ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses secularization, not so much as an academic concept, although it borrows from Charles Taylor’s idea that secularity shapes the “conditions of belief” in today’s West, but rather starting from my informants’ representations of it. The latter often expressed concern about integration (economic, cultural and institutional) into “secular Europe”, as a potential source of jeopardizing their religious identity. The data echo a larger recurrent preoccupation of Orthodox circles both in “diaspora” and in the homeland, namely the critique of “the world” and its multifaceted disenchanting forces.
