ABSTRACT
Significant scholarship has illustrated that the modern self-help and therapeutic ethos originates in Protestant Christianity. For instance, the prolific American self-help genre with its positive thinking can be traced back to late 19th century religious manuals, in which readers were encouraged to control and direct their thoughts so that they ‘mirrored’ the intentions of God. This chapter suggests that therapeutic knowledge and practices within Finnish Orthodoxy are best understood through the concept of glocalized therapeutic assemblage. It also discusses an anthropological investigation of such an assemblage within Finnish Orthodoxy. The histories of Finnish Orthodoxy embraced numerous people’s dislocations, resettlements, enforced and voluntary moves, as well as alleged tensions between Karelian and Russian Orthodox identities. The very use of the term ‘therapeutic’ in its functional and psychologizing sense points to the effect of the modern therapeutic discourses on how liturgy and singing are perceived.
