Political Language of the Church in the Post-Soviet Period
Abstract
This article analyzes the political language of the Russian Orthodox Church as a social / public instrument of influence. Against the backdrop of post-secular processes, it considers the specifics of the language of political church strategies that go beyond the traditional religious domain. The ways and communicative approaches in the field of government relations and public relations are shown, by which the Russian Orthodox Church establishes relations with the authorities in the post-Soviet period, and already today demonstrates itself not just as one of the institutions of civil society, but also as an institution vested with political functions and political authority. To construct its social and political role, the Church acts situationally. On the one hand, it resorts to narratives of the 20th century, using different discourses - from the “victim” one to isolationism, on the other – to modern concepts typical for post-Soviet times, such as, for example, the idea of messianism, “Katekhon,” that is, saving the world from sin. In one way or another, the Church acts as an open political player, in part as a political technologist offering recipes of “soft power” for strategic state purposes, especially foreign policy objectives. The authors analyze the evolution of public rhetoric of the Church leaders in the context of the post-secular institutionalization of Orthodoxy in the space of politics and law.
Keywords: post-secularism, political language, post-Soviet, Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodox Church, discourse of victimization, messianism, Orthodox civilization
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