This project argues for an exploration of how social transformations can be accomodated in a religiuos tradition through the dynamics of alternate modes of religiosity existent in the religious practice. Research is based on  fieldwork in a Soviet suburb of L'viv (Sykhiv), a village in the L'viv oblast (Schyrets) and a new monastic community in Ternopyl oblast (Kolodiivka) between 2003- 2004.

First communion in the center of L'viv - the strong link between nation and religion is somehow accidental nowadays (L'viv, 2004)

In order to account for the richness of contemporary religious life in Ukraine this research started with an investigation of the social processes that characterized the “religious enthusiasm” of early 1990s. Investigating the origins of the current religious pluralism in a Soviet suburb of L’viv (Sykhiv) revealed the successive splitting of one church community into three “new churches” and the social repositioning of formerly banned groups (Greek Catholics, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses) into the now open public spaces. This process of “the making and unmaking of churches” characterizes the “religious revival” period of Ukrainian society (to mid-1990s). The concept of the making of churches describes the formation of new religious groups in local communities and thus the gradual reintegration of religion in the public sphere. Among the mechanisms important in this process were: the splitting of former Orthodox parishes into several confessional groups, the fluctuation of believers and local communities between various  Churches and the accommodation of private practice into public rituals. During these changes religion became associated to other postsocialist transformations as the emergence of national movements or property issues. In recent years, the making of churches has turned into a process of religious institutionalization. Problems of authority, politics of memory and standardization of the ritual grew out of the attempt to consolidate Church structures.  These differentiation mechanisms generated new confessional boundaries between multiple Orthodoxies - a situation which Ukrainians saw as an “anomaly”. Rejecting clear-cut affiliations believers tended to  relate to an imagined Orthodoxy which encompassed the constructed variations.