ABSTRACT
The topic of ethical reasoning connects chapters 2 and 3. Autobiographical narratives of Russian believers reveal the links between conversion, moral imagination, and moral perceptions, on the one hand, and radical personal transformation, on the other. If conversion to Orthodoxy is based on “interrupted continuity”, it also includes the perception of an intimate, personal relationship of an individual with Orthodoxy. Unlike the Protestant tradition, personal stories have no ritual function in Orthodox liturgical life. Hence, Russian conversion narratives can hardly be reduced to a common pattern: They follow multiple models. Still, one narrative type presents it as sudden, lightning event following St. Paul’s model. Another type describes conversion in terms of pain and acute physical suffering. Such “moral torment” preceding conversion, and indeed continuing for so long as the believer seeks personal transformation away from a sinful past and self, prove that a model of “break” and “rupture” is neither exclusively Protestant nor Pentecostal. The condition of “moral torment” is a sign of high moral sensitivity among the most committed Russian believers. Autobiographical narratives of conversion, including those about miracles, are important for answering one of the key questions asked at the beginning of the book: Is Orthodox revivalism in modern Russia genuine or spurious? Stories show the deeply personal, intimate nature of the passage from non-belief to religious dedication. The emotional nature of conversion, described at one moment as strong excitement and “bliss” and at another as an intolerable physical or moral pain, leaves no doubt about the genuine nature of the Orthodox resurgence in the grassroots perspective and among Orthodox parishes in particular.
