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Postcolonial Studies, Sociology of Religion, Russian Studies, Soviet History, Subaltern Studies, History of Missions, and 35 moreOrthodox Christianity, Sectarianism, Sov, Gender, Culture, Cultural History, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy Of Religion, Islamic Studies, Geography, Globalization, Gender and Sexuality, Social Movements, International Studies, Islam, Terrorism, Social History, Indonesia, India, Anthropology of Religion, Religious Freedom, Eurasia, Imperial Russia, Sovereignty, Secularization, Russian Orthodoxy, Russia, Hagiography, Religion, Byzantine Liturgy, Eastern Christianity, russian sects, Patristics, Theological Anthropology, and History edit
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The religious studies scholar Bruce Lincoln famously defined myth as “ideology in narrative form” that “naturalizes and legitimizes” social taxonomies. Over two decades, Father Sergii (Romanov), a convicted murderer who turned toreligion... more
The religious studies scholar Bruce Lincoln famously defined myth as “ideology in narrative form” that “naturalizes and legitimizes” social taxonomies. Over two decades, Father Sergii (Romanov), a convicted murderer who turned toreligion while in prison, has used myth to shape his public persona, legitimize his spiritual leadership, cultivate the loyalty of his followers, and articulate a vision of holy Russia that seeks to reconcile the Soviet and imperial pasts. Weaving his personal biography into a narrative of national redemption from the sin of regicide, he has helped construct and lead a complex of monasteries. Drawing on a variety of narratives that emphasize Russian exceptionalism, Sergii and his admirers present the cleric as a divinely appointed emissary to lead their nation to spiritual greatness. Je conspiracy theories that support this worldview have also encouraged Sergii to denounce both secular and ecclesiastical authorities and to reject public health measures desig...
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The rise and fall of the priest-monk Father Sergii (Nikolai Vasil’evich Romanov), who was sentenced in November 2021 to 42 months imprisonment for vigilantism and other crimes, illustrates Russia’s struggle to create a convincing national... more
The rise and fall of the priest-monk Father Sergii (Nikolai Vasil’evich Romanov), who was sentenced in November 2021 to 42 months imprisonment for vigilantism and other crimes, illustrates Russia’s struggle to create a convincing national narrative that can bring together the imperial and Soviet pasts. For 15 years, as the spiritual confessor of the Sredneural’sk Convent of the Icon of Our Lady, Grower of Crops, Sergii fashioned a “usable past” for those Orthodox nationalists who wanted to celebrate the glories of both the imperial and the Stalinist periods. In his hardline sermons, disseminated via YouTube, Telegram, and VKontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook), Sergii reconciled the irreconcilable: Orthodoxy and Stalinism.
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The religious studies scholar Bruce Lincoln famously defined myth as “ideology in narrative form” that “naturalizes and legitimizes” social taxonomies. Over two decades, Father Sergii (Romanov), a convicted murderer who turned to religion... more
The religious studies scholar Bruce Lincoln famously defined myth as “ideology in narrative form” that “naturalizes and legitimizes” social taxonomies. Over two decades, Father Sergii (Romanov), a convicted murderer who turned to religion while in prison, has used myth to shape his public persona, legitimize his spiritual leadership, cultivate the loyalty of his followers, and articulate a vision of holy Russia that seeks to reconcile the Soviet and imperial pasts. Weaving his personal biography into a narrative of national redemption from the sin of regicide, he has helped construct and lead a complex of monasteries. Drawing on a variety of narratives that emphasize Russian exceptionalism, Sergii and his admirers present the cleric as a divinely appointed emissary to lead their nation to spiritual greatness. Je conspiracy theories that support this worldview have also encouraged Sergii to denounce both secular and ecclesiastical authorities and to reject public health measures designed to stem the coronavirus pandemic. Despite his revolt against his bishop, Sergii remained in control of his convent until his dramatic arrest on 29 December 2020. Jis article analyzes some of Sergii’s most significant narratives, traces their origins, and weighs their social implications.
