Tornike Metreveli

Docent (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Religions at Lund University

Title of Research

Sentimental Orthodoxy in Ukraine

Abstract

The project explores theological, political-institutional, and grassroots tensions among Ukraine's main Orthodox churches. By examining transfers between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and the Kyiv Patriarchate, and later between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and UOC-MP, the project reveals why parishioners switched from one church to another, remained loyal, or abstained from religious life. The project examines key factors that explain the rationale behind parishioners' denominational choices and introduces the concept of "sentimental orthodoxy" to explain why conflicting discourses and practices do not result in violence, despite efforts to instrumentalize religious identity.

Biography

Tornike Metreveli is a Docent (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Religions at Lund University. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Bern in 2017 and has held various fellowships at the University of St Gallen, Harvard’s Davis Center, the London School of Economics, and the House of Commons. Metreveli's research focuses on the intersection of nationalism and religion in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. His first book, Orthodox Christianity and the Politics of Transition, discusses the involvement and influence of Orthodox Christianity in political transitions in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia after the collapse of communism. Metreveli was the Principal Investigator of two international research projects examining the responses of Orthodox churches to the pandemic (the results published in his second edited manuscript, Orthodox Christianity and the Covid-19 Pandemic, in press with Routledge) and Territoriality of the Georgian Orthodox Church - toc.ge (for which he won the EU Prize for Journalism).