Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Sun, 8 Nov 1992 18:51:56 EST
From:         blomberg cepeda <ST402747@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject:      When gods die
Comments: To: words-l@uga.cc.uga.edu

Since I suspect that Frank will put an entirely different spin on this, I'll
put in my own 20 rubles (400=$1) in.
     Religion does not seem to be sweeping the neighborhood. There is a large
core of believers, but most of them are of the only-on-Easter variety. It's
almost just an in-thing, or (shudder) a nationalist statement. The fundies get
crowds, but not much commitment--I spent some time in a provincial city close
to what had always been a "burnt-over" district (Vladimir, 100 miles east of
Moscow), and another American I knew there, a born-again himself, said that
most of them were just going for the novelty or the free Bibles.
      But, as Graham inferred, the real obvious revivial is in such things as
astrology. Astrology is everywhere, including five minutes every night after
the national news. And, as a connoisseur myself (though not a fundy), it is of
a fairly high quality. Astrology books are outselling the Bible, but then, both
are being murdered by Tolkien and Erle Stanley Gardner.
      Orthodoxy has more adherents than I might have let on above, but it is
hard to call it a revival, at least in the Anglo-American sense. Orthodox
fundamentalism is in some respects an oxymoron; it is a phenomenon that I have
only noticed (tellingly?) among emigres in the States. And no one sees
astrology or spiritualism as a contradiction to a belief in Orthodoxy.
      Why? The church had been indistinguishable from the state for two
centuries before the revolution, and then just became indistinguishable,
period. Add this to the fact that Orthodoxy is much closer to its syncretic
roots than its Latin cousins, and the fact is that there is really no deeply
rooted theological structure (rooted, that is, in the popular mind) to wave
red flags at and push lots of buttons with. And those who were steeped in
theological debates were usually in monasteries, while the clergy itself was
lettered but not very learned, and almost indistinguishable from their flock.
     Actually, if I ever did become a Christian, it would probably be into
Orthodoxy. One of the traits of Russian culture which has always attracted me,
and which Orthodoxy shares, is a great respect for chaos. Orthodox services
are wonderfully disordered affairs, with people buying candles and looking for
the icon of their saints, others confessing, others following the service, but
the whole is a wonderful mishmash in a cavelike atmosphere, with icons taking
up just about all the available space.
      This chaotic quality is responsible, I think, both for Orthodoxy's
resilience--you can't really erase something so amorphous--but also for its
inability to really support a fundy-type movement--there is really no core, no
fundament to claim as the only. If there is a fundy Orthodoxy, it will only be
as an adjunct to nationalism. And that would, I posit, be very scary.

                                             b.c.

BTW Graham: I haven't explicitly come out--never assume certain types of
statements aren't hypothetical. But then, I haven't explicitly not come out.8->
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