Capital Shares: The Way Back into the With of Christianity

Abstract

In the ten years since the publication of Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's Empire, the relationship between Christianity and global capital has received increasing theological attention among the adherents, critics, sympathizersssa, and apostates of Radical Orthodoxy. At stake in this conversation is the possibility that Christianity might provide a universal ontology sufficient to ground a counter-hegemonic, specifically socialist, praxis. One question that many of these authors rarely address, however, is the extent to which Christian universalism has been responsible for the emergence of global capital in the first place. This article will address this profound split at the heart of a tradition; that is, Christianity's culpability for and resistance to global capital. To this end, "Capital Shares" sketches the aporia of Christianity's relation to Empire and then appeals to Jean-Luc Nancy's "deconstruction of Christianity"; in particular, his attempt to find "a source of Christianity, more original than Christianity itself, that might provoke another possibility to arise."     

Covers, volume 26, Number 1, 2010

Front and back cover caption, volume 26 issue 1
POST-SOVIET RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY
The last 20 years have seen a striking revitalization of Orthodoxy in Russia. This is remarkable considering that for more than 70 years following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 the Soviet regime imposed 'scientific atheism' on its citizens. Russian Orthodoxy, institutionally dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church, has emerged as a crucial source of morality and identity. The personal dimension is intertwined with politics and the co-operation between the Church and the Russian state has strong symbolic implications.
The close association between religion and the army is evident in this religious procession. For millions of Russians of different social backgrounds and ages, the fall of the Soviet state still leaves a bitter taste, stemming from the feeling of loss of territory and of superpower status. The Russian Orthodox Church offers an avenue for retrieving a sense of power and moral righteousness.
However, the prominence of the Church and its symbols does not necessarily mean that young soldiers acquire religious knowledge and observe the rules of the Church in their everyday behaviour. Soldiers are no different from teachers, businessmen, or impoverished urban residents in general who, in the face of post-socialist uncertainties, turn to Orthodoxy for healing, protection and as an insurance against an unclear future. Orthodoxy also contributes to the construction of a harmonious and idealized narrative about the recent past, obscuring the memory of violence of the state against Orthodox believers under the Soviet regime.
An anthropology of the Russian case – and religion in the postsocialist world generally – can shed new light on debates about religion in the public realm, secularization, individual morality and identity in the contemporary world.     

Eilert Sundt. A founding father of the social sciences in Norway

The cult of St Nicholas spread in Scandinavia and northern Rus' in approximately the same period, namely in the last decades of the 11th and the first decades of the 12th centuries. In spite of such a correspondence, the dissemination of the cult in the two adjacent regions has been treated as two separate phenomena. Consequently, the growing popularity of the cult in Scandinavia has traditionally been dealt with as an immanent part of the transmission of the Catholic tradition, and a similar phenomenon in northern Rus' has been discussed with reference to the establishment of Orthodox Christianity. By contrast, the evidence analysed in this article shows that the establishment of the cult of St Nicholas in the two regions was an intertwined process, in which the difference between Latin Christendom and Greek Orthodoxy played a minor role. The early spread of this particular cult thus suggests that, as far as some aspects of the cult of saints are concerned, the division between Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity in Northern Europe was less abrupt in the 11th and 12th centuries than has been traditionally assumed. This was due to the fact that the medieval cult of saints was not limited to the liturgy of saints, but was a wider social phenomenon in which political and dynastic links and cultural and trading contacts across Northern Europe often mattered more than confessional differences. When we leave the liturgy aside and turn to kings, princes, traders and other folk interacting across the early Christian North, then the confessional borders are less useful for our understanding of how some aspects of Christian culture were communicated across Northern Europe in the first two centuries after conversion.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.     

The Queen's preferred chant and Greece's nineteenth century Orthodox‐Christian national problem

When in 1875 Queen Olga of Greece insisted a multi‐part chant be introduced in the Athens Cathedral, a widespread debate about the influence of Western European culture upon Greek‐Orthodox tradition was initiated in Athens. With a significant part of this debate originating in mid‐century Vienna, and Russian musical influences affecting the form of the otherwise ancient Byzantine chant, the issue of polyphony acquired cultural‐historical dimensions intimately connected to historical continuity and the Orthodox‐Christian musical tradition. The debate transformed rapidly from a musicological enquiry into a matter of national identity, and an otherwise innocent aesthetic choice showcased the musical dimensions of Greek national claims at continuity. This article examines the historical contingencies that fuelled this debate, showcases the importance of patronage for musical transference and highlights the potency of Greek national Orthodoxy as a carrier of historical continuity for the ethnic group, here seen through music.     

