Abstract
Praying with the Senses is a volume edited by Sonja Luehrmann (recently deceased), whose several chapters offer contributions from Vlad Naumescu, Ioann Veniaminov, Jeffers Engelhardt, Angie Heo, Jeanne Kormina, Tom Boylston, Andreas Bandak, Daria Dubovka, Simion Pop, and William A Christian Jr. Throughout her distinguished career, Sonja Luehrmann received accolades for such publications as Religion in Secular Archives: Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge (Winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award), Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic, and Alutiiq Villages under Russian and U.S. Rule. This book makes an important contribution to the study of religion, particularly global Orthodoxy, analyzing the role of mediation, materiality, and the senses within a traditional, hierarchical, religious framework. Several chapter contributors also address individual practices of religious creativity and agency at the local level and their relation to the traditional constraints of religious structures of authority.
As Sonja Luehrmann states in the introductory chapter, ‘this project grows out of a collaborative effort to understand the sensory worlds of contemporary Eastern Orthodox prayer in their geographic and ethnolinguistic diversity’ (p. 2). The authors of this volume, through their rich ethnographic and qualitative analysis, convey the intrareligious diversity and ‘shared aesthetic sensibilities’ among Eastern Orthodox traditions around the world (p. 4). According to Luehrmann, ‘orthodoxy’ means not only ‘right belief’ but also ‘right worship’ and ‘right praise,’ highlighting the aesthetic dimension of any analysis of Orthodox spirituality. However, within a tradition characterized by autocephalous (autonomous, often national, religious bodies in ecclesiological communion) churches, there is a unique balance of aesthetic and theological innovation and traditional constraint both across and within patriarchates, down to the individual initiatives of Orthodox parishes. As Simion Pop writes in his analysis of spiritual reform movements, ‘Orthodox revival is simultaneously a popular bottom-up movement and a top-down institutional process, and sometimes clerical attempts claimed as forms of restoring tradition go against lay revivalist expectations’ (p. 220). Although the aesthetical practices of the Orthodoxy reveal diversity across geographic, ecclesial, and hierarchical boundaries, there are also commonalities rooted in the very dogmas and councils of the church that, for example, affirm the use of iconography in worship (p. 6). The chapters of this volume address this nexus of the universal and particular within global Orthodox spirituality, focusing on what other scholars have referred to as the ‘glocalization’ of sensuous, material, practices within Eastern European, Middle Eastern, East African, and South Asian traditions.
The chapters of Praying with the Senses are divided into two sections: ‘Senses’ and ‘Worlds.’ The book’s first four chapters within the ‘Senses’ section address ‘personal spiritual practice and its sensory environments – the gestures, sounds, images, and texts through which people are socialized into an Orthodox community’ (p. 21). Several of the chapters of this volume explore how, in the everyday working out of the dialectic between tradition and localized practice, a real or imagined common, sensuous framework provides Orthodox faithful with an understanding of solidarity and freedom within tradition. The authors draw from Birgit Meyer’s (2009) concept of ‘aesthetic formation’ to articulate how routinized styles of worship become a ‘forming form,’ that provides the foundation of perceived community in an organization without a ‘common organization structure’ (p. 16). These discussions, throughout this work, describe the roles of sensuous engagement in the formation of the Orthodox subject and her/his understanding of their relationship to the institutional church.
Chapter 1 of this volume describes how the sensuously engaged interplay between ‘mastery’ and ‘mystery’ provides the framework in which individuals attempt to achieve ‘theosis’ (becoming God-like). Vlad Naumescu (p. 32) writes, ‘in an empowering and yet humbling way, the mastery of practice can lead to a better understanding of the mystery of faith but remains ultimately dependent on the mystery itself.’ This focus within Orthodoxy, according to the author, should be understood as a balancing strategy that seeks to formalize right practices while remaining sensitive to the ineffable mysteries of God.