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Over the last decade, the Russian Federation has turned sharply away from the secular foundations of its 1993 constitution and moved toward the model of a confessional state — a model that strikingly resembles the state-sponsored... more
Over the last decade, the Russian Federation has turned sharply away from the secular foundations of its 1993 constitution and moved toward the model of a confessional state — a model that strikingly resembles the state-sponsored hierarchy of religions in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire. Increasingly, the Russian state actively cooperates with certain favored religious organizations, labeled “traditional,” to achieve its social and political goals. One of the clearest manifestations of this developing relationship between the state and “traditional” religious institutions is the Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics, a new national program of spiritual and moral education for the public schools. Since September 2012, all pupils in fourth and fifth grades must take a total of 34 hours of the Fundamentals, designed to promote religious tolerance, patriotism and morality. In their current form, the Fundamentals represent a compromise between advocates of confessionalization, who argue for the benefits of greater religious influence on the state, and strict secularists.
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In his influential work The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz offered a semiotic approach to religious studies by defining religion as a symbolic sys tem.1 Although more recently, some sociologists have criticized Geertz's... more
In his influential work The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz offered a semiotic approach to religious studies by defining religion as a symbolic sys tem.1 Although more recently, some sociologists have criticized Geertz's entire approach to culture for being too all-encompassing or failing to account for contested values, Geertz's explicit comparison of religion to means of communication, especially language, suggests a fruitful research agenda for the study of Russian religion. itself. The conversations and arguments between Orthodox missionaries and the pomortsy, the eschatological debates among the Perm' Old Believers, and the internal logic of the theological systems each played its role in the evolution of these religions
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Since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy has increasingly become the captive of its nationalist and fundamentalist wing. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the remarkable career... more
Since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy has increasingly become the captive of its nationalist and fundamentalist wing. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the remarkable career and dramatic downfall of the priest and monk Sergii (Nikolai Vasil’evich Romanov, b. 1955), a former policeman and convicted murderer who embraced Orthodoxy in the 1990s while serving his 13-year prison term in a colony near the city of Ekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains.
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In this issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, eight authors explore Eastern Christian communities from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Originating as papers presented at the sixth biennial conference of the Association... more
In this issue of Canadian-American Slavic Studies, eight authors explore Eastern Christian communities from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Originating as papers presented at the sixth biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture (http://easternchristianity.org) at Rhodes College in 2015, these articles have been carefully selected for their original contributions and revised for publication. From disputes over monastic landholding in the sixteenth century to the vicious persecutions of the Soviet period, Eastern Christians have responded creatively to historical crises, even as they have faced both internal and external conflicts. These thought-provoking essays provide significant analyses of these responses and offer penetrating insights into Eastern Christianity.
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In the 1670s, from his underground prison in Pustozersk, the Old Believer leader Archpriest Avvakum, misled by Anglican propaganda, equated the “Quaker heresy” with bestiality. Decades later, the Russian sought to eradicate a religious... more
In the 1670s, from his underground prison in Pustozersk, the Old Believer leader Archpriest Avvakum, misled by Anglican propaganda, equated the “Quaker heresy” with bestiality. Decades later, the Russian sought to eradicate a religious movement that it mislabeled the “Quaker heresy” (better known as the khlysty or flagellants): two special commissions in 1733–1739 and 1745–1756 arrested, imprisoned, and exiled hundreds of peasants and townsmen who had participated in secret meetings, where they prayed, danced, prophesied, and spoke in tongues. Rather than destroy the movement, however, exile only encouraged the spread of the “heresy” into Russia’s eastern frontier. By 1760 the “heresy” had appeared in Viatka and Tobol’sk dioceses, where the Ukrainian metropolitans Varfolomei (Liubarskii) and Pavel (Koniuskevich) tried to eliminate it, without much success. Using printed and archival sources, this article examines the Siberian “Quakers” and the discourse surrounding them; the portray...
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Law and Church and State
A prodigal saint. Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian people . By Nadieszda Kizenko. (The Penn State Series in Lived Religious Experience. Studies of the Harriman Institute.) Pp. xiv+377 incl. frontispiece and 13 figs. University Park, P A: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. £16....more
... Russia for today is the center of the universe. The fate of the whole world de-pends on our fatherland, on us, you and me. In 1917 in the tiny Portuguese hamlet of Fatima, the Queen gave her revelation about Russia to the Catholics. ...
