Russia, the principle of ‘symphony’ has being implemented in its most complete form (Kirill 2010: 251). Indeed, the state’s support of the ROC’s initiatives has recently been very substantial, ranging from adopting the legislation according to which all ROC’s property nationalized after the revolution of 1917 should be given back to the Church, to the incorporation of thecourse ‘Bases of the Orthodox Culture’ in secondary school, to the introduction of the state-paidchaplains to the Russian army,—all these novelties would have been unthinkable without the state’s benevolent backing.In return, the ROC supplies the Kremlin with a number of rhetoricaldevices and ideological frames, which help the political elite to consolidate Putin’s predominantly conservative constituency.However, the coalescence of the Church and the state should not be exaggerated; the ROC has its own sense of mission, ideological agenda and doctrinal grounds (especiallyBases of the Social Concept,adopted in 2000), which provide for a possibility (mostly dormant up to day) to raise an independent and oppositional voice.
Digital religions worldwide
The study of religion and digital technologies has recently become a point of growth in social sciences and humanities, reflecting on the dynamic ‘colonization’ of the digital terrains by different religions.Theological traditions and cultural backgrounds have variegated impact on the religion’s ability to ‘domesticate’ digital technologies. The worldwide turn from ‘religion towards spirituality’(Heelas & Woodhead2005)rendered the actual religious experience lessbounded by the tradition and ritual, and pushed it in the direction of religious syncretism and individualism. This ‘spiritual turn’ provides more opportunities for accommodation of the new media. Especially the representatives of the New Age religions met the early advances of the digital technologies into our everyday life with enthusiasm. Some traditional religious denominations managed to grasp and make sense of the computer-mediated technologies remarkably easy as well. For example, Hinduism relatively successfully embraced the digital technologies(Helland2010), among other reasons, because of the idea of purity of the environment in which ritual takes place. According to this tradition, if the image of a god or a goddess is located in cyberspace, not in the physical space, this could be regarded positively by the believers who perform the ritual ofpurja(Scheifinger 2013:125). Similarly, meditating rituals of ZenBuddhism,or their parts could be easily transferred online.
By contrast, those religions which emphasis the mystical, and corporeal, sensorial experience, rather than symbolic aspects of rituals (e.g. Eucharist) resist to transferring services into the virtual world. Another ‘trench’ in a position war with modern technology could be the traditionally patriarchal and hierarchical structure of the church. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is way more comfortable with the internet than the ROC, finding it a useful tool for the dialogue with religious and secular ‘others’, but at the same time, the Vatican disabled the possibility to comment on itsYouTubechannel, fearing to lose the control over the discussion(Campbell2012).Likewise, in ultra-Orthodox Judaism the resistance of the religious authorities to destabilizing their cultural and political hegemony in the digital environment could be fierce(Rashi2013).
The relation of fundamentalist religions to computer-mediated communication (CMC) is, however, never reduced to a straightforward rejection. Whereas Messianic religions concentrated on the idea of a covenant with a deity would tend towards isolationism and unacceptance of the new media, religions striving to expand their Messianic message would find digital technologies to be a useful tool for church mission. But even religions trying to reconstruct the basisof their faith and to return to their roots in the distant past, which usually find it difficult to accommodate any modern technology, eagerly adopt methods of ‘religion online’ for the purposes of propaganda, self-presentation, or search for information(Howard2011). Likewise, CMC does not unequivocally undermine the ‘epistemic power’ and the authority of the religious hierarchy(Barzilai-Nahon & Barzilai 2005; Campbell 2010a; Livio & Tenenboim Weinblatt 2007). For example, in spite of the prohibition to use the internet by rank-and-file believers, leaders of Taliban could be quite active online in both recruiting new members and fighting with ideological adversaries(Bunt2009). Modern paganism can also be seen as a ‘back-to-the-roots’ religious movement, and yet it is developing quite dynamically in the internet, seen as a platform to spread information, connect with fellow believers and perform some, e.g. Wicca rituals(Cowan 2005; Krüger2005).
The Orthodox Church only recently began to pay serious attention to the possibilities of cyberspace and the Orthodox theological dimension of his mission on theinternet. In 1997 PatriarchAleksiiII blessed the world-wide web information technology as a new means for Orthodox missionary work. Today believers have Orthodox search services,[7]social networks, web-based dating services, and information agencies. One can follow Patriarch Kirill on Facebook, exchange tweets with the popular priest and actor Ivan Okhlobystin, or leave comments on the blog of the controversial Deacon AndreiKuraev. The Orthodox religious tradition, conservative disposition of the ROC’s leadership and constituency, as well as the Church’s participation in shaping today’s state political agenda is not very accommodating to the new media, and yet its highest clerics and intellectuals understand that it is better to master the new technology than to fight with it.
The Orthodox segment ofRunet, sometimes called as ‘Ortho-net’ is shaped by half-hearted attempts undertaken by the ROC toinstrumentalizedigital technologies in order to exercise a greater ascendance over society. On the one hand, ‘Ortho-net’ has arguably become the main source of informing people about religion, boasting extensive connections with Orthodoxy worldwide, which now numbers some 300 million believers. On the other, Russian-language ‘Ortho-net’ occupies a relatively modest and isolated niche inRunet. It is notoriously difficult to calculate its share, but one can have an adequate grasp of the ‘big picture’ by looking up into the service top100.rambler.ru, which allocates the most popular Orthodox webpage (pravoslavie.ru) only the 101stplace in the list of Russian-language web-resources.[8]Another example is the number of received comments on the blogs inLiveJournal;the most popular Orthodox blog by deacon AndreiKuraev(akadiak_kuraev) with its 1.1 million comments lags far behindArtemiiLebedev(akatema) with 4,2 million (as of November 2015). It is safe to say that the share of Orthodox content inRunetroughly corresponds to (or somewhat less—due to the fact that older people tend to be more religious and less conversant with the internet) the proportion of regular church-goers in the Russian society.
State-of-the-art
This book is grounded on the vast literature, devoted to studying the interrelationship between different aspects of religious experience and new media.[9]The research of digital religion has passed through several stages(Campbell 2013), having made an important contribution to the understanding of the problem of (post)secularism. Early, ‘romantic’ conceptualizations of the cyber-world as a place of disembodied spirituality and sacredness, spurred this process, and affected the way how religious traditions consider the internet and utilize its affordances to practice faith and obtain religious experience(O'Leary 1996; Rheingold 1994; Turkle 1995). At the turn of the millennium, the proliferation of digital technologies in everyday lifeprompted scholars to contemplate the conceptual distinction between two modes of existence of religion on the web: ‘religion-online’, and ‘online-religion’. This distinction illustrates the limits of the secularization hypothesis, because it shows how churches manage not only to colonize the internet (‘religion-online’) but also to develop new religious practices and sensibilities, specific to digital culture—‘online-religion’(Helland 2000; 2002; 2005).
Penetration of the internet into all spheres of human culture rendered the divide between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ obsolete. Simultaneously the distinction between ‘religion online’ and ‘online religion’ is becoming less and less relevant; on the one hand, websites initially designed to inform believers (‘religion online’) provide increasingly more possibilities for participation and interaction, such as commenting and discussing or performing rituals (i.e. ‘online religion’). On the other, social networks enabling believers to collectively obtain religious experience have become the main source of information about the life of the churches as well as the field of the churches’ missionary work(Wagner 2012; Young 2004). Social networks have been usefully conceptualized as the ‘third place’ of non-instrumental communication(Baab 2012; Soukup 2006). In this vein, blogging believers not necessarily strive for the spread of their doctrines, but rather for self-cultivation and obtaining religious experience(Bakardjieva & Gaden 2012; Lee 2009), which more often than not reinforces their religious community(Cheong, Kwon, & Halavais 2008).
Later on, Heidi Campbell, drawing on the ‘social shaping of technology’ approach, argued that success or failure in mastering the digital technology depends not on ‘the innate qualities of the technology but on the ability of the users to socially construct the technology’(Campbell 2012: 84), which in turn depends on traditions, values, and discursive practices of a given religious community. Such an approach helps researchers to revisit the secularism thesis. Even if the internet may be (or may not—depending on how this technology is being socially shaped) detrimental to the traditional religious authorities(Bruce 2002), it gives innumerable affordances for mediating the experience of the sacred and ritual practices beyond the churches’ fences(Casas, Poon, Cheong, & Huang 2009; Hackett 2006), which has also been explored in the literature on the religious dimension of the digital popular culture(Deacy & Arweck 2009; Geraci 2014; Wagner 2012). The paradox of the social ‘domestication’ of the internet approach consists in the fact that the internet serves as the most important platform to ‘domesticate’ it; that is the internet is both the object of discursive construction and the instrument of so doing. Thus, ‘domestication’ of the internet is essentially different from the social shaping of other technologies. Consequently, researchers can speak of ‘cybertheology’(Baab 2012; Horsfield 2012; Spadaro & Way 2014), whereas ‘theology of internal combustion engines’, or ‘theology of electricity’ is hardly conceivable without a great stretch.
Anoutline of thebook
The chapters of the book are divided into three parts:Discourses,Divergences,andPractices.The first part deals with representations of CMC in the ROC’s public discourses. Itchronicles and analyzes factors conditioning the ROC’s mastery of the internet. One of them is growing skepticism of the Church leaders about the new media, suspected of breaching Russia's cultural authenticity and implanting values and ideas alien to the Russian culture. Another factor is weak commensurability of the social ethos of the internet users, fostering individualism and social activism, and the ROC’s traditional propensity for communitarian ethics and loyalty to the authority.At the same time,the relationship between the ROC and the internet should not be reduced to the clash of antagonistic logics, ethics, ideologies and practices. The problems of communication and mediation of the religious message, the dialectics of the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ have always been in the heart of the Orthodox theology. For example, disputes over theology of image as a visual ‘doubling’ of the world date back to the iconoclastic era (8–9 centuries AD). The Russian Orthodoxy rejected the theatre and musical instruments, accepting only the chorus of voices as a proxy of the angelic singing, whereas masks and histrionics were seen as the domain of the devil. Echoing iconoclastic disputes, there were tough debate about ‘new iconography’, i.e. Baroque religious painting of the Catholic style in 17th-century Russia.[10]This controversy resulted in the still open sore of splitting into theNiconianchurch (now—the ROC) and the Old Believers.
Chapter 1 by MikhailSusloviscentered onhowboth the highest clerics and rank-and-file priests continuously express disquietude or overtly negative attitudes toward the internet. Even those actively involved in blogging have paradoxically developed this ‘digital anxiety’, expressing it through a slew of negative metaphors around the internet ranging from drug addiction, to meaningless chattering, to a swamp in which they are drowning to a vanity fair. In theirviews, the internet has become associated with moralcorruption,and a threat to the society and its core values, to such an extent that it is legitimate to speak about the ‘moral panic’ around the internet in the Orthodox discourses. The discrepancy between the officially accepted ‘instrumentalization’ interpretation of the internet, and widespread ‘digital anxiety’, however, signals that the internetisthe issue for the ROC, in spite of its claim that it is not.
Chapter 2 byMagdaDolińska-Rydzekcontinues the exploration of the bunch of the demonic metaphors in the ROC’s online debates, associated with the internet. It scrutinizes how Church discourses employ the notion of the Antichrist to raise ethical questions as well as to create moral panics. In this context the Antichrist serves not only as adesignatumof an antagonistic system, but also as the immoralOtherwho threatens Russian moral, social, and political order.
Chapter 3 by FabianHeffermehltakes the negative attitude of the Orthodox Church to the internet as a phenomenon, which derives from a complex development of theories of the icon-medium. It argues that the internet can be interpreted within the patterns of a false icon—or idol. That means a medium, which is diametrically different from an icon in substance, but appears with the icon’s phenomenological attributes, i.e. an imagined gaze, watching the human being.It continues with a discussion of the meaning of the notion ofvirtual realityin relation to patristic and modern versions of icon theology.
Chapter 4by AlexanderPonomariovrounds up this discussion, focusing on today’s policy of the ROC towards the internet. This chapter pays special attention to how digital technology challenges the ROC’s teaching about the Church (ecclesiology). Itarguesthatthe application of computer-mediated communication allows the ROC officials to experience a new dimension of connectivity with the flock, as well as arrange an efficient top-down and bottom-up mode of sharing, turning the offlineconciliarityinto what functions as a digital manifestation of the unity of all in the Body of Christ: as a kind of digitalsobornost’(conciliarity). This is the term developed by the 19thcentury religious thinker andSlavophileAlekseiKhomiakovto designate a utopia of religiously motivated communitarian ideal and at the same time to reenact the Church model of the first centuries of Christianity. Bringing clerics and laypeople together, the internetrevitalizes this idea.
