Download or read book Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Southeastern Europe written by Lucian N. Leustean and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-07-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nation-building processes in the Orthodox commonwealth brought together political institutions and religious communities in their shared aims of achieving national sovereignty. Chronicling how the churches of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia acquired independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s decline, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe examines the role of Orthodox churches in the construction of national identities. Drawing on archival material available after the fall of communism in southeastern Europe and Russia, as well as material published in Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Russian, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe analyzes the challenges posed by nationalism to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ways in which Orthodox churches engaged in the nationalist ideology.

Download or read book Against Orthodoxy written by Trevor W. Harrison and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Cold War, nationalism fell from favour among theorists as an explanatory factor in history, as Marxists and liberals looked to class and individualism as the driving forces of change. The resurgence of nationalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, called for a reconsideration of the paradigm. Against Orthodoxy uses case studies from around the world to critically evaluate decades of new scholarship. The authors argue that theories of nationalism have ossified into a new set of orthodoxies. These overlook nationalism’s role as a generative force, one that reflects complex historical, political, and cultural arrangements that defy simplistic explanations.

Download or read book For the Peace from Above written by Hildo Bos and published by . This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the early days of the Church, Christians have struggled to come to terms with Christ's words of peace and His example of peace. In Christ's life, as recorded in the New Testament, it is striking that He neither killed anyone nor summoned any of His disciples to kill. Indeed, the final miracle Christ performed before His execution was to heal an enemy's wound, an injury caused by the Apostle Peter in an attempt to defend his master. Yet, in the course of more than twenty centuries of Christian history, we see Christians often involved in war and, in surveying the calendar of saints, find not only those who refused to take part in war but also those who served in the military, though no one has been canonized due to his skill as a soldier. Besides the millions of Christians who have fought in armies, often against fellow Christians, we also find many priests, bishops and theologians who have advocated war and blessed its weapons. Our subject is an urgent one. Many people today live either near conflict areas or are directly touched by war or in areas where terrorist actions may suddenly occur. Everyone on the planet is in some way affected by wars in progress or wars in the making as well as the consequences of wars in the past. Every day thousands of Christians struggle in thought and prayer with some of the most difficult of questions: May I fight injustice by violent methods? Am I allowed to kill in combat? Are there limits on what I can do in the defense of my country? Am I as a Christian allowed to disobey demands that I believe are unjust or violate the Gospel? When the demands of my country seem at odds with the demands of the Kingdom of God, how do I respond to this conflict? Rarely do we find easy answers to these and similar questions. Thus, those of us in the Orthodox Christian tradition search for help in Holy Scripture, the canons provided to us by ecumenical councils, the witness of the saints, the writing of the Fathers of the Church as well as theologians of recent times. Imitation of saintly forebears alone, however, will not solve our problems. Different eras have adopted different attitudes. Also many of today's problems never existed before, not least the changed character of war in an era of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and mass propaganda. Yet knowledge of the thought and action undertaken by the Orthodox Churches on the issues of war and peace in recent decades surely can help us find ways out of the dead ends that many communities are experiencing today. This is the aim of this book.

Download or read book The Making of Holy Russia written by John Strickland and published by Holy Trinity Seminary Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critical study of the interaction between Russian Church and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At a time of rising nationalist movement throughout Europe, Orthodox patriots advocated for the place of the Church as a unifying force, central to the identity and purpose of the burgeoning, yet increasingly religiously diverse Russian Empire. Their views were articulated in a variety of ways. Bishops such as Metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky - a founding hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia - and other members of the clergy expressed their vision of Russia through official publications (including ecclesiastical journals), sermons, the organization of pilgrimages and the canonization of saints. On the other hand, religious intellectuals (such as the famous philosopher Vladimir Soloviev and the controversial former-Marxist Sergey Bulgakov) promoted what was often a variant vision of the nation through the publication of books and articles. Even the once persecuted Old Believers, emboldened by a religious toleration edict of 1905, sought to claim a role in national leadership. And many - in particularly famous painter Mikhail Vasnetsov - looked to art and architecture as a way of defining the religious ideals of modern Russia. Whilst other studies exist that draw attention to the voices in the Church typified as "liberal" in the years leading up to the Revolution, this work introduces the reader to a wide range of "conservative" opinion that equally strove for spiritual renewal and the spread of the Gospel. Ultimately neither the "conservative" voices presented here nor those of their better-known "liberal" protagonists were able to prevent the calamity that befell Russia with the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Grounded in original research conducted in the newly accessible libraries and archives of post-Soviet Russia, this study is intended to reveal the wider relevance of its topic to an ongoing discussion of the relationship between national or ethnic identities on the one hand and the self-understanding of Orthodox Christianity as a universal and transformative Faith on the other.

