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Well, it doesn't ring true to me. I think blowing up a trade center is a big deal whether you worship money or not.
But people don't use it every single day. That's kind of my entire point. The reaction to a historical church's defacement proves its historical value, not spiritual.
And I really don't think there would be an enormous lynch mob. Cops, at best, if someone saw it. If Russian Christians are capable of organizing in mobs, lynch or otherwise, I had never seen it. Nothing like that one Muslim holiday that has them fill the streets facing the mosques.
When I hear of any activism from Russian Christians it is usually top-down state-adjacent bullshit like canceling permits for Halloween cons for vaguely-danced-around reasons. Another example of the reasons for my general disdain towards ROC.
And not everybody’s relationship to Christianity is devout or spiritual, which is my point. Mine is cultural and heavily intellectual. Prayer and attendance is something I’m clearly spiritually deficient in which I desire to greatly improve.
Okay. What I observe is that for most Russians, the most relationship they have to Christianity is owning a cross from their childhood baptism and maybe a habit of perfunctory praying when frustrated with something, if their family was religious. Instead of devout, spiritual, cultural or intellectual, I'd call it rudimentary.
To provide a contrast in how I think about this: In people’s daily habits, lifestyle and rituals in Russia, would you say they take after the influence of Communism or Orthodox Christianity more, in either an explicit or an implied sense. Because if I remember correctly (although I can’t recall the title of the book), it was either after Stalin’s death or the dissolution of the USSR that Russians found a great sense of relief and refuge in going back the historic traditions of their church. Whether is was impactful on a grand scale or lasted very long is beside the point.
What I’m getting at is that even if most Russians aren’t explicit practitioners of the faith or attend church regularly, I would still argue their lives are full of the trappings of what Orthodox Christianity has left behind for them in the way they live their lives. You can argue it’s not meaningful if you want. You can say Orthodox Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep if you like. Sure. Most people aren’t ideologues to an extreme extent and only have brief moments of their lives where they experience such commitments to ideas, perhaps under trying circumstances. But take away Orthodox Christianity and think of how much of the history of Russia you erase, if not the country itself, in every dimension.
I don't know about the church. I would assume that after Stalin's death, Russians found a great sense of relief and refuge mostly because Stalin's time was characterized by political purges of anyone who slightly misstepped on the party line. Not necessarily in the direction of religion. As for the dissolution of the USSR, well, it is widely reported that things just went to complete shit in general for a few years after that. Maybe half of the country rushed to the church while the other rushed to the bottle (or worse). I don't have the statistics. What I know is that while I was baptized, neither my parents nor grandparents have been particularly religious in all the time I remember them. No Lent, no special meaning given to Orthodox Christmas, etc.
Disentangling the entire concept of "conventional morality" as we know it today from Christianity (in general) is admittedly hard. And religion had been important before communism. And we do say "oh Lord" in the moments of exasperation. It's in the language. But all of that is distant from churches, and very distant from high-ranking clergy who pose in gold-laden robes, drive luxury cars and bless tanks that drive out to the west. (Originally my disagreement was about the notion that the Patriarch's promise to be godfather to third children would have any sway over those who aren't already in the most churchgoing percentile and having 5 kids.)
(From what I heard, the saints many Orthodox Russians pray to are basically rebranded local pagan deities. So take the Christianity away from that, and how much would you really lose?)
It’s well known that in times of crisis and uncertainty people turn to religion and family connections to find security and stability to navigate the chaos they’re going through. Maybe religion was just a way for the mass of society to sedate themselves and find a way to get along with life.
I did see a YouTube video a few years ago of someone who went around parts of Russia to ask people what their religion is and one of the men actually said, “Alcoholism.” I laughed my ass off but couldn’t tell if the man was serious or not. A lot of Americans see Russians as brutish and as a group of cultured thugs. Not always in a bad way. Many Americans (especially young ones I know) love the masculine Russian gangbanger vibe they see and especially Russian accents. A couple of them intensely hate British accents and culture because they see it as too effeminate and weak.
“Blessing tanks” is definitely a Russian thing. People in the US would think that’s hilarious. I think you see the common culture of Christianity (per the reference to language) as something distant from belief whereas I see it as the power Christianity had over time to extend its range even into the mundane and ordinary aspects of life while continuing to preserve an elite status in other respects. But that’s independent of whether or not lay people incorporate the full aspects of a pious Christian life.
I see it as Christianity extending its range into the mundane and ordinary aspects of life, and then everything more substantial than that withered and died, with a gilded facsimile painted over the top by the state. You tell me whether that's "continuing to preserve an elite status" in your books.
Re: alcoholism, I do not truly know how things are in the poorer/more rural regions right now. Urban youths seem to drink far less (matching the decline of socialization). But what the culture says about 15-30 years ago is that yes, absolutely, people drank a lot. I doubt balding pot-bellied middle-aged men splitting a bottle of vodka three-ways (a typical stereotype) give off a lot of that masculine gangbanger energy, though. I do recall the stories of how thug lords were very visibly Orthodox, but can't speak to their veracity.
If you think that’s all Christianity is then your conclusion is pretty straightforward. That’s why I asked earlier in my previous comment to tell me what Russia is without any reference to Orthodox Christianity. There’s a lot about Russia that’s left uncovered, from the ordinary to the elite as well as the sacred. Sure you can say some things about it. Maybe talk about its Communist days, but Russia is insignificant without it. Most societies on Earth shared a coevolution between the state and its religious traditions.
A note on the drinking point. I once heard that Putin was very popular with women his age as a politician leading the country, specifically because he ‘wasn’t’ a drinker unlike a lot of men of his time. Do you know if that’s true? I know people had to experience Yeltsin’s woes and alcoholism. We’ve all seen his famous television speech, even in the US. I remember alcoholism in Russia was so bad at one point that the average life expectancy of a Russian male was something like 58 years, which is hard to imagine.
Am I not saying "some" things about it? If you want a historical/sociocultural essay, I'm afraid you've got the wrong guy. I was never interested in history lessons in school. What do you even want me to tell you about - tea etiquette?
I already conceded that many aspects of daily life will have stemmed in some way from Christian traditions. I also have said that in many of those, the Christian tradition is barely recognized as such, and some are quite blatantly originally Slavic Pagan. For most people I meet their moral compass, if they appear to have one, is quite secular.
Without being Putin's butler I obviously cannot know if it's true. He certainly isn't known for drinking like Yeltsin was. His private life, to the extent he might have one, is not really the matter of public discussion. (Not because people are afraid or consider it impolite, but because it's simply not interesting. Those who want to hate Putin do it because of what he does in his capacity as the head of state, not any hypothetical grabbings by the pussy or private island trips. If there is any censorship of lurid speculation, of the kind that appears in the certain kind of pulp tabloids, I have not heard of it.)
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