Resistance and Submission. Pandemic, Late Modern Epistemes, and Russian Orthodox Ethos

Abstract

The article discusses the reactions within the Russian Orthodox Church to the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Based on materials from the press, religious and secular Internet-resources and online forums, the article systematizes the variety of responses of Orthodox priests, laity and church leaders to the unprecedented interruption of liturgical cycle and church sociality in the period of sanitary restrictions. The extraordinary challenges of the pandemic period revealed otherwise less obvious trends within the Orthodox milieu, and the nature of its ambivalent correlation with the basic epistemes of the late modern secular society.