According to several authors in this book, potential dilemmas may arise, however, when Orthodox practices become detached from their institutional frameworks. Jeffers Engelhardt (p. 60) discusses this in terms of engagement with ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ media. According to Engelhardt, ‘unmarked media’ are those traditional, sanctioned forms used in the Orthodox Church (incense, human voices, icons, etc.) that practitioners understand as offering unmediated access to the divine. While ‘marked’ media (radio, film, etc.) are understood more explicitly as indirectly providing the faithful with access to religious information. Engelhardt suggests both forms of media have a place in the spiritual life, although marked media function more as a conduit that reinforces and redirects the faithful back to unmarked forms. This case reveals the emphasis in Orthodoxy on the importance of authentic practices within the dialectic of mystery and mastery.
Addressing the sensory element of Orthodox prayer, Angie Heo writes about the role of images in the encounter of Orthodox faithful with saints. She writes, ‘remembering a holy person with fullest sympathy is a multisensory exercise involving pictures, sounds, smells, postures, and movement’ (p. 84). Icons, in particular, within the Eastern Christian tradition, are viewed as windows that make present the holy individual or deity. Individuals venerate the archetype (Christ, Mary, saints, angels, etc.) represented in the image through prayers, while giving honor to the ‘unmarked’ medium that provides this perceived direct access. Exemplifying the relationship between religious agency and religious structure, Heo writes about the local (rather than institutional) processes that allow Orthodox faithful to actively participate in the making and/or recognition of saints. She describes, for example, the devotional practices of creating unconsecrated, photographic images of holy persons known within a community that could inspire official canonization. Sonja Luehrmann, analyzing the Orthodox use of prayer books, also highlights the potential for creative agency within a quite formalized approach to prayer. The author writes, ‘in combination, the words and their material basis provide ways of forging connections between communal practice at church and individual devotions’ (p. 121). In this traditional form of prayer, ‘believers can personalize their prayers to their own needs and abilities while acknowledging a common standard of correctness.’
The final section of this volume, Worlds,’ analyzes the ‘social contexts of prayer,’ focusing on cultural and geographic diversity within Orthodoxy and outside influences on religious practice.” In this section, Jeanne Kormina (p. 144) considers ‘religious nomads’ in Russia who ‘prefer making pilgrimages to sacred sites . . . to a regular religious life in their local parishes.’ While religious belonging and identity are often tied to particular sacred spaces, this group of believers met their spiritual needs through à la carte methods of exploration, experimentation, and pilgrimage. According to the author, much like the role of ‘marked media,’ the deinstitutionalized, religious activities of those practicing forms of nomadic spirituality often brought them into engagement with more institutional and authorized types of religious behavior. For example, Kormina analyzed the evangelization efforts of a Russian priest whose goal was to integrate these individuals into the traditional life of the local church. A large part of the process Orthodox socialization, furthermore, centers on ‘cultivating religious bodies and disciplining the senses,’ allowing practitioners to authentically (however that is defined) embody the tradition. The challenges of Orthodox embodiment were also addressed by Daria Dubovka’s analysis of new monastic movement’s attempts to balance traditional and modern understanding of labor, hygiene, and spirituality within the difficult conditions of economically declining monasteries.
If the chapter on nomadic spirituality addresses the religious context in terms of internal diversity within Orthodoxy, Tom Boylston’s chapter explores external (domestic and international) influences and interactions among Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. The author explores the mediating and boundary crossing (and, thus, political) influence of technology on interactions among Orthodox and Muslims in the Zege Peninsula in Ethiopia. Addressing the public quality of spirituality, the author describes how the soundscape produced by the Muslim ‘call to prayer’ broadcast over loudspeakers complicated the friendly interfaith relations in that region. Boylston also shows how social media influence Orthodox religious life, and sometime serve to present social and religious conflicts occurring internationally. Additionally, according to the author, media also open up the possibility for ‘divergences from centrally controlled Orthodoxy.’ However, these media exist within already existing material, religious, socio-economic, and political contexts that condition their understanding and influence.
This volume advances the study of global Orthodox spirituality, focusing on the role of the body in religious practice. Its several chapters reveal the ethnic and cultural diversity of Orthodox Christianity, and how various sensory regimes of engagement may bring about, among other things: new religious identities, religious solidarity, devotional innovation, spiritual experiences, revival movements, and sometimes social conflicts. In terms of limitations, the authors might have focused more attention on the experiences of the Orthodox diasporas (though it might be beyond the scope of this project). Nevertheless, this book provides a rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of global Orthodoxy that deserves careful consideration by scholars working in this or related fields.