The Russian Church in Modernity

That dreary class of human beings called American political pundits has already been aflutter for some time wondering about (and in some more appalling cases openly cheerleading for) war with Russia over Ukraine. So expect to hear a lot more about Russia in 2022, and with it the Russian Orthodox Church, whose stance on any further escalation in the war with Ukraine (started, n.b., in 2014 by a unilateral invasion and annexation of Crimea) will bear watching closely. 

The Russian Church's encounter with "modernity," from the end of the Romanovs through Stalin and later dictators, to the Putin era, is not always straightforward. Reputable scholars know to tread carefully. Regina Elsner is one such scholar, and has, at the end of December, given us a brand new book which I learned about when happily perusing the catalogue of Columbia University Press before Christmas. In it I spy The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity: A Historical and Theological Investigation into Eastern Christianity between Unity and Plurality (Ibidem Press, Dec. 2021), 440pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) faced various iterations of modernization throughout its history. This conflicted encounter continues in the ROC’s current resistance against―what it perceives as―Western modernity including liberal and secular values. This study examines the historical development of the ROC’s arguments against―and sometimes preferences for―modernization and analyzes which positions ended up influencing the official doctrine. The book’s systematic analysis of dogmatic treatises shows the ROC’s considerable ability of constructive engagement with various aspects of the modern world. Balancing between theological traditions of unity and plurality, the ROC’s today context of operating within an authoritarian state appears to tip the scale in favor of unity.

Christianity and Islam in Post-Soviet Russia

When I teach, as I do every semester, my course on Eastern Christian encounters with Islam, I love the time we spend on Russia for it gives me a chance to upend a lot of silly notions that American Christians have about Russia, Russian Orthodoxy, and Islam, including in its Russian embodiment and context where there are many notably different practices from Islamic life in, say, the Arabic world. A recent book helps us further appreciate the unique challenges in the Russian context: Languages of Islam and Christianity in Post-Soviet Russia by Gulnaz Sibgatullina (Brill, 2020), 230pp. About this book the publisher tells us this: 

In her book, Gulnaz Sibgatullina examines the intricate relationship of religion, identity and language-related beliefs against the background of socio-political changes in post-Soviet Russia. Focusing on the Russian and Tatar languages, she explores how they simultaneously serve the needs of both Muslims and Christians living in the country today. 

Mapping linguistic strategies of missionaries, converts and religious authorities, Sibgatullina demonstrates how sacred vocabulary in each of the languages is being contested by a variety of social actors, often with competing agendas. These linguistic collisions not only affect meanings of the religious lexicon in Tatar and Russian but also drive a gradual convergence of Russia's Islam and Christianity. 

Arabic Christianity: Between the Ottomans and Europeans

The historical experiences of, and current realities lived by, Arabic Christians continue to fascinate me. Happily a new book further unfolds this world for us: Arabic Christianity between the Ottoman Levant and Eastern Europe, being the third volume in the series Arabic Christianity, eds. Ioana Feodorov, Bernard Heyberger, and Samuel Noble (Brill, 2021), 384pp. 

About this international scholarly collection, the publisher tells us this:

This volume sheds light on the historical background and political circumstances that encouraged the dialogue between Eastern-European Christians and Arabic-speaking Christians of the Middle East in Ottoman times, as well as the means employed in pursuing this dialogue for several centuries. The ties that connected Eastern European Christianity with Arabic-speaking Christians in the 16th-19th centuries are the focus of this book. Contributors address the Arabic-speaking hierarchs’ and scholars’ connections with patriarchs and rulers of Constantinople, the Romanian Principalities, Kyiv, and the Tsardom of Moscow, the circulation of literature, models, iconography, and knowhow between the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and research dedicated to them by Eastern European scholars. 

Russians Atop Mt. Athos

The attraction that Mt. Athos poses recently to a lot of people, including American journalists, is actually nothing new. It has long roots--very long roots, according to a book that is coming out next month: Russian Monks on Mount Athos: The Thousand Year History of St Panteleimon's by Nicholas Fennell PhD (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, Sept. 2021).

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Holy Mountain of Athos is a self-governing monastic republic on a peninsula in Northern Greece. Standing on the shores of the Aegean Sea is one of the twenty ruling monasteries that comprise the republic, that of St Panteleimon, known in Greek as the Rossikon. Its building, fully restored in recent years, can accommodate up to 5,000 men, reflecting the scale of the settlement at its apogee in the nineteenth century and prior to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 the monastery has experienced a strong revival and is now among the most numerous of the twenty. But the vast buildings that can be seen today are a reflection of only the past two centuries. That the Russian presence on Athos goes back more than one thousand years is much less well known.