Russia’s expansion to the south in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encouraged the development of new, dynamic religious movements, including Spiritual Christianity. Represented today by the two important Russian religious... more
Russia’s expansion to the south in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encouraged the development of new, dynamic religious movements, including Spiritual Christianity. Represented today by the two important Russian religious traditions of the Dukhobors and the Molokans, Spiritual Christianity first appears in archival documents from the 1760s in the black-earth provinces of Voronezh and Tambov. Holding to a radical eschatology that predicted the imminent return of Christ, these original Spiritual Christians rejected the priests, sacraments, and icons of the Orthodox Church, and instead introduced the practice of venerating one another, for each person was created in the true image of God. The remoteness of Tambov and Voronezh initially made the provinces more hospitable to different religious ideas and practices in the seventeenth century. But as the frontier closed in the black-earth region, new institutions of social control, such as the Tambov diocesan consistory, began policing religious and cultural practices in Tambov and Voronezh. At the same time, the closing of the frontier also led to the decline of the smallholders, who lost their service rank and were increasingly integrated into the state peasantry. This unhappy social group comprised a large percentage of the Spiritual Christians, who so decisively rejected the state church. After Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War, many Spiritual Christians moved to the new frontiers of New Russia.
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At the end of Russia’s old regime, the transformation of society initiated by the Great Reforms of the 1860s had also transformed the Orthodox Church. After the Emancipation, former serfs found new opportunities as laborers, factory... more
At the end of Russia’s old regime, the transformation of society initiated
by the Great Reforms of the 1860s had also transformed the Orthodox
Church. After the Emancipation, former serfs found new opportunities
as laborers, factory workers, entrepreneurs, and even priests, monks, and holy men. Vasilii Karpovich Podgornyi was one such serf who, after Emancipation, became a successful businessman. Inspired by traditional piety he used his entrepreneurial skills to create networks of religious communities, primarily composed of pious women. Podgornyi’s remarkable success sharply split the church hierarchy. Some conservative hierarchs regarded this former serf as a suspicious figure, a pervert who took advantage of his female followers. Because of such accusations, Podgornyi spent ten years in a monastic prison. Other clergy, including Podgornyi’s monastic jailers, became his strong advocates and ultimately succeeded in seeing him freed from prison. Podgornyi’s movement, however, remained controversial and illustrates the sharp social tensions within the church before the Bolshevik Revolution.
by the Great Reforms of the 1860s had also transformed the Orthodox
Church. After the Emancipation, former serfs found new opportunities
as laborers, factory workers, entrepreneurs, and even priests, monks, and holy men. Vasilii Karpovich Podgornyi was one such serf who, after Emancipation, became a successful businessman. Inspired by traditional piety he used his entrepreneurial skills to create networks of religious communities, primarily composed of pious women. Podgornyi’s remarkable success sharply split the church hierarchy. Some conservative hierarchs regarded this former serf as a suspicious figure, a pervert who took advantage of his female followers. Because of such accusations, Podgornyi spent ten years in a monastic prison. Other clergy, including Podgornyi’s monastic jailers, became his strong advocates and ultimately succeeded in seeing him freed from prison. Podgornyi’s movement, however, remained controversial and illustrates the sharp social tensions within the church before the Bolshevik Revolution.
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Modern Marian apparitions have often responded to vari
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Russia's expansion to the south in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encouraged the development of new, dynamic religious movements, including Spiritual Christianity. Represented today by the two important Russian religious... more
Russia's expansion to the south in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encouraged the development of new, dynamic religious movements, including Spiritual Christianity. Represented today by the two important Russian religious traditions of the Dukhobors and the Molokans, Spiritual Christianity first appears in archival documents from the 1760s in the black-earth provinces of Voronezh and Tambov. Holding to a radical eschatology that predicted the imminent return of Christ, these original Spiritual Christians rejected the priests, sacraments, and icons of the Orthodox Church, and instead introduced the practice of venerating one another, for each person was created in the true image of God. The remoteness of Tambov and Voronezh initially made the provinces more hospitable to different religious ideas and practices in the seventeenth century. But as the frontier closed in the black-earth region, new institutions of social control, such as the Tambov diocesan consistory, began policing religious and cultural practices in Tambov and Voronezh. At the same time, the closing of the frontier also led to the decline of the smallholders, who lost their service rank and were increasingly integrated into the state peasantry. This unhappy social group comprised a large percentage of the Spiritual Christians, who so decisively rejected the state church. After Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War, many Spiritual Christians moved to the new frontiers of New Russia.
