Q&A: What Can a Russian Orthodox Neighborhood Inform Us About Rural America?

By Christiana Wayne

Editor’s Word: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an electronic mail e-newsletter from the Every day Yonder. Every week, Path Finders incorporates a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see right here? You possibly can be part of the mailing checklist on the backside of this text and obtain extra conversations like this in your inbox every week.

Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a professor of faith and anthropology at Northeastern College, spent a 12 months dwelling with a group of Russian Orthodox monks and laypeople, nestled in a small West Virginia mountain city. What she discovered there was a portrait of rural non secular life far totally different than the often-caricatured ‘white clapboard church’ of Trump-tinged Protestantism. The truth is, as all the time, a lot stranger. She documented her findings in her e-book Between Heaven and Russia: Spiritual Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Christiana Wayne, The Every day Yonder: May you broadly describe the political and spiritual character of this West Virginia Russian Orthodox group?

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz: After I went to go to for the primary time, I used to be actually fascinated by two issues. First, the group is comprised of a males’s monastery. Just a few miles down the highway, there’s a church that was created to help individuals who wished to maneuver to the realm to be near this males’s monastery. And I used to be actually struck by the truth that, in a spot the place largely Orthodoxy is an immigrant religion – Russian and Ukrainian coal miners in Appalachia and within the Rust Belt area – what now we have on this group is white American converts who come from religion communities which can be extra carefully related to Appalachia like Evangelical Pentecostal, numerous sorts of Protestants. They usually’ve all discovered a brand new residence within the Russian Orthodox Church.

After I got here again to the group, it was about 9 months after Trump was inaugurated [in 2017], I discovered a group that was largely the identical because the group I had visited time and again, however they had been additionally actually involved about international geopolitics. After I began the method of interviewing them, they had been actually eager on speaking to me in regards to the significance of Russia in saving america from itself. And so I spent a 12 months dwelling with this group, and what I discovered was in the end a right-wing group of people that transformed to Russian Orthodoxy as a result of they believed that it was a extra genuine type of Christianity, but in addition as a result of they discovered inside Russian politics one thing that they thought was lacking from the American political system. That’s what the e-book is about, their experiences of changing and what they discover significant about being Orthodox and significantly being Russian Orthodox.

DY: Many political pundits speak about non secular individuals in type of purely political phrases. What do you assume that type of narrative misses about precise perception and the metaphysics of those individuals, particularly the group you lived with?

SRS: That’s a extremely nice query. I’ve seen each in reporting and amongst social scientists whose work focuses on proper wing or far proper communities, an attention-grabbing journey across the non secular lives of individuals. What I imply by that’s they usually will speak about their political subjectivities, however they’re not a lot eager about their ethical or moral frameworks for the way they received to these political subjectivities. It truly does a disservice to understanding the political patchwork of our nation as a result of politics is an extension of 1’s personal place on the earth and the way an individual views the world from the place they stand.

When somebody has a specific non secular bent, that impacts how they view all the pieces from politics to science to laws on the native stage and even geopolitics … and I feel that’s what I attempt to do with the e-book on a grassroots stage: present of us how necessary esoteric non secular concepts are to the bigger political dialog individuals are having with one another.

DY: Is there something that these Russian Orthodox members see as primarily rural Appalachian about their non secular follow?

SRS: The parish had began a yearly occasion that was targeted on one thing known as Outdated Christmas. And your readers in Appalachia will do not forget that Outdated Christmas has been a practice in Appalachia for a very long time, having Christmas in January. However for Orthodox interlocutors, it’s aligned with one thing known as the Outdated Calendar within the Orthodox Church, which is a calendar that doesn’t line up with the calendar that we use within the West. They’d usually take issues that they discovered inside Appalachia and attempt to, for lack of a greater time period, make them orthodox. The congregants mentioned that, as a result of West Virginia has such economically depressed areas and it doesn’t have a number of growth in high-speed web or infrastructure in small cities, they really noticed that as a profit to them as a result of it allowed for them to get again to a extra rural simplistic lifestyle. And it neared, for them, what of us would do traditionally in Russia, which is to go stay close to a monastery out within the Russian countryside. Being in a rural, very remoted space truly was crucial, not just for the monks, but in addition for the individuals on the parish close by, as a result of they believed they had been type of lower off from the unwell results of modernity in america.

DY: Rural voters are portrayed as virtually fully nationalist and populist, however members of this Orthodox group, although right-wing, had been Russian exceptionalist and monarchist. What does this group must say in regards to the state of issues on the best and the state of issues in rural America that’s so shallowly understood?

SRS: I train a category on the anthropology of rural America. We actually take the time to consider the flourishing of LGBTQ+ life in Appalachia, and we take time to consider the Appalachian motion. We speak loads in regards to the totally different political and financial situations that form communities. And one of many issues I attempt to get my college students to consider actually severely is that every one of those preconceived understandings that now we have of rural America, it’s not likely rural America.

That’s a longstanding curation of rural America, and significantly Appalachia that we’ve had within the American public consciousness since earlier than Johnson’s Struggle on Poverty, and positively after. And once I inform my college students that folk that I labored with didn’t vote for Trump, largely, they’re type of shocked. After I inform them that, on the native stage, the elections usually skewed Democratic, they had been additionally type of shocked. And that simply reinforces that we don’t actually, outdoors of Appalachia, have a great understanding of the historical past of issues just like the labor motion, the socialist actions inside Appalachia that basically do have strongholds.

Between Heaven and Russia This Orthodox group, though they’re far proper, they problem our assumptions about what the far proper seems like and what they maintain to be priceless. For instance, I interviewed a pastor and his spouse who had been actually fairly in love with Trump, however they discovered Orthodox group much more proper wing than them. So I feel it challenges us to see the range on either side, each when it comes to right-wing populations and when it comes to the truth that in rural communities there are Democrats, there are socialists, there are far proper individuals there, it’s not homogenous in any approach. And I hope that the e-book deconstructs {that a} bit for individuals.

DY: As we enter this new presidential administration, what are you searching for as a scholar of faith and a citizen?

SRS: This can be a very crucial second in our democracy. And now we have seen for the previous few years, throughout the globe, rising types of illiberalism and authoritarianism. And now we’re seeing it really come residence to america in a approach that would rework our nation fairly drastically within the subsequent few years if we don’t acknowledge that this is identical playbook that’s occurring in different international locations. And I’m hopeful that our nation acknowledges the place we’re headed, and that we do one thing in regards to the course which we appear to have discovered ourselves on since January twentieth. I anticipate that issues are going to develop into far worse in our nation until one thing adjustments and we see extra grassroots mobility to carry accountable people who find themselves destroying the federal authorities from the within out.

This text first appeared on The Every day Yonder and is republished right here underneath a Inventive Commons license. PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: perform() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://dailyyonder.com/qa-what-can-a-russian-orthodox-community-tell-us-about-rural-america/2025/03/21/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } }

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Picture: Sarah Riccardi-Swartz is an assistant professor of faith and anthropology at Northeastern College. (Picture through Northeastern College Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.)

The submit Q&A: What Can a Russian Orthodox Neighborhood Inform Us About Rural America? appeared first on The Good Males Challenge.

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