The second part of the book gathers together chapters devoted to how new media technologies facilitate and promote intellectual differences, heresies and resistance to the hegemonic religious discourses.It considers a discrepancy between cultivation of all kinds of hybridizations and mixtures of different confessional practices and ideas, including monotheistic religions, pagan cults, esoteric doctrines and so on, which is characteristic for the new media, and the ROC’s heightened sensitivity and aversion to heterodoxy and schisms.Large sectors of theRunetvoice anti-Orthodox criticism, because digital technologies provide powerful levers for anti-clerical activists who effectively parody Orthodox tweeters, creating disincentives and disseminating memes that ridicule the Orthodox Church, whereas traditional media, such as the press and TV have been purged from anti-religious tendencies during the last decade and a half. All in all, the internet is not seen as a comfortable environment for the ROC, but rather as a battlefield, on which the Church is compelled to wage ‘web wars’ in order to remain in the public space and to maintain control over its flock.
Chapter 5 by EkaterinaGrishaevaexplores how the heresy of the post-denominational community is presented in RussianLiveJournalby the example ofVladimirGolyshev, who creates high quality 'heretical content' which is spread by other users within theLiveJournalcommunity. It shows thatGolyshev’sheterodoxy is highly politicized; his desire to undermine the social and political authority of the ROC leads to the non-institutionalized spiritual interpretation of Christianity which is free from any external dogmas.Golyshev'sheresy is typical of post-secular society, where the line between politics and religion is blurred, and various religious ideas are mixed into a whimsical kaleidoscope of notions.The chapter shows that dissenting religious bloggers considerLiveJournala unique opportunity to discuss hot political issues and serious problems related to the ROC, and to express their religious views and identity as outcasts.
Chapter 6 by HannaStähleaddresses the Church-critical discourse on the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and homosexuality that pervaded social media discussions after the Church hierarchy was publicly accused of engaging in homosexual relations and promoting same-sex behavior in its innermost circles. One of the most prominent critics of the so-called gay lobby within the Church is theologian andProtodeaconAndreiKuraevwhoseLiveJournalblog entries on homosexual scandals gained significant resonance and sparked heated online debates. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper demonstrates how the discourse on the gay lobby controversy takes shape online, examines argumentation strategies and communication patterns and reveals high levels of intolerance and hostility among theinternet users toward non-straight sexual desire. In broadcast media, as the subsequent analysis demonstrates, the discourse on homosexuality in relation to Orthodoxy has been significantly suppressed and remained largely invisible.
Chapter 7 byMariaEngströmdeals with the phenomenon of ‘digital anti-clericalism’ in the Russian-speaking sphere of the internet. In the context of post-secularism the claims of Russian clerical and bureaucratic elites to the ideological monopoly in the politicaland social life face a strong resistance from the champions of religious pluralism and preservation of a secular state. Presented here is a detailed analysis of the topics and the stylistic features of different types of anti-clerical internet communication—a variety of political folklore (memes,demotivators,photoshoppedpictures). The chapter also traces the connection between the modern anti-clericalism onRunetand the late Soviet counter-culture.
The third part of the book discusses religious practices of engaging with the digital technologies rather than discourses about them. It considers howOrthodox believers express themselves in and through digital media.
Chapter 8by AnastasiaMitrofanovaanalyzes how Orthodox women in contemporary Russia collectively invent, test and evaluate new patterns of pious behavior with the help of digital media. Three popular topics: culinary, clothing and relations with men are in the focus of interest. It is shown that both forums and digital magazines seem unable to indicate patterns of female Orthodox piety in real life. In the absence of ‘style icons’ and a living tradition female parishioners need some external authority to lean upon. They refer either to the traditions of contemporary Orthodox (and even Muslim) peoples, or to the Russian folk customs of the past. However, this works well only with regard to external manifestations of piety, such as clothing and food. Working out exemplary life styles would require more theological resources than the existing digital community has at its disposal.
Chapter 9 by Sarah A.Riccardi-Swartzaddressesthe dynamic vernacular understandings of iconography in Eastern Orthodox devotional practices in North America, callingattention to how practitioners employ digital technologies to purchase icons via the internet marketplace, and to (re)create photographic (re)presentations of the material holy, (re)producing images of miraculous icons and incorruptible bodies of saints, thereby displacing the homogeneity of institutional iconography and producing constructiveintersensoryartifacts that often function concomitantly as both icon and relic. Utilizing three years of ethnographic researchin the rural Missouri Ozarks,the author emphasizesthe role new technologies play in the creation and maintenance of Orthodox piety.Throughinterviews with interlocutors, shehighlighteshow the purchasing and production of icons via the digital world contributes to ongoing discourses on the thingness of objects and thesacralizationof digital imagery.This study stresses how digital technology is important element in the reimagining of the mystical through material means.