Over the last decade, the Russian Federation has turned sharply away from the secular foundations of its 1993 constitution and moved toward the model of a confessional state — a model that strikingly resembles the state-sponsored... more
Over the last decade, the Russian Federation has turned sharply away from the secular foundations of its 1993 constitution and moved toward the model of a confessional state — a model that strikingly resembles the state-sponsored hierarchy of religions in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire. Increasingly, the Russian state actively cooperates with certain favored religious organizations, labeled “traditional,” to achieve its social and political goals. One of the clearest manifestations of this developing relationship between the state and “traditional” religious institutions is the Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics, a new national program of spiritual and moral education for the public schools. Since September 2012, all pupils in fourth and fifth grades must take a total of 34 hours of the Fundamentals, designed to promote religious tolerance, patriotism and morality. In their current form, the Fundamentals represent a compromise between advocates of confessionalization, who argue for the benefits of greater religious influence on the state, and strict secularists.
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Metropolitan Filaret (Vasilii Mikhailovich Drozdov), who reigned over the important diocese of Moscow and Kolomna from 1826 until his death over forty years later, played an outsized role in nineteenth-century Russia in both... more
Metropolitan Filaret (Vasilii Mikhailovich Drozdov), who reigned over the important diocese of Moscow and Kolomna from 1826 until his death over forty years later, played an outsized role in nineteenth-century Russia in both ecclesiastical and political circles. Controversial in his own time, Filaret provoked strong responses from his contemporaries. The revolutionary émigré Aleksandr Herzen portrayed him as the
sycophant of his imperial masters; the historian Sergei Solov΄ev, as an arrogant and cruel authoritarian, out of touch with his surroundings; and the devout journalist Nikolai Sushkov, as a wise spiritual elder. An enigmatic figure, Filaret both promoted autocratic rule and edited the official announcement of the emancipation of the serfs. He defended the prerogatives of the state church, even as he called for complete obedience to the tsar. He championed the translation of the Bible into Russian and actively worked with Protestants and Catholics in educational and philanthropic endeavors, while he staunchly opposed Protestant and Catholic missions in the Caucasus. After the fall of the USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Filaret in 1994, prompting a flood of hagiographical works about the metropolitan. Despite his significance, American historians have largely ignored him. Until the publication of the book under review, the major biography of Filaret in English was Robert L. Nichols’s unpublished PhD dissertation, “Metropolitan Filaret and the Awakening of Orthodoxy,” written
in 1972. To correct this neglect, Nicholas Racheotes, emeritus professor of history at Framingham State University, has written Filaret’s intellectual biography.
sycophant of his imperial masters; the historian Sergei Solov΄ev, as an arrogant and cruel authoritarian, out of touch with his surroundings; and the devout journalist Nikolai Sushkov, as a wise spiritual elder. An enigmatic figure, Filaret both promoted autocratic rule and edited the official announcement of the emancipation of the serfs. He defended the prerogatives of the state church, even as he called for complete obedience to the tsar. He championed the translation of the Bible into Russian and actively worked with Protestants and Catholics in educational and philanthropic endeavors, while he staunchly opposed Protestant and Catholic missions in the Caucasus. After the fall of the USSR, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Filaret in 1994, prompting a flood of hagiographical works about the metropolitan. Despite his significance, American historians have largely ignored him. Until the publication of the book under review, the major biography of Filaret in English was Robert L. Nichols’s unpublished PhD dissertation, “Metropolitan Filaret and the Awakening of Orthodoxy,” written
in 1972. To correct this neglect, Nicholas Racheotes, emeritus professor of history at Framingham State University, has written Filaret’s intellectual biography.