Russian Nationalist Orthodox Theology: A New Trend in the Political Life of Russia

Abstract

Presently nationalist circles seem to promulgate a synthesis of Russian Orthodox Christianity with Marxism and ultra-patriotism. Russian nationalist Orthodox theology teaches that Jesus Christ was Russian or Slavic; it leans toward violence and is apt to quickly change the target oppressor who is broadly defined as anyone who is non-Russian or non-Orthodox. Russian nationalist Orthodox theology may be used at the Presidential Elections 2008 to boost an ultra-nationalist candidate.     

The impossible object: Relics,property, and the secular in post‐Soviet Russia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article analyzes a recent court case concerning the relics of two 14th‐century Russian Orthodox saints, during which the Russian state ruled to confiscate the relics from the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. I examine the church's attempts to fight back, paying particular attention to how the conflicting parties have differently framed the disputed objects' materiality. In doing so, I link the ongoing debates over whether dead bodies can be considered property and who owns the bodies of saints, to the current battles in Russia over the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. The relics affair, I suggest, ultimately points to the issue of how politics itself is constituted through the battles to define these boundaries, who claims the power to draw these lines, and why issues dealing with dead bodies possess a certain affective charge that causes political action. I argue that the case of the Suzdal relics makes visible certain aporias in both secular law and religious discourse, which ultimately make this case impossible for the state to resolve in its favour through conventional judicial means without overruling the law. In this process, the object of dispute itself disappears from the discursive space, becoming buried in a sort of ‘black box’, the interior contents of which are ultimately unnameable and uncategorizable.     

Religious Conversion in Early Post-Ottoman Bulgaria: A Case Study of Ruse

Under Ottoman rule, conversion to Islam took place in the Balkans in various forms often described as forced, voluntary or “conversion for convenience.” Islamic law, however, strictly forbade apostasy for Muslims, who risked the death penalty. Although the Ottoman reform of 1844 banned the execution of apostates from Islam and that of 1856 declared freedom of religion, Muslim conversion was carried out discreetly. In 1878, the establishment of the Bulgarian nation-state paved the way for potential conversion from Islam to Christianity. This study examines the conversion of Muslims, Catholics, and to a lesser extent, Jews, to Bulgarian Orthodoxy and Protestantism in the city of Ruse. It shows that apostasy was a result of a complex interplay of loyalties, political dynamics, and self-interests rather than purely religious principles. Specifically, it argues that Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Jews, perceived conversion as a way of developing a Bulgarian identity, whereas Catholic conversion to Orthodoxy was mostly marriage-based and did not necessarily entail an intention to achieve a Bulgarian national identity. Moreover, the way that the Bulgarian Church processed the petitions shows a continuity from the practices that the Ottomans used when Christians and Jews converted to Islam during the Tanzimat Era.     

Separatism redux: Crimea,Transnistria, and Eurasia's de facto states (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article compares recent events in Crimea to Transnistria, another de facto, separatist state located in eastern Moldova. The article asks what Crimea and Transnistria, along with Eurasia's other unrecognized states, can tell us about statehood, sovereignty, and a ‘people’ in the 21st century. Though Eurasia's de facto states can be seen as entities that emerged with the backing of the Russian state, their continued existence reflects a wider uncertainty that emerged with the demise of the Soviet Union. More broadly, these de facto states problematize many of the fundamental terms of political existence.     

The political geographies of religious sites in Moscow’s neighborhoods

Abstract

This paper addresses the spatial politics of Russia’s increased religiosity in Moscow. It analyzes the rights of minority Muslim communities within the context of increased political support for expressions of Russian Orthodoxy in Moscow’s public space. Moscow’s Russian Orthodox and Muslim religious leaders claim that their communities have a lack of religious infrastructure, with one church per 35,000 residents and one mosque per three million residents, respectively. The Russian Orthodox Church has been more successful than Muslim organizations at expanding their presence in Moscow’s neighborhoods. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, religious spaces are examined as sites of dissent as well as participatory, active citizenship at three different sites in Moscow. Protests over Russian Orthodox Church construction in one neighborhood are contrasted with the protests over mosque construction in two neighborhoods. This paper provides insights into how civil society and religious groups have increased their public presence in Moscow and shows the unequal access that different groups have to public space in that city.     

