ABSTRACT
One of the most determining global events to occur in the last few decades is without a doubt the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc. Yet social scientists have forgotten to integrate the economic dimension of this collapse in their analysis of religion. This chapter surveys the transformations of religion in OMEE countries through the Nation-State and Global-Market regime, showing how the turn to capitalism has profoundly affected religion. This chapter starts by describing nation and state-building processes in Eastern Europe and what this meant for religion over the course of modernity and under communist conditions before turning to the description and analysis of post-1991 religious transformations. Topics covered are the phenomenal rise in Orthodox affiliation, coupled with the reactivation of the nation-building process. The analysis goes beyond the quantitative data however in order to show the important qualitative changes that are affecting Orthodoxy, namely through the influence of the ethics of authenticity and expressive individualism carried by consumerism. This chapter also looks into the New Age and Pentecostal boom, showing how they constitute two class-dependent answers to globalisation.
