In Chase of ‘Modern Religiosity’

In the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly spread through the four corners of the world, Christian Orthodox churches were caught in the age-old altercation with science. Tensions condensed around a small material object—the communion spoon—and its potential to transmit the virus. The article examines the ensuing Eucharist-related debates between ‘liberal secularists’ and followers of the Orthodox Church of Georgia: namely, the former’s selective juxtaposition of abstract ‘faith’ against religious practice due to the latter’s alleged incongruity with modernity. The goal of this article is to illuminate the underlying discourse behind these accusations, which in turn draws on the notion of ‘modern religiosity’ informed by post-Reformation ideals.