Download or read book Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe written by Sabrina P. Ramet and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orthodox Churches, like most religious bodies, are inherently political: they seek to defend their core values and must engage in politics to do so, whether by promoting certain legislation or seeking to block other legislation. This volume examines the politics of Orthodox Churches in Southeastern Europe, emphasizing three key modes of resistance to the influence of (Western) liberal values: Nationalism (presenting themselves as protectors of the national being), Conservatism (defending traditional values such as the “traditional family”), and Intolerance (of both non-Orthodox faiths and sexual minorities). The chapters in this volume present case studies of all the Orthodox Churches of the region.

Download or read book Religion and Politics in the Orthodox World written by Paschalis Kitromilides and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the leading centre of spiritual authority in the Orthodox Church, based in Istanbul, coped with political developments from Ottoman times until the present. The book outlines how under the Ottomans, despite difficult circumstances, the Patriarchate managed to draw on its huge symbolic and moral power and organization to uphold the unity and catholicity of the Orthodox Church, how it struggled to do this during the subsequent age of nationalism when churches within new nation-states unilaterally claimed their autonomy reflecting local national demands, and how the church coped in the twentieth century with the rise of nationalist Turkey, the decline of Orthodoxy in Asia Minor and with the Cold War. The book concludes by assessing the current position and future prospects of the Patriarchate in the region and the world.

Download or read book Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth century Southeastern Europe written by Lucian Leuștean and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the impact of nationalism on Orthodox Christianity in nineteenth-century South-Eastern Europe. It analyses the challenges posed by nationalism to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ways in which Orthodox Churches engaged in the nationalist ideology in Greece, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Download or read book Nationalism Globalization and Orthodoxy written by Victor Roudometof and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001-07-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roudometof provides an in-depth sociological analysis of the birth and historical evolution of nationalism in the Balkans. The rise of nationalism in the region is viewed as part of a world-historical process of globalization over the last five centuries. With the growing contacts between the Ottoman Empire and the Western European system, the Eastern Orthodox of the Balkans abandoned the enthoconfessional system of social organization in favor of secular national identities. Prior to 1820, local nationalism was influenced by the Enlightenment, though later it came to be developed on an ethnonational basis. In the post-1830 Balkans, citizenship rights were subordinated to ethnic nationalism, according to which membership to a nation is accorded on the basis of church affiliation and ethnicity. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the discourse of nationhood was institutionalized by the native intelligentsia of the Balkan states. In the first half of the 20th century, the efforts of Balkan states to achieve national homogenization produced interstate rivalry, forced population exchanges, and discrimination against minority groups. While the Cold War helped contain some of these problems, the post-1989 period has seen a return of these issues to the forefront of the Balkan political agenda.

Download or read book Political Orthodoxies written by Cyril Hovorun and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dispatches on nationalism and religion As an insider to church politics and a scholar of contemporary Orthodoxy, Cyril Hovorun outlines forms of political orthodoxy in Orthodox churches, past and present. Hovorun draws a big picture of religion being politicized and even weaponized. While Political Orthodoxies assesses phenomena such as nationalism and anti-Semitism, both widely associated with Eastern Christianity, Hovorun focuses on the theological underpinnings of the culture wars waged in eastern and southern Europe. The issues in these wars include monarchy and democracy, Orientalism and Occidentalism, canonical territory, and autocephaly. Wrought with peril, Orthodox culture wars have proven to turn toward bloody conflict, such as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Accordingly, this book explains the aggressive behavior of Russia toward its neighbors and the West from a religious standpoint. The spiritual revival of Orthodoxy after the collapse of Communism made the Orthodox church in Russia, among other things, an influential political protagonist, which in some cases goes ahead of the Kremlin. Following his identification and analysis, Hovorun suggests ways to bring political Orthodoxy back to the apostolic and patristic track.

Download or read book Russian Orthodoxy Nationalism and the Soviet State during the Gorbachev Years 1985 1991 written by Sophie Kotzer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-22 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the Russian Orthodox Church developed during the period of Gorbachev’s rule in the Soviet Union, a period characterised by perestroika (reform) and glasnost (openness). It charts how official Soviet policy towards religion in general and the Russian Orthodox Church changed, with the Church enjoying significantly improved status. It also discusses, however, how the improved relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the state, and the Patriarchate’s support for Soviet foreign policy goals, its close alignment with Russian nationalism and its role as a guardian of the Soviet Union’s borders were not seen in a positive light by dissidents and by many ordinary believers, who were disappointed by the church’s failure in respect of its social mission, including education and charitable activities.

