The article deals with the problems of theory and methodology in the study of the modern Orthodox fundamentalism. It particularly discusses the issue of its authenticity – the correspondence between the qualitative aspects and features of the modern Orthodox fundamentalism and the real features of the object defined the so called generic attributes of religious fundamentalism. From the start the author deliberately emphasized the difficulties associated with the study of the given phenomenon including those conditioned by special character of the Soviet modernization and secularization and by the specifics of the transfer to postmodernism and post-secularization of the modern Russian society. This reasoning helps to avoid narrow scope and to understand what we deal with and why we do it. The activity of some Orthodox “fundamentalist” organizations in modern Russia shows that their focus is not on a religious project but some kind of “social program”: statism, ideology, traditional culture, sexual moral values etc. They can appeal to theocentricism, piety and faithfulness to the Holy Tradition, but the idea of “return” to the basics of religion, to the theological doctrinal basis or to the religious and civilizational frameworks of unity serves as a tool for such unions and fraternities – as a means to achieve non-religious goals. In the author’s opinion such movements and organizations should be identified as pseudo-fundamentalist ones and the phenomenon itself as Orthodox pseudo-fundamentalism, a specific form of the social and political activity based upon the pseudo religious discourse of ideativeness, eschatologism and Puritanism (simulacrum of fundamentalism).

Golovushkin Dmitriy Alexandrovich, Candidate of Sciences (History), Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Religious Studies, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, 48, Moyka embankment, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation, tel.: 8(812)3129925, e-mail: golovushkinda@mail.ru

Golovushkin D. A. Modern Orthodox Fundamentalism or Pseudo-Fundamentalism? The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series Political Science and Religion Studies. 2018, vol. 25, pp. 92-102. https://doi.org/10.26516/2073-3380.2018.25.92 (in Russian)

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