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This volume contains selected papers presented at a conference on Orthodox Christianity and its contemporary European setting. The conference was held in England, at the University of Leeds, in June 2001 and drew together historians, theologians, philosophers, specialists in theological education and political scientists. Countries with an Orthodox Christian history were well represented, as well as Orthodoxy in the diaspora and other Christian confessions by representatives from Western Europe and the United States and Canada. The coherence of Orthodox Christianity and contemporary threats to its coherence formed one main strand for reflection, but discussion also broadened out to consider ...
This book examines the religious character of Nikos Kazantzakis’ literary work. The author of famous novels like Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified, Captain Michalis and The Last Temptation, as well as the programmatic essay Asceticism: The Saviours of God and the monumental Odyssey, wrestled with the numinous nearly lifelong. Though raised in and saturated with the liturgical and spiritual tradition of the Orthodox Church, he soon dissociated himself from the ecclesiastical establishment of his youth and searched for a new form of religion. A passionate ‘hunter’, he sought out the absolute truth and definitive redemption. In his quest for ‘God’, his steady and farthest goal was the incessant search for freedom – even freedom to such an extent as freedom from the liberator! Yet the Greek Orthodox inheritance has influenced his work to a quite considerable extent. He held on to various Christian elements which appealed to him, although he filled them in with altered contents. This especially concerns the emphasis on asceticism, the Cretan religious popular culture, the language of Scripture, various liturgical rituals as well as Byzantine hymnody and iconography.
This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of Eastern Christian churches in Europe, the Middle East, America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it examines both Orthodox and Oriental churches from the end of the Cold War up to the present day. The book offers a unique insight into the myriad church-state relations in Eastern Christianity and tackles contemporary concerns, opportunities and challenges, such as religious revival after the fall of communism; churches and democracy; relations between Orthodox, Catholic and Greek Catholic churches; religious education and monastic life; the size and structure of congregations; and the impact of migration, secularisation and globalisation on Eastern Christianity in the twenty-first century.
This book reexamines the concepts of fundamentalism and religious Orthodoxy in the contemporary world. It brings together twelve essays by some of the leading scholars on Orthodox Christianity that explore the relationship between Orthodoxy and fundamentalist ideas and practices, both in countries and regions where Orthodox Christianity has been the dominant and traditional faith, and in the “New World,” where Orthodox Christian communities constitute a minority. The main issues that the contributors explore include fundamentalism as a religious and ideological phenomenon, the relationship between fundamentalism, traditionalism and modernity, fundamentalism in the contemporary Orthodox world, fundamentalist responses to the issues of modernization, pluralism, and democracy, Orthodox Christian responses to political liberalism and secularism, and Orthodox theology and the construction of the (fundamentalist) self.
A broad discussion about how history and religion contribute to identity politics in contemporary Europe, this book provides case studies exemplifying how public intellectuals and academics have taken an active part in the construction of recent and traditional pasts. Instead of repeating the simplistic explanation as a return of religion, this volume focuses on public platforms and agents and their use of religion as a political and cultural argument. Filled with previously unpublished data gathered from texts, interviews, field observations, artifacts, and material culture, this record challenges stereotypical images of East and Southeast Europe.
The relationship between tradition and innovation in Orthodox Christianity has often been problematic, filled with tensions and contradictions starting from the Byzantine era and running through the 19th and 20th centuries. For a long period of time scholars have typically assumed Greek Orthodoxy to be a static religious tradition with little room for renewal or change. Although this public perception continues, the immutability of the Greek Orthodox tradition has been questioned by several scholars over the past few years. This book continues this line of reasoning, but brings it into the centre of contemporary discussion. Presenting case studies from different periods of history up to the present day, the authors trace different aspects in the development of innovation and renewal in Orthodox Christianity in the Greek-speaking world and among the Diaspora.
This volume maps the international academic debate on secularity. It places seminal contributions from within 'Western' academia alongside less well-known texts from various parts of the world; in several cases this is the first time that they have been translated into English. The volume demonstrates that the academic debate on secularity was and is a global debate, with contributions from many regions. The collected texts relate to each other either directly or indirectly by referring to similar arguments - whether reinforcing or criticising them - and thus create a discourse. When speaking of global secularity, we therefore do not insinuate a uniform 'world secularity' resulting from the ...
Religion and nationalism are both powerful and important markers of individual identity, but the relationship between the two has been a source of considerable debate. Much, if not most, of the early work done in Nationalism Studies has been based, at least implicitly, on the idea that religion, as a genealogical carrier of identity, was displaced with the advent of secular modernity, which was caused by nationalism. Or, to put it another way, national identity, and its ideological manifestation nationalism, filled the void left in people’s self-identification as religion retreated in the face of modernity. Since at least the late 1990s, this view has been increasingly challenged by schola...
The Moralist International analyzes the role of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state in the global culture wars over gender and reproductive rights and religious freedom. It shows how the Russian Orthodox Church in the past thirty years first acquired knowledge about the dynamics, issues, and strategies of Right- Wing Christian groups; how the Moscow Patriarchate has shaped its traditionalist agenda accordingly; and how the close alliance between church and state has turned Russia into a norm entrepreneur for international moral conservativism. Including detailed case studies of the World Congress of Families, anti-abortion activism, and the global homeschooling movement, the bo...
Do the terms ?pagan? and ?Christian,? ?transition from paganism to Christianity? still hold as explanatory devices to apply to the political, religious and cultural transformation experienced Empire-wise? Revisiting ?pagans? and ?Christians? in Late Antiquity has been a fertile site of scholarship in recent years: the paradigm shift in the interpretation of the relations between ?pagans? and ?Christians? replaced the old ?conflict model? with a subtler, complex approach and triggered the upsurge of new explanatory models such as multiculturalism, cohabitation, cooperation, identity, or group cohesion. This collection of essays, inscribes itself into the revisionist discussion of pagan-Christ...