Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society. Ethnographies of Catholic Hegemony and the New Pluralism in Lithuania/Eds. Milda Alisauskiene, Ingo Schroder. Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. - 212 p.

This book is the result of a three - year project (2007-2010) supported by Volkswagen Schiftung, entitled "The Catholic Church and Religious Pluralism in Lithuania and Poland". This book is one of

results of a project related only to Lithuania. The book is an extremely coherent, theoretically and empirically rich analysis of contemporary Lithuanian religiosity, mainly based on anthropological and sociological material.

The editors of the book assume that until now ethnographers (anthropologists) have focused more on describing the "survival strategies" of religion in the Soviet era, while almost completely ignoring the influence of secularism, which in fact is not only the result of Soviet anti - religious campaigns-it preceded Sovietization. The editors criticize this one-sidedness of past research and offer a balanced combination of the paradigm of de-secularization that now dominates the social sciences, and a careful look at the consequences of long and ongoing secularization. It is true that some processes clearly contrast with Soviet times and cannot be ignored: the rise of historical churches, primarily Catholicism; the rapid spread of new religions; and the revival of pre-Christian local religious forms. At the same time, the authors of the book understand how complex this process is and how it is transformed under the influence of continuing secular attitudes, the growth of religious consumerism and the pluralization of the religious field (p. 27-28).

Ultimately, it is this last point - the pluralization of the previously almost exclusively Catholic milieu - that is the main axis of the entire book; and this axis can hardly be separated from the discussions surrounding religious revival and the influence of secularism. Is Lithuania a "Catholic country", and if so, in what sense? Pluralization after the collapse of the USSR was a challenge to the Catholic monopoly, as well as to all the dominant religions in the former USSR. The new religious pluralism was caused, as the book shows, by at least several reasons: first, the emergence of non-traditional religions due to the new democratic legislation; second, the diversification of Catholicism itself; and third, the emergence of a" new spirituality " with some new spiritual capital that has come to replace capital."religious". All these processes were related to a broad public policy framework.-

This is due to the need to diversify and individualize - in accordance with global trends, which were expressed in the emergence of a "religious market" and the development of individual religious bricolage (p. 5, passim).

Pluralization challenges Catholic hegemony, as well as the old stereotype of Lithuanian confessional homogeneity; however, despite all this, according to the 2001 census, 79% of the Lithuanian population declares themselves Catholic, and public discourse on religious or religiously colored moral topics has remained strongly influenced by the "hegemonic Catholic world" in recent decades. hegemonic idiom of Catholicism, p. 8). The question of "innate" Lithuanian Catholicism, which has eroded under the influence of new secularism and other trends, constantly haunts the authors of the book, and they always carefully try to avoid certain one-sided answers - a completely reasonable position. After all the case studies presented in the book, Ingo Schroeder, one of the editors and the main inspirer of the project, returns to the question of Catholic hegemony and concludes his text (and the text of the book as a whole) with the following argument: "Despite the different types of individual secularism andbricolages, throughout Lithuanian society as a whole, Catholicism continues to define the grammar of discourse on religious and moral issues, and neither orthodoxy nor secularism can be perceived outside the framework of this grammar " (p. 208).

This balanced and careful formulation seems to reflect empirical reality and is well-founded in theory. The authors have every right and reason to make their conclusions appear balanced, since they approach the concept of "hegemony" with full theoretical seriousness. Ingo Schroeder develops the theoretical framework of the study based on two main sources - the theory of cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci and the conceptual knot of concepts by Pierre Bourdieu (cultural capital, religious field and habitus). Schroeder also cites several other interesting theories, such as Mart Bax's" religious regimes"; the distinction between ideology as an aggressive mode of power and hegemony as a non-aggressive mode of power; and a few others.

I have to say that those pages where the Shredder works are-

This text can be useful for anyone who studies the widespread phenomenon of religious dominance; thus, its significance goes beyond the relatively narrow field of study of post-socialist Eastern European religious processes. Schroeder, trying to make Gramsci's and Bourdieu's theories applicable to this specific context, contributes to the development of the problem of religious hegemony as such.

In his theoretical reflections, Schroeder explores the difference between" official doxa " (another Bourdieu term), which is based on hegemony, and the concept of "common sense" in the sense used by Gramsci;" common sense", according to Gramsci, is a series of alternative and adaptive discourses embedded in local culture (local culture). This latter is described as follows: "Although it is [local culture] By its very nature, it is disorganized, discordant, and fragmented; its elastic strength lies in the fact that it represents an accumulated local history, daily experience, and social relations that are opposed to a unified hegemonic language" (p.21). Compare this with the conclusion I quoted earlier about the indestructible Catholic "grammar" of Lithuanian culture. So, what happens? Yes, we have hegemony, and yet we have refractions (my term) of this dominant grammar through experience and the optics of"local common sense."

What is the relationship between "official doxa" and "common sense" - particularly when it comes to religion? Schroeder refers to John Gaventa and borrows his terms, saying that religion often produces a language of "quiescence" and "routine practices of non-resistance" (the routines of non-challenge)². However, according to Gramsci, religion can be both a "hegemonic" and an alternative-subversive force (subaltern/subversive); Schroeder similarly speaks of "the dual potential of religion-both as an auxiliary discourse for the ruling elite and as an ideology of resistance to elite rule" (p. 23-25). So if we are talking about how can the cape-

^{Gaventa J.} 2. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Village. Urbana, 1982.