This book is the first comprehensive account in the English language of this millennium of history. The author has been able to draw from previously inaccessible archival materials in gathering the wealth of information he shares in this work. The history of the community is not described in geographical isolation but shown as interacting with the much wider worlds of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and the modern nation state of Greece, together with that of the Russian homeland whose political character is constantly evolving. There are shown to be three distinct phases in this history: 

--from the tenth to the twelfth centuries when Russian Athonites inhabited the ancient Russian Lavra of the Mother of God, also known as Xylourgou;

--then the six hundred years from the mid-twelfth to the mid-eighteenth century when the ancient Monastery of St Panteleimon was the Russian house on Athos, more commonly referred to as Nagorny or Stary Rusik;

--the most recent 250 years, that are naturally covered in greater depth thanks to the wider availability of sources.

Amongst the themes explored in the book are ethnic relations, the Pan-Orthodox ideal, the role of money and political pressure, sanctity and heroism in adversity, and the importance of historical memory and precedent. The author seeks to arbitrate fairly between often strongly opposing ethnic viewpoints. 

It examines in detail the fluctuating fortunes of the monastic community of St Panteleimon during the past 250 years, when its ethnic identity was frequently questioned. St Panteleimon's is a history that has been blighted by Greek-Russian quarrels, mass deportation of dissenting brethren, troubles in the Caucasus, and even tangential implication in the present-day dispute between the Ecumenical and Moscow Patriarchates over Ukraine.

This text will be invaluable to both academic historians and the general educated reader who does not possess specialist knowledge. It is complemented by a timeline, glossary, comprehensive bibliography, index, full-color illustrations and photographs.

The Angel Beholding the Face of God

Angelico Press continues to have some of the most interestingly varied lists today, and their regular publishing of works in Eastern Christianity does them huge credit. Just this month they have now published a translation of a work by a Russian-American iconographer and founder of the Prosopon school, whose videos I have sometimes used in my own iconography classes: Vladislav Andrejev, The Angel of the Countenance of God: Theology and Iconology of Theophanies, trans. Alex Apatov (Angelico, 2021), 326pp.

About this new book the publisher tells us this: 

Iconography is the study of the history, practice, and symbolism of painted Christian images. Iconology probes deeper still, into the “icon” of Divine Presence in the inner man, who is himself made “in the image [eikón] of God” (Gen 1:26), as the place where Wisdom seeks to make her home. Written by an iconographer with forty years’ experience researching the nature and mission of the icon, The Angel of the Countenance of God explores the biblical epiphanies of God—their translation into images, their mythological parallels, and their Trinitarian and Christological implications. Drawing on his own icon-writing, V. L. Andrejev here focuses on the biblical theme of the “Angel of Jehovah,” distinguishing the “created Angels” of the Heavenly Hierarchies from this “uncreated Angel” of Theophany, that divine Being Moses beheld in the flames of the Burning Bush, and Christian tradition depicts as the royal maiden Sophia, personification of the Wisdom of God. This distinction carries profound consequences for iconography, dogmatic theology, and discipleship.

The icon written on a board is the “spoken” word made visual, but its final significance lies within each person. For it is man himself, as the living icon of the Image of God, who by means of the immaterial, essential Light of God makes visible in icons the “actions” of God. Icon-writing is “symbolic realism,” and though not able to depict God, is able to depict the image of His actions. The fulfillment of the icon, the image of God, is love—the love uniting Bride and Bridegroom in the Song of Songs; that same love hymned by St Symeon the New Theologian and St Maximus the Confessor.

The Angel of the Countenance of God will be of value to all who have an interest in iconography, Trinitarian Christology, Sophiology, and Eastern Christianity.

More Solzhenitsyn Forthcoming

The fall catalogue from the University of Notre Dame Press is just out. They are, of course, the largest and finest Catholic academic publisher in the world, and have recently brought you Married Priests in the Catholic Church, of which you should at once order 100 copies for all your friends. 

In the fall, UNDP is releasing a paperback translation of Book I of Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. About this book the publisher tells us this:

Russian Nobel prize–winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) is widely acknowledged as one of the most important figures―and perhaps the most important writer―of the last century. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the first English translation of his memoir of the West, Between Two Millstones, Book 1, is being published. Fast-paced, absorbing, and as compelling as the earlier installments of his memoir The Oak and the Calf (1975), Between Two Millstones begins on February 12, 1974, when Solzhenitsyn found himself forcibly expelled to Frankfurt, West Germany, as a result of the publication in the West of The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a time and was considered the most famous man in the world, hounded by journalists and reporters. During this period, he found himself untethered and unable to work while he tried to acclimate to his new surroundings.

Between Two Millstones contains vivid descriptions of Solzhenitsyn's journeys to various European countries and North American locales, where he and his wife Natalia (“Alya”) searched for a location to settle their young family. There are fascinating descriptions of one-on-one meetings with prominent individuals, detailed accounts of public speeches such as the 1978 Harvard University commencement, comments on his television appearances, accounts of his struggles with unscrupulous publishers and agents who mishandled the Western editions of his books, and the KGB disinformation efforts to besmirch his name. There are also passages on Solzhenitsyn's family and their property in Cavendish, Vermont, whose forested hillsides and harsh winters evoked his Russian homeland, and where he could finally work undisturbed on his ten-volume history of the Russian Revolution, The Red Wheel. Stories include the efforts made to assure a proper education for the writer's three sons, their desire to return one day to their home in Russia, and descriptions of his extraordinary wife, editor, literary advisor, and director of the Russian Social Fund, Alya, who successfully arranged, at great peril to herself and to her family, to smuggle Solzhenitsyn's invaluable archive out of the Soviet Union.

