ABSTRACT
Understanding and engaging Russia requires not only cross-cultural but also geopolitical religious literacy—or “geo-religious literacy.” Indeed, religious geopolitics has created and sustained Russia’s unitary state. For nearly 1,000 years, rulers claimed power from God—or in opposition to God during the atheist Soviet times—while governing the multi-confessional, ethnically diverse, and culturally distinct peoples of Eurasia. The state needed compelling national ideas and unifying institutions to survive and thrive. Patriotism and faith filled the ideational need; Eastern/Russian Orthodox Christianity provided overarching state-linked institutions with managed allowances for select other systems of belief and religious organizations. Citizens have always navigated cross-cultural relations shaped by religious traditions, even when the state banned religious expression. The post-Soviet resurgence of religious diversity in Russia testifies to the enduring skills and emergent competencies of religious literacy as well as the potential for covenantal pluralism. This chapter analyzes the extent of, and prospects for, cross-cultural religious literacy in Russia, and how it has helped (or could potentially in the future) cultivate an environment of covenantal pluralism in Russia. The discussion addresses how Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and the Russian Orthodox version thereof, relates to all this, both positively and negatively.
