Reform and Revival in Moscow Orthodox Communities

2020

Orthodoxy has achieved a large-scale revival in Russia following the collapse of Communism. However, paradoxically, although there is a high level of identification with Orthodoxy, there is in fact a low level of church attendance. This book, based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, explores the social background and moral attitudes of the "little flock" of believers who actively participate in religious life. It reveals that the complex moral beliefs of the faithful have a disproportionately high impact on Russian society overall; that among the faithful there is a strong emphasis on striving for personal perfection; but that also there are strong collective ideas concerning religious nationalism and the synergy between the secular and the religious.

Barbara Martin and Nadezhda Beliakova (ed.), Religious Life in the Late Soviet Union: From Survival to Revival" (London, Routledge), 2023

Based on oral history interviews, this chapter examines youth religiosity among Russian Orthodox converts in the 1970s–1980s. Born for the most part in non-religious families or having turned away from religion in their school years, many young people with higher education found faith and turned to Russian Orthodoxy during this period. They had come to regard Communist ideology as an empty shell, with a performative dimension emptied of any content, and they searched for new life meaning, holistic world conceptions, and identities. Despite the authorities’ measures to stem youth religiosity, the lack of available religious literature, and the ban on religious teaching, young converts went to great lengths to gain religious knowledge and find masters and teachers. This chapter argues that the new converts created a kind of “parallel polis” not only within society but also largely within the Russian Orthodox Church. Three dimensions of this phenomenon are examined: the circulation of religious samizdat and tamizdat (literature imported from the West); the creation of underground religious seminars and Bible study and prayer circles; and the visit of monasteries and contacts with venerable monks, the startsy.

2007

Hedda analyzes the ideas and activities of the parish clergy serving in St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, in order to discover how the Russian Orthodox Church responded theologically and pastorally to the profound social, economic, and cultural changes that transformed Russia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The challenges of modernity forced the Orthodox clergy, like other members of educated society, to re-examine their interpretation of the church's earthly mission and their own role in fulfilling it. During the mid-19th century, Orthodox theologians began to argue that the church had a responsibility to society as well as to individuals, and to assert that its mission was to lead believers in building a society that manifested the gospel principles of love, mercy, charity, and justice.The idea of creating "the kingdom of God" on earth inspired many clergymen, who dramatically increased their social outreach work in the last two decades of the...

Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2018

The paper highlights the role of communities of monks and nuns (the Third Orders) in the structure and activity of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which functioned underground. It is emphasized that the historical roots of the Third Order are traced back to the 13th century when spiritual life of specific lay communities was regulated by the Franciscan and the Dominican Orders, and later, by the Carmelite Order. Between 1900 and 1930s lay communities of the UGCC became noticeably active. A characteristic example of their activity is the well known Rules for laypersons of the Basilian Order drawn by Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky. In the 1970s (the Soviet time, when the UGCC worked underground), there appeared the Redemptorist and the Basilian Third Orders in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Their members kept in safety different cult objects, held underground Divine Services, meetings, had spiritual practices, did catechesis, etc. On the whole, these lay communities had played an important role in the UGCC underground activity up till the late 1980s. Keywords: the Third Order, Tertiaries, UGCC, Precarpathian region.

Orthodox Revivalism in Russia. Driving Forces and Moral Quests, 2021

Orthodoxy has achieved a large-scale revival in Russia following the collapse of Communism. However, paradoxically, although there is a high level of identification with Orthodoxy, there is in fact a low level of church attendance. This book, based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, explores the social background and moral attitudes of the "little flock" of believers who actively participate in religious life. It reveals that the complex moral beliefs of the faithful have a disproportionately high impact on Russian society overall; that among the faithful there is a strong emphasis on striving for personal perfection; but that also there are strong collective ideas concerning religious nationalism and the synergy between the secular and the religious.

2014

This book tells the remarkable story of the decline and revival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first half of the twentieth century and the astonishing U-turn in the attitude of the Soviet Union’s leaders towards the church. In the years after 1917 the Bolsheviks’ anti-religious policies, the loss of the former western territories of the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union’s isolation from the rest of the world and the consequent separation of Russian emigrés from the church were disastrous for the church, which declined very significantly in the 1920s and 1930s. However, when Poland was partitioned in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin allowed the Patriarch of Moscow, Sergei, jurisdiction over orthodox congregations in the conquered territories and went on, later, to encourage the church to promote patriotic activities as part of the resistance to the Nazi invasion. He agreed a Concordat with the church in 1943, and continued to encourage the church, especially its claims to jurisdiction over émigré Russian orthodox churches, in the immediate postwar period. Based on extensive original research, the book puts forward a great deal of new information and overturns established thinking on many key points.

Political Theology, 2018

2017

This book explores the changes underwent by the Orthodox Churches of Eastern and Southeastern Europe as they came into contact with modernity. The movements of religious renewal among Orthodox believers appeared almost simultaneously in different areas of Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth and during the first decades of the twentieth century. This volume examines what could be defined as renewal movement in Eastern Orthodox traditions. Some case studies include the God Worshippers in Serbia, religious fraternities in Bulgaria, the Zoe movement in Greece, the evangelical movement among Romanian Orthodox believers known as Oastea Domnului (The Lord’s Army), the Doukhobors in Russia, and the Maliovantsy in Ukraine. This volume provides a new understanding of processes of change in the spiritual landscape of Orthodox Christianity and various influences such as other non-Orthodox traditions, charismatic leaders, new religious practices and rituals.