“To Be a Real Orthodox”: Religious Identity and Discursive Practices of Authenticity
An ethnographic analysis of the semantics and discursive practices of religious authenticity reveals that the definition of a “real Orthodox» among the Russian immigrants established in Quebec goes beyond the limits of the religious. Rather, the notion of the “real Orthodox» is traversed by cultural, spatial, linguistic, familial and, sometimes, political references. These discursive practices of authenticity play an essential role in immigrant communities as well as in the relations between different religious and cultural groups. They also stabilize the identity that has been rendered fragile by migration, by allowing the Russian Orthodox to establish places of their own in the host country and mark them as Orthodox and Russian, places that are also recognized and respected by the Orthodox of other cultural origins, converts and the Catholic majority.