Kryachkov 2!indd

102
Д. А. Крячков
UNIT III
to be/via/as if he were (25) the minister avatar. The bishop avatar is modeled after the bishop of 
London, who provided the sermon for the first service on x/the (26) May 11 and interacted with 
visitors at the church entrance through the avatar. About 60.000/60,000 (27) people visited the 
site the first two days, Goddard said. Now, 10.000/10,000 to 12.000/12,000 come per day.
A/The/X church is somewhere in what Milwaukee thinker, speaker and writer Richard Thieme 
calls sacred digital space. Just as speech, writing and the printing press transformed a/the/x (28) reli-
gion along with the rest of x/the/a (29) society, electronic communication is having a profound effect 
on humane/human (30) identity, said Thieme/Thieme said, a former Episcopal priest who speaks 
and writes about “life on the edges, especially the human dimension of technology and work.”
“We are redefining ourselves, what it means to be humane/human (31),” said Thieme/Thieme 
said. “We really are. And therefore new forms of spirituality will emerge. You couldn’t have pre-
dicted/could not be predicting/couldn’t predict (32) the Reformation, but after it happened you 
could predict that it would happen/would have happened/will happen (33).
“I have not looked to the traditional religious structures to be the place where the new para-
digm is going to emerge, in/by/on (34) definition. Because they’re institutionally committed to 
preserving the old.”
The site’s freedom of expression is a charm/temptation/an attraction (35), even for conven-
tional Christians.
“You’re sitting at home with a keyboard, and you can just type it and send it off and nobody’s 
going to come to your house and knock on the door and say, ‘I disagree with you’ and get into an 
argument with you,” Ryan Burg said/said Ryan Burg, 35, an active member of First Congregational 
United Church of Christ in Sheboygan.
“I’m a seeker. I’m always interested to hear what others have to say about their own life/lives (36) 
and take what they’ve learned and see if I can apply it to who I am. You get people from all over 
the world who come in. If I go to my church, I’m going to be talking to people who come from 
Sheboygan County and have the same values that I do.”
(After Tom Heinen’s “Late for church? Try online” printed in Journal Sentinel)
Ex. 40. Fill in the gaps with any suitable word.
A.
Before the development of increasingly __________ (1) international relations, religion was a 
__________ (2) source of competition and sometimes __________ (3) in many parts of the world. 
By the time of the Treaty of Westphalia, religion was an __________ (4) aspect of European con-
flict, discord and instability, involving rival religious faiths (both __________ (5)-Christian and 
Christianity versus Islam). Over time, however, religion’s __________ (6) for international relations 
appeared to __________ (7) significantly, linked to the __________ (8) of politically centralized, 
increasingly secular states — initially in Western Europe and then via colonialism to much of the 
rest of the world. 
Now religion is back. Once Islamic terrorism __________ (9) religion in the international spot-
light, it suddenly became harder to __________ (10).
One can speak of numerous religious actors in international relations, with various concerns 
that go __________ (11) a narrow focus on religious fundamentalism and anti-modernism.
State-related religious actors. Certain countries, for example, the USA, India, __________ (12) 
and Saudi Arabia, have religious actors enjoying __________ (16) relationships with government. 

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