European Integration and Russian Orthodoxy: Two Multiple Modernities Perspectives

Abstract

This article introduces a distinction in the paradigm of multiple modernities between a comparativecivilizational and a post-secular perspective. It argues that the first, comparative-civilizational perspective, helps to understand modernization-processes in large cultural-civilizational units; whereas the second, postsecular viewpoint, focuses on actors and cultural domains within civilizational units and on intercivilizational crossovers. The two perspectives are complementary. What we gain from this distinction is greater precision in the use of multiple modernities for explaining the place of religion in modern societies. The example of Russian Orthodoxy is used for clarifying the difference between these two perspectives: whereas from a comparative-civilizational viewpoint, Russian Orthodoxy may appear as Europe's 'other'; from a postsecular viewpoint, Orthodox religion is part of Europe's religious pluralist landscape and partakes in an ongoing process of defining the meaning of European political and cultural integration.