The Phenomenon of “Diasporic Religion”. The Case of a Third Wave of Ukrainian Immigration

Abstract

The article examines the phenomenon of the diasporic religion, which emerged in the third wave of Ukrainian emigration in the form of the Patriarchal Movement of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Recent studies on the role of the religion in diaspora show that for the first generation of immigrants, Church and religious practices can play an even more significant role in their lives than they have played before. The reason for this is that religion is able to bridge the “gap” in time in space resulted from the emigration and to give the “stable territory” amid the rapidly changing realities. It functions as a transtemporal and translocative tool connecting newly arrived immigrants with their homeland and its history and manifests in different aspects of religious life and practices. All these aspects and practices were fully developed within the Patriarchal Movement which thus can be seen as a Ukrainian case of the phenomenon of the diasporic religion.