The crucifix as a symbol of secular Europe: The surprising semiotics of the European Court of Human Rights (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In March of 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled counter to current trends found in many European courts and legislatures as the ECHR affirmed the right of the Italian state to display crucifixes on the walls of its public school classrooms. Those who succeeded in arguing for the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms did so not by advocating for the now entrenched human right of the freedom of religious expression, but by suggesting that the crucifix was, in fact, not only a religious sign but also a cultural and historical one. The crucifix, according to many of the religious and governmental claimants to the case, is a symbol that stands not just for Christianity but also for “tolerance” and, therefore, as a sign of secularism. The petitions heard in the Court, its decision, and the concurring opinions are revealing of the ambiguity of the categories of religion and secularism in Europe today. In this article I use the ECHR ruling to explore the lack of agreement surrounding the distinction between the religious and the secular and the implications this shifting boundary holds for different     

Contesting Putin's nation‐building: the ‘Muslim other’ and the challenge of the Russian ethno‐cultural alternative

This article explains the crystallisation of a new Russian national discourse, shaped by a challenge posed to Putin's statist non‐ethnic national model by a popularly formed ethno‐cultural alternative, constructed through negation of the ‘Muslim other’. The article describes this new and previously overlooked phenomenon of Russian nationalism and explicates the social mechanism behind its formation. The article concludes that when rampant corruption exists, generating a breakdown of legal order, the ‘other’ is defined through behaviour that deviates from accepted local norms, while the contrasting normative ‘general public’ is defined as ‘Russian’. Such group definitions mean that the current process of Russian grass‐roots exclusive national consolidation is based predominantly on culturally based behavioural codes, rather than on mere ethnic or religious affiliation, as is widely believed. Additionally, a conceptual landmark discourse shift from the question of Russia's mere plausibility as a nation‐state to a focus on its ongoing definition is demonstrated.     

A Complete History of Early Christianity: Taking the “Heretics” Seriously1

The heterodox have been treated unfairly within the histories of mainstream Christian tradition, whether by their ecclesiastical opponents or by recent and current scholarship. This article outlines the place of Christian Gnostic belief and practices in the processes of self‐definition and institutionalization that took place within the early history of Christianity and makes a plea to reinstate the “heretics” to their rightful place in any academic discussion of the history and beliefs of Christianity.     

The Thomas Souls Ministry – Onto‐praxis,Dividualism, and Charismatic Catholicism at Lake Chambri,Papua New Guinea

The Thomas Souls Ministry is a prayer group founded by Catholics from the middle Sepik. It is led by a spirit of the dead called Thomas who takes possession of a Nyaura (West Iatmul) woman to preach, prophesy, counsel, and heal. While a prominent debate within the Anthropology of Christianity argues for radical change and rupture with the pre‐Christian self and society, I suggest that continuity within change is found in the way my interlocutors have made Christianity their own. I argue that the local concept of the person defined by aspects of dividualism and reflecting ontological premises of people's lifeworld has strongly influenced the way Christianity was appropriated. In current religious practices people put these premises into action and reinforce them in intersubjective encounters with the divine other. Analysing people's ‘onto‐praxis’, I argue that the Thomas Souls Ministry can be understood as part of a re‐empowerment process that re‐appropriates local meanings, spirits, and practices despite, and in fact against, the influence of the Catholic mission proselytizing in the region.     

Looking ‘The Gift’ in the mouth: Russia as donor (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

While the Soviet Union was a significant donor of international development aid, since the 1990s, a generation of Russians has experienced the subject position of ‘recipient’ in the global political economy. However, following its G8 presidency in 2006, Russia officially signalled its intention to (re‐)emerge as an aid donor. Should the Russian government's efforts to join the global community of donors be understood as a defence mechanism against what Mauss called the ‘wounding’ experience of being treated as a perpetual recipient? International development aid is seen here as a cultural phenomenon whose underlying assumptions are both challenged and affirmed by the arrival of ‘emerging donors’ such as Russia.     

