Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Assistant Professor of Religion and Anthropology
How is religious conversion transforming American democracy? In a corner of Appalachia, a group of American citizens have embraced the Russian Orthodox Church and through it Putin's New Russia. Historically a minority faith of immigrants to the United States, Russian Orthodoxy attracts Americans looking to Russian religion and politics for answers to Western secularism and the loss of traditional family values in the face of accelerating progressivism. This ethnography highlights an intentional community of converts that is exemplary of much broader networks of Russian Orthodox converts in the United States. These converts sought and found a conservatism more authentic than Christian American republicanism and a nationalism more intolerable than the broken promises of American exceptionalism. Ultimately, both the converts and the Church that welcomes them develop the subversive act of adopting the ideals and faith of a foreign power for larger, transnational political purposes.
Offering insights into this rarely considered religious world, including its far-right political roots fueling the embrace of Putin's Russia, this ethnography shows how religious conversion is linked to larger questions of social politics, faith, (anti)democracy and citizenship. These conversions offer us a window into both world politics and foreign affairs, while also allowing us to see how specific US communities are grappling with social transformations in the twenty-first century. With wide-ranging implications for our understanding of both conservative Christianity and right-wing politics, as well as contemporary Russian-American relations, this book provides insight into the growing constellations of far-right conservatism. While Russian Orthodox converts are more likely to form the moral minority than the moral majority, they are an important gauge for understanding the powerful philosophical shifts occurring in the current political climate in the United States and what they may mean for the future of American values, ideally and democracy.
