The ethics of Orthodoxy as the aesthetics of the local church

Abstract

This paper addresses the ritual aesthetics of mundane aspects within the global Eastern Orthodox Christian liturgical practice. By comparing a variety of ‘local practices’ within the liturgical traditions of various Orthodox Christian communities, the paper explores how commonly held ethical commitments are expressed in radically different – and at times exactly opposite – practices of quotidian religion. In this evaluation of ‘little traditions’ within the ‘great tradition’ of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the paper focuses on local practices and their relation within the larger canonically inscribed theology of ‘correct practice’ (orthopraxy). The dogmatic and canonical aspects of orthopraxis, being similar across the Orthodox contexts, link the various communities as each being part of the same ethical project, while their specific aesthetic inventiveness marks each as being uniquely local. Drawing on anthropological and sociological theory of art, aesthetics, and ethical invention, the paper argues that aesthetics is localised ethics in practice.

Keywords:

• Orthodox Christianity
• ethics
• aesthetics
• the local

Notes on contributors

Timothy Carroll is Teaching Fellow in Anthropology and Material Culture at University College London where he teaches the anthropology art and design as well as the anthropology of religion. Recent publications include ‘Architectural renovations of body-as-temple’ for a special issue on the ‘Delimitations of the Body’ co-edited with Aaron Parkhurst in New BioEthics Vol 22 Is 2 (July 2016) and ‘Textiles and the making of sacred space’ in Textile History Vol 48. He has also edited, along with David Jeevendrampillai, Aaron Parkhurst and Julie Shackelford, The Material Culture of Failure: When Things Do Wrong (Bloomsbury 2017).

ORCID

Timothy Carroll http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4220-9745

Notes

1. Some of the Churches also recognise a fifteenth: that of the Orthodox Church in America. Its tomos of autocephaly (the declaration granting it its independence) given it by the Russian Church, however, is contested by, for example, the Greek Church.

2. Mount Athos is a theocratic democracy, consisting of 20 monasteries and their dependencies. Following ancient custom, no women or children are allowed on the peninsula.

3. I am specifically avoiding the word ‘simple pragmatism’ so as to avoid confusion with the theoretical school, which I see to have its own aesthetic; for a discussion of the aesthetics of pragmatism see the work of Levin (1994).

4. There is the potential here for a much longer discussion on the political aspect of the aesthetics of ritual and devotional practice. This would require a more historiographical approach, and is beyond the scope of this paper.