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Drawing on a wide range of rare printed and archival sources, James White has written an important book about the Russian Orthodox institution of edinoverie (unity in faith), an effort to heal the seventeenth-century schism provoked by... more
Drawing on a wide range of rare printed and archival sources, James White has written an important book about the Russian Orthodox institution of edinoverie (unity in faith), an effort to heal the seventeenth-century schism provoked by the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon (Nikita Minin, r. 1652-1658) of Moscow. The Old Believers (staroobriadtsy, starovery), who had refused to accept the reforms, were anathematized at the Moscow Council of 1666-1667; separated from the state church, which they regarded as heretical, the Old Believers formed their own ecclesiastical communities that continued to follow the pre-Nikonian rituals and books. Initially, state and church severely persecuted all religious dissent, but by the mid-eighteenth century, Russian authorities tried more tolerant policies to govern their large numbers of Old Believer subjects. Edinoverie represented one of the most long-lasting of these policies. Formally created in 1800 by Emperor Paul (r. 1796-1801) and Metropolitan Platon (Pëtr Georgievich Lëvshin, r. 1775-1812) of Moscow, edinoverie provided a way for Old Believers to legally practice their faith and the old rituals—as long as they accepted the authority of the state church. Under the aegis of official Orthodoxy, the edinovertsy observed the pre-Nikonian rites celebrated by their own elected priests in their own consecrated churches.
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In this beautifully written and important book Patrick Michelson contends that for many Russian Orthodox hierarchs today, “asceticism is generally considered to be the practice of national and confessional identity, a method of life that... more
In this beautifully written and important book Patrick Michelson contends that for many Russian Orthodox hierarchs today, “asceticism is generally considered to be the practice of national and confessional identity, a method of life that both generates and embodies a specifically Russian Orthodox mind-set” (4). For these thinkers, to be Russian is to be Orthodox and to be Orthodox is to be ascetic. Russian Orthodox asceticism is often contrasted favorably to the corrupt ideologies associated with the West—individualism, sexual license, secularism, or capitalism.
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Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University The Harriman Institute, Columbia University, sponsors the Studies of the Harriman Institute in the belief that their publication contributes to scholarly research and public... more
Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University The Harriman Institute, Columbia University, sponsors the Studies of the Harriman Institute in the belief that their publication contributes to scholarly research and public understanding. In this way, the Institute, while not ...
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From shape-shifting Merlin to the homunculi of Paracelsus, the nine fascinating essays of this collection explore the contested boundaries between human and non-human animals, between the body and the spirit, and between the demonic and... more
From shape-shifting Merlin to the homunculi of Paracelsus, the nine fascinating essays of this collection explore the contested boundaries between human and non-human animals, between the body and the spirit, and between the demonic and the divine. Drawing on recent work in animal studies, posthumanism, and transhumanism, these innovative articles show how contemporary debates about the nature and future of humanity have deep roots in the myths, literature, philosophy, and art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The authors of these essays demonstrate how classical stories of monsters and metamorphoses offered philosophers, artists, and poets a rich source for reflection on marriage, resurrection, and the passions of love. The ambiguous and shifting distinctions between human, animal, demon, and angel have long been contentious. Beasts can elevate humanity: for Renaissance courtiers, horsemanship defined nobility. But animals are also associated with the demonic, and medieval illuminators portrayed Satan with bestial features. Divided into three sections that examine metamorphoses, human-animal relations, and the demonic and monstrous, this volume raises intriguing questions about the ways humans have understood their kinship with animals, nature, and the supernatural.
J. Eugene Clay is an associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, where he writes and lectures about religious movements in Eurasia and the encounters of the world religions. His work has appeared in Church History, Russian History/Histoire russe, and the Cahiers du monde russe. He has received grants and awards from the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the International Research and Exchanges Board.
J. Eugene Clay is an associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, where he writes and lectures about religious movements in Eurasia and the encounters of the world religions. His work has appeared in Church History, Russian History/Histoire russe, and the Cahiers du monde russe. He has received grants and awards from the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the International Research and Exchanges Board.
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Art History, Medieval Literature, Renaissance History, Medieval History, Animal Studies, and 12 moreChivalry (Chivalry), Paracelsus (Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus von Hohenheim), Medieval Bestiaries, Bodily Resurrection, John Scottus Eriugena, Merlin (Sorcerer), Metamorphosis, William Rufus, Horsemanship, Renaissance French poetry, Thomas Bradwardine, and Temptation of Jesus
"Мистический опыт в русских религиозных движениях". Сборник материалов круглого стола (АИЭМ, РХГА, 27 апреля 2018 г.).