COLLECTIVE LIFE AS THE GROUND OF IMPLICIT RELIGION - THE CASE OF AMERICAN CONVERTS TO RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY

Evidence from nearly every facet of our world indicates that we live at a transition time. The postmodern world implies fragmentation and the lack of a grand narrative. As traditions - including religious ones - crumble, the effort among believers to find a home for their implicit religion becomes more acute. Recent studies seems to indicate that the need for the sacred is not disappearing but rather gaining different forms of explicit expression. This article looks at a group of converts to the Orthodox Church in America to illustrate the effect of collective life on creating and sustaining a meaningful belief system that interacts with the implicit religion of its members. Their stories show that the product of a collective experience (the group's collective conscience) becomes greater than its component parts (the individuals), and that this may be the way for individuals to recover a grand narrative involving the sacred in postmodern times.