Public Religion and the Quest for National Ideology: Russia's Media Discourse

This close analysis of the printed media discourse in post-Communist Russia shows various ways of using religious cultural capital in reifying the Russian national identity. This blossoming public religion, contrasted with the generally low level of religiosity as reported by the surveys, became a new phenomenon comparable to similar patterns on an international scale. In the Russian case, the major themes of this public discourse are "spiritual entropy,""symphony" of state-church relations, religious diversity (pluralism), and the search for a religiously legitimized "national idea."