The Siberian philosopher Nikolai Karpitsky, who today lives on the edge of the war in Sloviansk (Donetsk Oblast), gave a talk on “The War and the Crisis of Religious Identity”, stating that the problem of religious dissent arises when “canonical rules only exacerbate, rather than resolve, internal contradictions. [. . .] In times of peace, these contradictions can remain hidden, but war highlights them.”
In his opinion, the mechanism by which religion is transformed into ideology is activated when “the tension to convey one's own moral position in society is embodied not in religious preaching, but in demands on everyone, even those with different beliefs.” In this case, the appeal is made to the “ideology of fundamental values” in an “imitation of religion” that transforms faith into a “parody in favour of power”.
This is in fact the parable of the “religious revival” of post-Soviet Russia, where religion has been bent to serve ideology, achieving an even more oppressive result than the propaganda of state atheism itself.
Karpitsky defines the compulsory orthodoxy of today's Russians as obryadoveriye (обрядоверие), uncritical "ritualism" that submits to religious authorities and observes their formal practices, which “adapt to socio-political conditions, ending up serving only the ruling political power.”
After all, this is how Orthodoxy interpreted things even in Soviet times, against which the religious dissent of Father Gleb Yakunin and many others developed, people like Father Aleksandr Men, killed in 1990 by the dark forces of a regime that was changing its skin, so as not to lose its power.
The ideology of values ends up projecting itself as an imperial and universal vision, addressed to the will of the Most High as the source of every principle of world order, justifying dictatorship and war against the “enemies of the true faith”.
Read the full article here: Religious dissidents in Orthodox Russia. by Stefano Caprio // Fondazione PIME Onlus – AsiaNews 03/15/2025