‘The enemy is at the gate’:1 Russia after Beslan

This article examines the changes that have taken place in Russian domestic and foreign policy after the Beslan hostage crisis of early September 2004. The terrorist attack has had two immediate effects in Moscow: it shook new convictions about the apparent consolidation of Russia and it reinforced old beliefs in the need to strengthen the Russian state. In order to analyse recent changes, the article discusses the policy framework put in place during Putin's first term to strengthen the state and to build a more favourable external environment. Putin's response since the Beslan attack is founded on the premise that the only effective response to the terrorist threat is to reinforce the 'organism' of the state to withstand further attacks and to manage their consequences. The article examines the limits of the policy framework in place since 2000, where a circular logic is at work, in which terrorist attacks produce greater efforts by the government to strengthen the state but with measures that do little to prevent further attack, which, in turn, stimulate a further securitization of policy. The terrorist attack at Beslan has accelerated this logic, which sits uneasily with Putin's twin vision since 2000 of domestic modernization to revitalize the country and external engagement to create a predictable external setting.     

Russian ‘deniable’ intervention in Ukraine: how and why Russia broke the rules

The Russian military interventions in Ukraine, which have led to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and to the entrenchment of separatist enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, directly challenge the post‐Cold War European state system. Russia has consistently denied any wrongdoing or illegal military involvement and has presented its policies as a reaction to the repression of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. This article argues that it is important to examine and contest unfounded Russian legal and political claims used by Moscow to justify its interventions. The article proceeds to assess in detail three different explanations of the Russian operations in Ukraine: geopolitical competition and structural power (including the strategic benefits of seizing Crimea); identity and ideational factors; and the search for domestic political consolidation in Russia. These have all played a role, although the role of identity appears the least convincing in explaining the timing and scope of Russian encroachments on Ukrainian territorial integrity and the disruption of Ukrainian statehood.     

Christianity and Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Overview

This article summarizes its author's response over more than 30 years to the various arguments advanced against the possibility of the appropriation of Christianity by indigenous peoples. It sets out the intellectual and evidential reasons for rejecting these arguments. However, it admits that while indigenous appropriation of Christianity is always possible, under some circumstances it has been improbable. Many indigenous peoples have made use of Christianity but in the past there has been comparatively little appropriation by Native Americans or Australian Aborigines. This article explores the reasons for this. When the factors that have accounted for resistance and rejection rather than adaption no longer exist, it may be expected that Aborigines will indeed appropriate Christianity. The article concludes with a brief examination of academic work on African appropriations and suggests that new developments in Aboriginal Christianity will reveal how far comparisons can be made.     

From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d'Orsay,the Banque Russo-Asiatique,and the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1917–1926

This article explores the use made of Christianity during the Second World War and the dilemmas created for the Allies by Stalin's religious record. It is particularly concerned with the way in which Christianity appeared for a while to become a bridge between East and West, with the explicit promise of continued post-war co-operation. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Anglo-American policies in particular switched from using Christianity to rehabilitate the adverse image of the Soviet regime to what had been the inter-war policy of using religion to demonise it. Inter-war demonisation held up the Soviet Union as a model not to be emulated. Post-war demonisation pointed to the Soviet Union as an expansionist threat bent on world domination. The article examines Stalin's responses, and Allied perceptions of those responses, to the changes in Western religious policy and propaganda from the Second World War to the emergence of the cold war. The article seeks to show how both sides used religion for political purposes, but that in the final analysis Western reluctance to relinquish what was perhaps its most emotive means of indicting and containing Communism meant that Christianity, instead of becoming a bridge, became a divisive factor that contributed to both the onset of the cold war and public acceptance of it.     

The uses of Greek Orthodoxy in the early poetry of Yannis Ritsos

Abstract

The influence of Greek Orthodoxy on Ritsos' poetry, previously neglected because of the poet's political commitments, is examined. Against the backdrop of the poet's Orthodox upbringing and his early conversion to communism, Ritsos' uses of Orthodoxy in certain poems written before 1948 are considered. The diversity is demonstrated during this period of Ritsos' conception and treatment of the tensions and oppositions between Orthodoxy and Marxism. The ideological influence of Varnalis on the earliest collection, Tρακτ?ρ, can be contrasted with the more nuanced use of Orthodox material in Eπιταφιο? and the sympathetic depiction of childhood religion in Mια πυγολαμπιδα φωτιζ?ι τη νυχτα. Only in the particular conditions of wartime Greece does Ritsos manage a bridge between Orthodoxy and Marxism: H Kυρα Aμπ?λιων synthesizes Ritsos' liberation message with images rooted in popular religion.