Why are American Christians rooting for Putin? How did the Russian autocrat become the ideal leader in their eyes? Brad speaks to Dr. Sara Riccard Swartz, an expert on Russian Orthodoxy and American religions, about her brand new book, "Between Heaven and Russia": https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823299515/between-heaven-and-russia/
Historically a minority immigrant faith in the United States, Russian Orthodoxy is attracting Americans who look to Russian religion and politics for answers to Western secularism and the loss of traditional family values in the face of accelerating progressivism. These converts sought and found a conservatism more authentic than Christian American Republicanism and a nationalism unburdened by the broken promises of American exceptionalism. Ultimately, both converts and the Church that welcomes them deploy the subversive act of adopting the ideals and faith of a foreign power for larger, transnational political ends.
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Over the last few weeks, the world has watched in horror as Vladimir Putin has attempted to invade Ukraine and, in the process, leveled destruction and violence and death on both the Ukrainian leveled destruction and violence and death on both the Ukrainian people and his own Russian soldiers.
One of the surprising facets of this war has been the response on the American right with everyone from Donald Trump to Tucker Carlson praising or defending Putin in different ways.
While some of them have backtracked in recent days, others, notably a swath of American Christians, continue to not only defend but to praise Putin for his actions.
This has baffled observers.
Why would American Christians think of Putin as on the right side of history and the right side of God in trying to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine?
My guest today is Sarah Riccardi Swartz, who is an expert in Russian Orthodoxy and American religions.
She helps me decode what's happening when conservative Christians in the United States think of Putin as aligned with God.
She explains how Putin, in the post-Soviet context, has used the Russian Orthodox Church as a weapon
At home on his own soil, but perhaps most importantly abroad, where he has sold Russia as a Christian nation, a Christian nationalist nation, a place where the values of patriarchy and heteronormativity and xenophobia have been coded as Christian and have been understood stateside as the ideal situation for the people of God.
The interview with Sarah is illuminating as much as it is startling.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show starts in a partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm joined today by a friend and colleague who is a return guest and who's just an amazing scholar, but is enduring a moment where her scholarship is incredibly pertinent and on the headlines.
So I'll just say, Sarah Riccardi Swartz, thanks for joining me once again.
Thanks so much for having me, Brad.
So Sarah, you are a postdoctoral fellow at the Recovering Truth Project, Recovering Truth, Religion, Journalism, and Democracy in a Post-Truth Era, and that's at Arizona State.
PhDs from New York University.
You've published all over, you've received funding from so many places, and most importantly, your book Between Heaven and Russia, Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in Appalachia has just appeared and is sort of topping bestseller lists all over the place.
So congratulations on the publication of this amazing work.
Thank you.
Thanks.
It's sadly too timely.
Yes, yes.
And so today we want to talk about obviously your book, but also I think that's going to tie into things that are on people's minds as it relates to Russia and Vladimir Putin and just what's happening in Ukraine and so on.
And so I want to, this is a book, your book is about Appalachia.
It's about a community of religious folks, Russian Orthodox converts in Uh, in Appalachia.
However, I think for our purposes today, we might need to start in Russia, um, and just to kind of set up some, some things, uh, going forward.
I'm going to embarrass you and read a little bit of your writing here, just so people can get an idea of where we're going.
Putin's seemingly illiberal tenure has been marked by two important social movements, the rise of the powerful and politically charged post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church and the engagement of Western conservative actors.
with Russian politics, religion, and ideas.
Putin's conservative social politics, his focus on keeping the Moscow Patriarchate as a close political ally, and his emphasis on marketing Russia as a wholly outside of Western secularism and liberalism, set into motion a social transformation of Russia in the Western conservative imagination.
So I hope that you might just give us a kind of refresher on Russian history regarding how during the Soviet era, the communist era, religion was not seen as a friend of the state.
And And subsequently, how Vladimir Putin has reinvigorated the Russian Orthodox Church.
And yet that has come with certain conditions, I shall say, that the church has had to kind of abide by and, and act upon.
So would you mind taking us through that?
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right that during the during the Soviet period, religion wasn't particularly it wasn't a cultural and social production that the Soviets were inclined to engage with.
In fact, they were inclined often, and this is broadly, this is not just with Orthodox Christians, but a variety of religious traditions, they were inclined to shut them down as soon as possible because they were seen as threats to the social cohesion of the state.
That being said, there was also at the same time a sort of an acceptability of certain religious practices.
So, for example, if you lived out in the country, as did some of my interlocutors who were from Russia, and you went to a small country parish, the Soviets might not bother you, right?
Because you're not really doing anything.
You're sort of living your life.
You're not bothering anyone.
the real fear for the Soviets came when you were a priest who had ideas about fighting back or overturning some sort of jurisdictional ideas that were put into law by the Soviets about how religion could function in a particular space.
That's when you became a threat.
So, you know, here's a church that seemingly in the Western context, they like to say went underground, the Orthodox Church during the Soviet period.
I wouldn't say it went underground as much as it just sort of in its normative formations was there.
When it was deliberately a threat to the state, that's when people started ending up in gulags, right?
So, So in the post-Soviet period, Putin recognized that, right?
You know, we all know, sort of, at least I think we do, because it's on the forefront of everybody's mind right now.
We understand how Putin was involved with the KGB.
We know his sort of mob ties and his rise to power.
And here he is right in the early 2000s as the president of the Russian Federation.
And he has to figure out a way to sort of make Russia powerful again.
Right.
We had this fall of Russian power after perestroika.
Things were sort of chaotic financially, economically for people, and in terms of sort of political power on the global stage.
And he had to figure out a way to Sort of revitalize Russia in in both the global consciousness, but also in terms of economics and and world politics and part of that was his great marketing strategies.
I mean, he was really good at marketing Russia as something completely unique on the global stage and he did that with the help of the post-soviet Russian Orthodox Church.
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