Chapter 10 by IrinaKotkinaand MikhailSuslovpresents a ‘virtual roundtable’, compiled from the written interviews with blogging Orthodox priests and religious activists. They relate their experiences and reflections on digitalization of the Orthodox religion, challenges and promises which the Church encounters in the internet. Their direct speech is framed by the introduction, in which strategies of self-presentations in ‘Ortho-blogs’ are surveyed.
Chapter 11byViktorKhroulexamines the religious identity of Russian internet users analyzing attitudes towards God and Russian Orthodox Church in the internet based ‘mass self-communication’. Since the religious identitydebateis mostly located not in mainstream mediabut in theinternet,the author focusesthe research on the self-expressions and discussions on lovehate.ru website.Content analysis provesthat young Russians in matters of belief/disbelief rely mainly on their own experience and the experience of other people (family, friends, acquaintances), and not on faith, authority or tradition, as would be expected initially. In the minds of the Russian internetusersreligion is located in the inner circle of communication (family, relatives, friends) and the religious identity for them is still much less significant in comparison to ethnic identity.
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[1]Iwould like to acknowledge important intellectual contributions of MariaEngströmand Greg Simons tothe earlier versions of this text.
[2]E.g. here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3276333/Russia-tries-cut-World-Wide-Web-Kremlin-attempts-clamp-internet-freedoms.html.Accessed 1 November 2015.
[3]Today, the informal list of banned websites includes 48045 items (‘Reestr’ 2015).
[4]http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm.Accessed 1 November 2015.
[5]In October 2014 54% of respondents supported the idea of state censorship in the internet (‘Internet-tsenzura’ 2014).
[6]The concept of ‘vicarious religion’ implies that the majority, although not actively participating in religious life, approves of the small group of regular church-goers, who perform religion ‘on behalf’ of the rest(Davie 2006).
[7]On 1 March 2015, when this research project was on its finish line, the Orthodox search engine rublev.com was launched under the auspices of the Information Department of the Moscow Patriarchate.
[8]http://top100.rambler.ru/navi/?page=4.Accessed 1 November 2015.
[9]Most comprehensive books are here(Ahlbäck & Dahla 2013; Campbell 2010b; Campbell 2013; Cheong, Fischer-Nielsen, Gelfgren, & Ess 2012).
[10]The author acknowledges the contribution of MariaEngström to the development of this argument.
Chapter 1.The Medium for Demonic Energies:‘Digital Anxiety’in the Russian Orthodox Church
MikhailSuslovUppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University
Introduction
In the last two decades religions around the globe successfully expanded intothe internet, thereby questioning basic tenets of the secularism theory.[1]New ways have been uncovered in which digital technology could be and is being integrated with religious tradition. Digital technology has been increasingly seen asa new platform fortheChurch’s mission, as well asanew communicative environment, in which people can build upreligious communality, establish their religious identities, obtain religious experience (Campbell 2010b; Stout 2012)and develop ‘cybertheology’(e.g.Spadaro2014).In some religions, including EasternOrthodoxChristianity, communication lies in thecenterof their theological reasoning. For example, Orthodox Trinitarian theology conceives of God as a communion of three hypostases. Metropolitan ofPergamonIoannisZizioulas, one of the most influential Orthodox theologians of our time, argues that the mystery oftheTrinity ‘points to a way of being which precludes individualism and separation… The“one”not only does not precede—logically or otherwise—the“many”, but, on the contrary, requires the“many”from the very start in order to exist’(Zizioulas2006:159). Communication from this perspective is fundamental for the development ofreligiousidentity(see also:Zizioulas1985:110;cf.Baab2012: 277–291). This theological insight exhibits one of thepossible ways for the Church to make sense of new media as a game-changer in human communication.Onescholarhasexpressed thisidea,thatdifferent media in religious life are like different translations oftheBible (Hipps2009:24). They are essentially about one and the same thing, but small differences can result in tectonic shifts, similarly to how the revision of liturgical books in the mid-17thcentury led to the schism in the Russian Church. More than this, religion itself is a kind of medium, and its manifestations are always mediated: by the written word, oral speech, icons or liturgy as a synthesis of many media (Engelke2010: 371–379;Khroul2012: 8–9;Vries2001). So media are by no means irrelevant to the ROCand its doctrine, nor are they unimportant for shaping one’s religious identity, andfor struggling for its recognition.
Possibilities, which computer-mediated communication (thereafter CMC)has createdfortheRussian Orthodoxy, are gigantic and historically unique; CMC gives voice to a subculture,which wasalmost voiceless during the Soviet period, and provides an instrument for limitless missionary activity.Keeping the debates on (post-) secularism in due consideration, this paper argues that Russian Orthodoxy’s uneasy co-existence with the internet is anchored in the incongruity between the regime of post-secularism, in which today’s ‘digital religion’ exists, andtheROC’s striving to restore pre-secular conditions. FollowingHabermas’ line of thinking about prerequisites for post-secularism (quoted inZiebertzandRiegel2009:300): acceptance of plurality, rational reasoning as a communicative strategy and acknowledgement of human rights as the fundamental value,we can suggest thattheROC is trying toinstrumentalizethe internet as a medium for exactlytheopposite messages:themonopoly on moral judgment,theprivileging of faith over reason andtherelativisationof the human rights’ doctrine.
New media, however, have their own communicative logic and political agenda, which may or may not facilitate democratization of the public sphere(e.g.Gorham 2014; Paulsen andZvereva2014;RoesenandZvereva2014; Schmidt andTeubiner2009;Uffelmann2014).Theydodefinitely spur grassroots activism as well as ‘cynicalreason’(Sloterdijk1987)and ‘liquid’ forms of social sensibility(Bauman 2000).The deepest irony here is thatproviding unlimited access to the discourse, the internet seems to undermine something dear to the hearts of the Orthodox Christians, namelythe hierarchy of knowledge, and the underlying hierarchy of power. To just haveaccess to the discourse is not important for them, because they believe that theyalreadyhave an exclusive access to the ‘real’ and the only important knowledge—about God. This means that the internet devaluestheir treasure and refashions their authority(cf.Hjarvard2008).Russian Orthodoxy shares these premonitions with some fundamentalist religions, fearing thatdigital technologiescould profane sacral truths and belittle the religious authority of the Church hierarchy (Barzilai-NahonandBarzilai2005: 25–40; Howard 2011).
At this juncture we can see the mechanism of the ‘digital anxiety’,powered by the fear of losing control over the identity of the self and the (collective and individual) other, on the one hand, and the attempt to ‘securitize’ the religious identity,many of whose aspects are being perceived as endangered in the age of new media.The logic of securitization produces a series of moral panics about CMC in order to reinforce the grid of values of this seemingly vulnerable religious ‘self’.
The supporting primary sources for this research come mostly from qualitative analysis of the blogs of Orthodox priests and activists, official documents of ROC and statements of the Church highest clericsas well asseveral open-ended questionnaires.[2]TheROC has no official policy document on the internet, so opinions may vary greatly among the Orthodox clergy. This article tries not to focus too much on the extremes of positive or negative (prevailing) attitudes towards the internet, but rather—through the close reading of the blogs—it uncovers discursive structures which made those opinions possible.
Methodology
This research is based on reflections, obtained from the internet users, mostly bloggers, who are eitherpriests or religious activists. These reflections arecontextualized in official statements about the internet from highest clerics of the Moscow Patriarchate. This means that this research is not an ethnographic study of what Orthodox believersdoin digital environment. It is rather an examination of the Church’s recent intellectual history, which revolves around questionssuchas: Which notions and metaphors do they employ in order to make sense of the digital world? From which intellectual layers and legacies do they borrow them? How do they recombine those ideas in order to adjust to today’s reality?
In order to approach these questions,Idraw onthe ‘social construction of technology’ theory(e.g.Bijker1987; Klein andKleinman2002),as it has been adapted to the studies of media and religion by Heidi Campbell(e.g.Campbell2005). According to this conceptualization,technical innovations become meaningful for users only when they are framed mentally and emotionally. In other words, success or failure in mastering technologies depends not on their innate qualities but on the wayin whichpeople construct them, leaning on their previous experience, cultural traditions, basic values and other discursive practices(Campbell 2012:84).However, our interpretation of technology should be fine-tuned in order to take into account hegemonic articulation ofmeaninings(LaclauandMouffe1985), becausethedigital environment is thoroughly intersected by lines of political force.The ROC,which in defiance of the post-secularismparadigm,reclaims the role of the solegatekeeperof culture and spirituality in Russian society, struggles to arrest the flow of many possible interpretations of CMCand thereby to (partially) fixate the religious identity of users. In this sense, moral panics (e.g.Molloy 2013: 194-201; Smith and Cole 2013: 207–223) around and about the ROC’s engagement with CMC, function as dress-rehearsalsofperforming ROC’s cultural hegemony in Russia.
The analysis of religious discoursesonlinealways faces the problem of motive, intention and the discrepancy between what issaid and what is thought. To be sure,theROC is a hierarchical authoritarian institution,whichalways tries to monitor and censor presbyters’ writingsonline. For example, rabid anti-Ukrainian posts of deacon PavelShul’zhenkoon hisvk.compage caused him to be banned from service on account of discrediting the Church (Shul’zhenko2015), whereashieromonkNikolaiSavchenko,who, by contrast, reproached Russia for its involvement in the war in Donbassand its annexation of Crimea, was punitively reassigned from St. Petersburg to a monastery inStrel’na(Vol’tskaia2015).However, censorship and auto-censorship online should not be exaggerated because the Church simply has no means to followeverysingle blog or page on social networks,andbarely reactsto the most virally spread scandals.
So for the majority of blogging priests, this activity is not an exercise in Aesopian language, but rather a missionary outreach, or more often than not,a struggle for recognition(e.g.Honneth1995), and particularly a self-cultivation technique (Lee 2009: 97–114;BakardjievaandGaden2012: 399–413).CMC, thus,becamethesingle most important platform on which recognition, status and identity are being debated, nurtured and negotiated, and in so doing, compensatesfordisfunctionalitiesin many other social spheresin Russia,from legislation to family life,andfrom the press to grassroots’ organizations.
The paradox of cyber-skepticism
Patriarch Kirill ironically remarks that his attitude towards the internet is similar to his relation to electricity, or to an automobile. One can use the internet for good or for evil, because as a tool, the internet isethically neutral (Kirill 2009:113; Kirill 2010; Krug 2007). And yet—contrary to this ‘official’instrumentalizationthesis—in the eyes of Orthodox intellectuals, the internet designates a space of insecurity and discomfort,incongruent with the ROC’s ‘socio-religious construction’ of other technologies.Patriarch Kirillemploys the ‘geopolitical’ metaphor to express the Orthodox ‘digital anxiety’: the internet is thebattleground, where forces of good and evil fight for human souls. Elsewhere he mentions: ‘The theme ofthemediasphere… is what I am thinking about now most of all, and what I am praying for, because here is the place where the devil struggles with God’ (Kirill 2012a; Kirill 2008:119).ArchpriestSergiiLepinextended the ‘geopolitical’ metaphorbyPatriarch Kirill,stating‘we are “fighting” not against the internet, but for the internet’ (Lepin2014; cf. Kirill 2012c;Legoida2012).Thus, contrary to the opinion that blogging is an unimportant activity for relaxation, and contrary to the ‘instrumentalizationthesis’, Patriarch Kirill suggests here the dramatic significance of the internetisfor personal salvation andtheworld’s destiny.
Speaking about ‘Ortho-blogging’ in Russia bridges the offline gap between the subculture of the ‘churchized’ [votserkovlennyi], i.e. of regular Church-goers, and the rest of Russian society. The widespread justification among Orthodox priests of their online presence focuses on the fact that the non-‘churchized’ population, which nevertheless feels its attachment to religion and builds its identity on the Russian Church, experiencesdifficulties with church customs. People often do not know how to behave themselves in church, or how to approach a priest and ask him a question. Blogs of the priests effectively solve this problem, providing them with a medium, in which they feel more ‘at home’ and do not hesitate to speak about their religious needs.In this sense, ‘Ortho-blogs’ provide a new social infrastructure for practicing religion and recruiting co-believers (e.g.Lövheim2013:52).