If opposition - or insurrection, in Gramsci's Marxist terms - and religion flow together, we see two possibilities: (a) a revolt against hegemonic religion as such, because it is part of hegemonic culture, and (b) a revolt of religious tradition itself (or rather a dynamic part of it) against hegemonic cultural heritage. the establishment. In the case of Lithuania, the second option may be associated with a Catholic underground opposition to Soviet hegemony, while the first option is associated with an ongoing challenge to Catholicism by other religious and secular forces.

However, the relationship between religious hegemony and religious "common sense" is not defined by direct, militant rebellions or conflicts; in most cases, we encounter a more complex "gray area" of interaction at the local level, where we find many more or less obvious, more or less hidden interpretations of hegemonic language and practices among collective and individual actors. The position of the editors of the book, which I have already mentioned, is that religious hegemony in societies like Lithuania is under pressure not from " popular religion "(as it was, perhaps, in the middle of the 20th century), but rather from secular" common sense " (p. 28). I want to repeat that I find this emphasis on persistent and deep-rooted secularism extremely useful, if only to temper too hasty conclusions about desecularization. In this sense, I would go even further and argue that today it is secularism that is most likely the cultural hegemony, while religion is becoming, on the contrary, one of the sources of what James Scott called hidden counter-hegemonic transcripts - actually hidden and not very hidden. Or perhaps the situation is even more complex: we are facing two competing cultural hegemonies - a deeply internalized secularism and an equally deep-seated Catholicism. The second one undoubtedly dominates the religious field itself, but the religious field is only one of the fields of a differentiated, secularized society; at the same time - and this makes the situation even more confusing - the Catholic Church, becoming more active in the public sphere, is challenging

the dominance of the secular. In any case, the role of Catholicism in Lithuanian society is very controversial, if not paradoxical.

* * *

The individual case studies that make up the book all deal in one way or another with the central theme of Catholic hegemony - imaginary, fictional, real, contested. Arunas Streikus offers a historical overview from the 19th century to the end of the Soviet era, focusing on the main milestones: "ethnic Catholicism" during the Russian Empire; then - the "national Church", which tried to oppose itself to the Polish Church (starting in 1918), anti-church pressure from authoritarian regimes in the late 1920s - 1930s; aggressive anti-church campaigns, starting in 1948 during the Soviet era; at the same time-the conservative position of the Church in relation to the innovations of the Second Vatican Council (p. 51).

This is followed by a chapter on "folk" religion: Lina Pranaityte-Wergin explores the perception of death and the afterlife in rural Lithuania, refuting the stereotype that rural religion is unreflective and unreservedly obeying the norm. In fact, rural religion also includes both reflection and individual bricolage (p.57). The author believes that ordinary rural religiosity is deep and invisible, and low church attendance is not the best indicator for us - a conclusion that perhaps needs a more conceptual understanding.

As for urban religiosity, as Ingo Schroeder suggests in the next chapter, this is an even more elusive reality associated with the structure of the urban middle class, with its "predominantly secular habit" (p. 91). Schroeder continues to interpret the concept of hegemony in this text. He admits that it is difficult to explain how the current urban non-religiosity is combined with the recent success of the Church in leading an active mission in the urban environment. To explain this discrepancy, he suggests an interesting concept - a "secular Catholic society", a society where the Church has already ceased to be the center of public life (both secular and even religious), but is considered by everyone with" respect " (complaisance) (p. 93ff).

Gediminas Lankauskas offers a very elegant study. Looking at what he calls the "syncretic convergence" between the Catholic Church and the charismatic evangelical Word of Life Church, the author describes one particular intermarriage between adherents of the two traditions. This marriage becomes a metaphor for the pervasive syncretism, as well as the trend away from confrontation (between faiths) to the union. These two religious institutions-the ancient Catholic Church and a charismatic "sect" that is completely new to Lithuania - may seem like incommensurable dimensions, but we see an extremely symptomatic alliance of conservative religions in the face of dominant (truly hegemonic) secularism.

Milda Alisauskiene examines two New Age cases: the Academy of Parapsychology and the Merkinet Pyramid. The founders of both groups consider themselves Catholics! This is another interesting piece of urban religious syncretism. If we keep in mind the implied "Catholic hegemony" in the religious field, which has already been discussed, the author comes to a very unusual, if not risky, conclusion: "perhaps it makes sense to understand the Lithuanian New Age not so much as a set of radically different beliefs and social relations, but rather as a variant of popular Catholicism" (p. 159), a conclusion that requires clarification, at least as far as the very concept of "popular Catholicism"is concerned.

The rest of the articles, where informative content prevails over analytical content, deal with the Ramuva movement (a Lithuanian neo-Pagan organization founded in 1967), the tiny Muslim community mainly consisting of Tatar women (2,860 people, according to the 2001 census), and the White Lotus community, which is a small one a "cult-sect" (in R. Stark's terms mentioned here), which barely survives in the hegemonic Catholic environment. In general, the book gives us a multi-colored mosaic of religions against the background of the entire Lithuanian society, which is still (after all!) It imagines itself to be Catholic, when in reality it is predominantly secular and pluralistic.

Permanent link to this publication: