Holy Civil Society and “the Moral Slump” of the Lithuanian Nation
This essay investigates The Word of Faith, an Evangelical Christian fellowship operating in post-Soviet Lithuania, as a religious “civil society”. It is argued that membership in this society enables Word of Faith followers to claim an ethical distinction vis-à-vis the Lithuanian “nation” seen to be in moral disarray. It is also suggested that, while Christian doctrine provides moral guidance, morality and civility in this church are produce through communal networks of trust, reciprocal exchange, and mutual support – through the practice of bendravimas. The essay challenges classical understandings of civil society by arguing that it need not be secular and that it can be based on principles other than liberal individualism. Among its other objectives is to demonstrate that ethnographic study of civil society in its many manifestations in postsocialism can help us better understand and critique the ongoing transformation in Eastern Europe.