Cherishing the Grains of Social CommunitiesBook Review: Zabaev I.V., Melkumyan E.B., Oreshina D.А. et al. (eds.) (2015) The Invisible Church—Social Effects of the Parish Community in the Russian Orthodoxy, Moscow: PSTGU.

Abstract

Elena Berdysheva – Candidate of Sciences (PhD) in Economic Sociology and Demography, Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology, Higher School of Economics. Address: of. 530, 9-11, Myasnitskaya St., Moscow, 101 000, Russian Federation. E-mail: eberdysheva@hse.ru

A collection of articles under the general title The Invisible Church—Social Effects of the Parish Community in the Russian Orthodoxy was published in 2015 by the publishing house of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. This review presents the book from the perspective of an interested reader whose research interests, however, lie outside the scope of sociology of religion. The reviewer discusses each section of the collection and highlights research questions inspired by this reading.
The first section assesses the capacity of parishes to shape stronger communities in Russia, that is, communities whose members are connected by feelings of solidarity and who form effective social networks of mutual support. It is argued that this capacity is significant. It is primarily based on trust in the Church, which brings the unchurched citizens into parish communities through various extraliturgical activities organized by parishes.
The second section analyses the influence of religiosity on people’s activities in various areas of social life. Using empirical evidence it is shown that the religiosity maintains its own logic in different areas, such as education or social work. It appears to be one of the few remedies against impersonal approaches, bureaucratization, and marketization in socially important areas of life.
The articles from the third section argue that the Church is capable of loosening the tension related to taking responsibility and making difficult decisions, such as having children.
The review pays particular attention to the methods employed in the collection and the analytical achievements which could have been made had the authors of the collection adhered to the strict requirements of sociological research with the use of grounded theory. In general, however, the collection offers a number of important empirical findings that shed light on the complex interactions between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian society. Yet, the main value of the collection is its contribution to the development of modern sociological theory and methodology, in which the concept of God has become an analytic category of its own.