Download or read book Stalin s Holy War written by Steven Merritt Miner and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Histories of the USSR during World War II generally portray the Kremlin's restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church as an attempt by an ideologically bankrupt regime to appeal to Russian nationalism in order to counter the mortal threat of Nazism. Here, Steven Merritt Miner argues that this version of events, while not wholly untrue, is incomplete. Using newly opened Soviet-era archives as well as neglected British and American sources, he examines the complex and profound role of religion, especially Russian Orthodoxy, in the policies of Stalin's government during World War II. Miner demonstrates that Stalin decided to restore the Church to prominence not primarily as a means to stoke the fires of Russian nationalism but as a tool for restoring Soviet power to areas that the Red Army recovered from German occupation. The Kremlin also harnessed the Church for propaganda campaigns aimed at convincing the Western Allies that the USSR, far from being a source of religious repression, was a bastion of religious freedom. In his conclusion, Miner explores how Stalin's religious policy helped shape the postwar history of the USSR.

Download or read book Containing Balkan Nationalism written by Denis Vovchenko and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing Balkan Nationalism focuses on the implications of the Bulgarian national movement that developed in the context of Ottoman modernization and of European imperialism in the Near East. The movement aimed to achieve the status of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox church, removing ethnic Bulgarians from the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This independent church status meant legal and cultural autonomy within the Islamic structure of the Ottoman Empire, which recognized religious minorities rather than ethnic ones. Denis Vovchenko shows how Russian policymakers, intellectuals, and prelates worked together with the Ottoman government, Balkan and other diplomats, and rival churches, to contain and defuse ethnic conflict among Ottoman Christians through the promotion of supraethnic religious institutions and identities. The envisioned arrangements were often inspired by modern visions of a political and cultural union of Orthodox Slavs and Greeks. Whether realized or not, they demonstrated the strength and flexibility of supranational identities and institutions on the eve of the First World War. The book encourages contemporary analysts and policymakers to explore the potential of such traditional loyalties to defuse current ethnic tensions and serve as organic alternatives to generic models of power-sharing and federation.

Download or read book Nationalism and Orthodoxy written by Teuvo Laitila and published by . This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Making of Holy Russia written by John Strickland and published by Holy Trinity Publications. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critical study of the interaction between the Russian Church and society in the late 19th and early 20th century. While other studies exist that draw attention to the voices in the Church typified as liberal in the years leading up to the Revolution, this work introduces a wide range of conservative opinion that equally strove for spiritual renewal and the spread of the Gospel. Grounded in original research conducted in the newly accessible libraries and archives of post-Soviet Russia, this study is intended to reveal the wider relevance of its topic to an ongoing discussion of the relationship between national or ethnic identities on the one hand, and the self-understanding of Orthodox Christianity as a universal and transformative faith on the other.

Download or read book The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy written by Heather L. Bailey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848-1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the Church as the political tool of despotic tsars. As Heather L. Bailey demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russian Orthodox publicists launched a public relations campaign in the West, especially in France, in the 1850s and 1860s. The linchpin of their campaign was the building of the impressive Saint Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. Bailey posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. At the same time, the confrontation with westerners' negative ideas about the Eastern Church fueled a reformist spirit in Russia while contributing to a better understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West.

Download or read book Orthodox Christianity and the Politics of Transition written by Tornike Metreveli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses in detail how Orthodox Christianity was involved in and influenced political transition in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia after the collapse of communism. Based on original research, including extensive interviews with clergy and parishioners as well as historical, legal, and policy analysis, the book argues that the nature of the involvement of churches in post-communist politics depended on whether the interests of the church (for example, in education, the legal system or economic activity) were accommodated or threatened: if accommodated, churches confined themselves to the sacred domain; if threatened, they engaged in daily politics. If churches competed with each other for organizational interests, they evoked the support of nationalism while remaining within the religious domain.

Download or read book The Power Worshippers written by Katherine Stewart and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the documentary God & Country For readers of Democracy in Chains and Dark Money, a revelatory investigation of the Religious Right's rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America's religious nationalists aren't just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy. Stewart pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and leading personalities of a movement that has turned religion into a tool for domination. She exposes a dense network of think tanks, advocacy groups, and pastoral organizations embedded in a rapidly expanding community of international alliances and united not by any central command but by a shared, anti-democratic vision and a common will to power. She follows the money that fuels this movement, tracing much of it to a cadre of super-wealthy, ultraconservative donors and family foundations. She shows that today's Christian nationalism is the fruit of a longstanding antidemocratic, reactionary strain of American thought that draws on some of the most troubling episodes in America's past. It forms common cause with a globe-spanning movement that seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with nationalist, theocratic and autocratic forms of government around the world. Religious nationalism is far more organized and better funded than most people realize. It seeks to control all aspects of government and society. Its successes have been stunning, and its influence now extends to every aspect of American life, from the White House to state capitols, from our schools to our hospitals. The Power Worshippers is a brilliantly reported book of warning and a wake-up call. Stewart's probing examination demands that Christian nationalism be taken seriously as a significant threat to the American republic and our democratic freedoms.