Abstract
In 2019 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine claimed autocephaly, gaining jurisdictional autonomy from the Russian Orthodox Church. Calling upon rhetorical theories of liturgy, ritual, and sensation, this paper analyzes how the deeply personal, spiritual, and sensorial experiences of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy were restaged in order to facilitate this process. Not only did these changes articulate the further separation of the two churches, but they also highlighted how liturgical practices implicate social and political realities. The paper reflects on the way the embodied rhetoric of religion manages internal and external experiences of division and unity.