“Only Russia Can Save the World”
Reactive Orthodoxies, Political Technology, and Religious Worldbuilding
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.160164Keywords:
Russia, United States, Orthodox Christianity, far right, media technologiesAbstract
Drawing on previous research dedicated to the examination of far right media worlds that link Christian conservatives in the United States and Russia, this talk offers a broad overview of how technology and ideology transform American social ecologies. Contending that digital media are crucial to the social recalibrations of Russian Orthodoxy in the global context, this talk invites us to see better the philosophical connections across local religious beliefs and global politics in our mediated contemporary moment.
References
Albuquerque, Ana Luiza. 2023. “Hungary’s Plan to Build an Army of U.S. Intellectuals,” Foreign Policy, May 19, 2023. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/19/hungary-american-conservative-right-wing-intellectuals-orban/.
Antonov, Mikhail. 2020. “Church-State Symphonia: Its Historical Development and Its Applications by the Russian Orthodox Church.” Journal of Law and Religion 35 (3): 474–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/jlr.2020.38.
Bhatia, Aditi. 2023. Digital Influencers and Online Expertise: The Linguistic Power of Beauty Vloggers. Routledge.
Bjork-James, Sophie. 2021. The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family. Rutgers University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1982. Ce que parler veur dire: l’économie des échanges linguistiques. Fayard. [Modified translation: Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press, 1991.]
Campbell, Heidi. 2010. When Religion Meets New Media. Routledge.
Church of the Eternal Logos. 2021. “The Trad Forum: Navigating Our Present Planning Our Future with Michael Sisco (June 12, Argos, IN).” Church of the Eternal Logos. April 2, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdNlhv-WSi8.
Clark, Anastasia, and Chris Bell. 2019. “Smartphone users warned to be careful of the Antichrist.” BBC, January 8, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-46794556
Dillingham, Rebecca. 2022. “We ain’t Skeered. . . but They Are,” Dissident Mama, February 12, 2022. http://www.dissidentmama.net/we-aint-skeered-but-they-are/.
Eisen, Norman L., and Tom Joscelyn. 2023. “Tucker Carlson, Viktor Orbán and the Anti-Democracy Playbook.” Just Security, September 15, 2023. https://www.justsecurity.org/88319/tucker-carlson-viktor-orban-and-the-anti-democracy-playbook/.
Erickson, John H. 1999. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. Oxford Academic.
Hanganu, Gabriel. 2010. “Eastern Christians and Religious Objects: Personal and Material Biographies Entangled.” In Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, edited by Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz. University of California Press.
Harkins, Anthony. 2003. Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon. Oxford University Press.
Herbel, Oliver. 2014. Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. Oxford University Press.
Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman, and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan. 2021. “Introduction: Religion, Law, and Politics, American Style.” In At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan. Columbia University Press.
Ingersoll, Julie J. 2015. Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction. Oxford University Press.
Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. University of California Press.
Kitroeff, Alexander. 2020. The Greek Orthodox Church in America: A Modern History. Cornell University Pres.
Kravel-Tovi, Michal. 2023. “Making a Difference: The Political Life of Religious Conversion.” Annual Review of Anthropology 52: 19–37. https://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-052721-101416
Kottasová, Ivana, and Anna Chernova. 2022. “Putin signs expanded anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia, in latest crackdown on rights.” CNN. December 5, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/05/europe/russia-lgbtq-propaganda-law-signed-by-putin-intl/index.html
Levin, Dov H. 2020. Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions. Oxford.
Lewis, David G. 2020. Russia's New Authoritarianism: Putin and the Politics of Order. Edinburgh University Press.
Lucas, Phillip Charles. 2003. “Enfants Terribles: The Challenge of Sectarian Converts to Ethnic Orthodox Churches in the United States.” Nova Religio 7 (2): 5–23.
Mudde, Cas. 2019. The Far Right Today. Wiley.
Moreton, Bethany. 2022. “The bond that explains why some on the Christian right support Putin’s war.” The Washington Post. March 5, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/05/bond-that-explains-why-some-christian-right-support-putins-war/.
Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2021a. “American Conservatives and the Allure of Post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy.” Religions 12 (12): e1036. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121036
Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2021b. “Head Coverings, Vaccines, and Gender Politics: Contentious Topics among Orthodox Christian Women in US-based Digital Spaces.” In Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity, edited by Ina Merdjanova, 241–74. New York: Fordham University Press.
Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2021c. “Seeking a Sovereign for the End of Democracy: Monarchism and the Far Right.” Canopy Forum, August 16, 2021. https://canopyforum.org/2021/08/10/seeking-a-sovereign-for-the-end-of-democracy-monarchism-and-the-far-right/
Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2022. Between Heaven and Russian: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia. Fordham University Press.
Riccardi-Swartz, Sarah. 2023. “Techno-theologoumena and Rise of Far-Right Orthodox Internet Celebrities.” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 6 (2): 229–55. https://doi.org/10.1353/joc.2023.a935940.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Island Kingdom. The University of Michigan Press.
Saler, Robert Cady. 2024.“Death to the World” and Apocalyptic Theological Aesthetics. Bloomsbury.
Sedgwick, Mark. 2023. Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order. Oxford University Press.
Shekhovtsov, Anton. 2018. Russian and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. Routledge.
Slagle, Amy. 2011. The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity. Dekalb Northern Illinois University Press.
Southern Poverty Law Center. 2007. “Report: 12 Anti-Semitic Radical Traditionalist Catholic Groups.” January 16, 2007. Accessed March 13, 2020. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/12-anti-semitic-radical-traditionalist-catholic-groups/.
Tashman, Brian. 2013. “World Congress of Families Praises Russian Laws ‘Preventing Gays from Corrupting Children.” Right Wing Watch. Accessed June 12, 2022. https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/world-congress-of-families-praises-russian-laws-preventing-gays-from-corrupting-children/.
Van Herpen, Marcel H. 2013. Putinism: The Slow Rise of a Radical Right Regime in Russia. Palgrave Macmillan.
Weber, Max. (1905) 1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons and Anthony Giddens. Unwin Hyman.
Wilson, Andrew. 2023. Political Technology: The Globalisation of Political Manipulation. Cambridge.
Zigon, Jarrett. 2018. Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding. Fordham University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Sarah Riccardi-Swartz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Author's Guarantee
- The Author acknowledges that the Work will be publicly accessible on the Internet and that such access will be free of charge for the readers.
- The Author guarantees that the Work is her/his original work that has not been published before and cannot be construed as copying or plagiarism. Furthermore, the Author confirms that the Work contains no statement that is unlawful, defamatory or abusive or in any way infringes the rights of others.
- The Author confirms that she/he has secured all written permissions needed for the reproduction in the Publication of any material created by a third party.
User Rights
Under the CC BY 4.0 license, the Author/s and users are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format,
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,
- However, the Work must be attributed to the original Author and source of publication.
The license of the published metadata is Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)
Author Rights
The Authors maintain the right to:
- copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the Work,
- the right to use the substance of the Work in future own works,
- the right to self-archiving/parallel publishing (publisher's PDF allowed).
Rights of Publisher
- The Publisher reserves the right to make such editorial changes as may be necessary to make the Work suitable for publication in the publication, e.g. style of punctuation, spelling, headings and the like.
- The Publisher will publish the Work if the editorial process is successfully completed and reserves the right not to proceed with publication for whatever reason.
- The publication entitles the author to no royalties or other fees. This agreement will be governed by the laws of Finland.
