Religious Conservatism in War-Time “Culture Wars”: Does the Same Stance on Values Represent an Elective Affinity with the Geopolitical Agenda of the Russian Federation?
Alar Kilp is a lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Tartu.
When Churches in Central and Eastern European countries take conservative positions (either alone or jointly in the form of all-Church councils) on “culture wars”[1] values relative to family and reproductive issues as well as sexual and gender identity, the overlap with “traditional values” promoted and weaponized by the Kremlin—which includes both Russia’s political leadership and the Patriarchate of Moscow—is often obvious.
In Russia, the promotion of traditional values has an “elective affinity” relationship, where conservative positions promoted by a religious actor (the Russian Orthodox Church) and the geopolitical agenda of the Russian Federation can intuitively and coherently be associated with each other in the way Max Weber used the term elective affinity (Wahlverwandtschaft) for the perceived associations between economic behavior and religious doctrine.