All these advantages notwithstanding, for rank-and-filebloggingprieststhe internetisparadoxicallyacquiring menacing contours. ‘Ortho-bloggers’ often mention reluctance with which they started their blogs.For example,archpriestDimitriiStruevbegins his first entry with the last words of Christ on the cross: ‘It is finished’, and then explains his reasons to beginblogging: ‘My friends have finally persuaded me to start this blog […] I was hesitant not only because all this virtual stuff [virtual’shchina, derogative for ‘the virtual’] is going to suck out even morerealtime [from my life], but also because I appreciate traditional human communication too much,and there is a sort of the retrograde fear to substitute it by virtual [communication]’ ([email protected]).Following this line of thought,MetropolitanIgnatii(Pologrudov) of Khabarovsk and Trans-Amur, who was arguably the first bishop oftheROC to start a personal blog, recollects thatitwas the head of his Information department, who convinced him to launch an online diary: ‘I resisted as much as I could but he displayed the prodigy of endurance and persistence… So [finally] my blog was brought to life’ (Ignatii2014). ArchpriestGennadiiBelovolov(akaotets-gennadiy) sounds the same note when confessing the following: ‘I have always been skeptical about all sorts of web logging, and could not think of myself doing these things…’([email protected]).Self-critical and derogative characteristics of web logging and the internet in general are ubiquitous: ‘this virtual stuff [virtual’shchina]’, ‘this slush swallows me up’ (here, thereisaplay on words;LiveJournalisZhZh,zhivoizhurnal, which sounds to a Russian ear likezhizha,slush); ‘I keep on buzzing’ (‘to buzz’ in Russian is ‘zhuzhzhat’’); ‘cesspool of the internet’ ([email protected]). WWW is referred to as a ‘global spider’s web’, and experience in theinternet—as being ‘contaminated with the internet’ (presviter-ds11.08.2007;Iakovleva2012[3]:130; Osborne 2004). It is necessary to note, that this ‘virtual arachnophobia’ exists well beyond theOrthodox blogosphere(Schmidt andTeubener2006: 52-53).
With the tinge of the paradox of a liar, ‘Ortho-bloggers’ claim thattheblogosphere does not represent or express the interests and opinions of the Russian people. Asinokv(hegumenVitaliiUtkin) angrily pens, it is time to limit the dependence of state and society from ‘a handful of people in the internet’, who in fact ‘are nothing but[who]feel their importance’. Otherwise, screams of a dozen of bloggers would muffle the voice of the ‘absolute majority of our people’ ([email protected]). This position suggests a counter to the idea that the internet democratizes politics, and echoes theSlavophileteaching of the mid-19thcentury, juxtaposing ‘the people’, which is natural, originalandauthentic, and the ‘public’, which is unnatural, unoriginal and unauthentic. The repercussions of this division are observable in Solzhenitsyn’s aversion towards ‘obrazovanshchina’, i.e. superficially educated intelligentsia, which assumes the right of moral judgment on behalf of the whole people.Pretre_philippe(priest FilipParfenov) compares bloggers with such‘obrazovanshchina’,criticizing them for combining opinionated ignorance with aggressive imposing of their views on the rest of the population. Hence, alignment of the internet witha‘false’ public sphere is common: digital technologies are believed to be used by some ‘external’ forces in order to create ‘an illusion of public opinion’ ([email protected];Dobrosotskikh2013:7).
However, the majority of ‘Ortho-bloggers’ do not reject CMC out of hand. The most common strategy to ‘normalize’ the internet and to make sense of the digital environment is to represent italong the line of Patriarch Kirill’s reasoningas purely instrumental to purposes of salvation and personal spiritual perfection ([email protected];Kuz’micheva2014). As fatherIakovKrotov,one of the ‘fathers-founders’ of the Orthodox ‘Runet’, explains, ‘the internet in general and blogs andLiveJournalin particular are technical tools, like paper and ink. Tools do not determine the rules of communication…’(Krotov,n.d.)HieromonkMakariiMarkishcategorically professes that to believe that any technological invention including the internet could have an impact on faith or theology is ‘sheer nonsense’(Markish2014).
Annette Markham distinguishesthree ways, or levels of engaging with the internet: as a tool, as a place and as a state of being (Markham 1998). For ‘Ortho-users’ the most common way to think about the internet is ‘instrumental’. This precludes Orthodox intellectuals andgrassrootsusers fromanydeep understanding of the phenomenon. The internet is not a problem for them intellectually, but it is anyway a huge problem for them emotionally and intuitively.The discrepancy between the perceived threat of the internet and reluctance to theorize it exposes the structure of the discourse, becauseeven anxiety, vigor and irritation with which ‘Ortho-bloggers’ insist on instrumentality of the internet suggests that CMC is something more.
Thedoubling of the world:theological tradition and new media
In the ideal world of Orthodox priests, the digital environment is a means, enhancing physical connectivity among humans, not a virtual double of ‘real’ society. This disquietude about the ‘virtual world’ resonates with some deeply seated religious sensibilities, such as the fear of the ‘monstrous double’in archaic cultures(Girard1972: 213–248) or—on a more historical plane of interpretation—