Between Two Millstones is a literary event of the first magnitude. The book dramatically reflects the pain of Solzhenitsyn's separation from his Russian homeland and the chasm of miscomprehension between him and Western society.

Russian Christianity and its Place in Global Christianity

Scott Kenworthy writes deeply learned, but accessible and always fascinating, books on Russian Orthodox Christianity that are always worth your time. So when I learned from him recently that he had teamed up with another author to contribute to an ongoing series, I knew it would be worth my time to read Understanding World Christianity: Russia by Scott M. Kenworthy and Alexander S. Agadjanian (Fortress Press, 2021), 311pp. 

This is part of an ongoing series of books, at least one of whose earlier publications, that devoted to India, will of course be relevant to Eastern Christians given the very great diversity of them in India. 

About this newest installment, the publisher tells us this:

Christianity is a global religion. It's a fact that is too often missed or ignored in many books and conversations. In a world where Christianity is growing everywhere but in the West, the Understanding World Christianity series offers a fresh, readable orientation to Christianity around the world. Understanding World Christianity is organized geographically, by nation and region. Noted experts, in most cases native to the area of focus, present a balanced history of Christianity and a detailed discussion of the faith as it is lived today. Each volume addresses six key "intersections" of Christianity in a given context, including the historical, denominational, sociopolitical, geographical, biographical, and theological settings. Understanding World Christianity: Russia offers a compelling glimpse into the vibrant and complex picture of Christianity in the Russian context. It's an ideal introduction for students, mission leaders, and any others who wish to know how Christianity influences, and is influenced by, the Russian context.

The Women of Soviet Catacombs

I almost avoided posting this notice of a forthcoming book for I am beyond tired of certain people traducing Soviet history in their transparently tendentious manner to scare us into thinking we shall soon see gulags erected in the United States any day now for these self-proclaimed Christians who adhere, with ostentatious sanctimony, to certain views on sex and gender which, they hope--not disguising their alarmingly overdeveloped sadomasochistic urges--will get them clapped in irons and subject to floggings and other tortures.

Nevertheless, we must not penalize the work of legitimate scholars narrating genuine history simply for fear of giving fodder to certain adolescent bloggers and their tiresome fetishes. Thus we can look forward, later this month, to the official release of Women of the Catacombs: Memoirs of the Underground Orthodox Church in Stalin's Russia, trans. Wallace L. Daniel  (Northern Illinois University Press, March 2021), 252pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The memoirs presented in Women of the Catacombs offer a rare close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history. The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the 1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred to the catacomb church as the "light shining in the dark." Women of the Catacombs provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic period.

Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. Wallace L. Daniel's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious and political history, but also shows how two educated women maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.

Islam and Christianity in Post-Soviet Russia

The complex realities of Muslim-Orthodox interactions in Russia continue to fascinate, and to repay careful study. A recent book builds on a considerable, and ever-growing, body of literature in this area: Languages of Islam and Christianity in Post-Soviet Russia by Gulnaz Sibgatullina (Brill, 2020), 232pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In her book, Gulnaz Sibgatullina examines the intricate relationship of religion, identity and language-related beliefs against the background of socio-political changes in post-Soviet Russia. Focusing on the Russian and Tatar languages, she explores how they simultaneously serve the needs of both Muslims and Christians living in the country today. 

Mapping linguistic strategies of missionaries, converts and religious authorities, Sibgatullina demonstrates how sacred vocabulary in each of the languages is being contested by a variety of social actors, often with competing agendas. These linguistic collisions not only affect meanings of the religious lexicon in Tatar and Russian but also drive a gradual convergence of Russia's Islam and Christianity.

Post-Soviet Russian Philosophy

One hears rather a lot about the so-called Russian Silver Age of philosophy and theology, and there is certainly no shortage of publications on the life of some outstanding Russian philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the new book about Bulgakov I noted on here last week, but what about now? How has Russian philosophy been shaping up in its post-Soviet period? A new book will give us some answers: 

Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology, eds., Mikhail Sergeev, Alexander N. Chumakov, and Mary Theis (Brill, 2020), 444pp. 

About this collection the publisher tells us this: 

Russian Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: An Anthology provides the English-speaking world with access to post-Soviet philosophic thought in Russia for the first time. The Anthology presents the fundamental range of contemporary philosophical problems in the works of prominent Russian thinkers. In contrast to the “single-mindedness” of Soviet-era philosophers and the bias toward Orthodox Christianity of émigré philosophers, it offers to its readers the authors’ plurality of different positions in widely diverse texts. Here one finds strictly academic philosophical works and those in an applied, pragmatic format—secular and religious—that are dedicated to complex social and political matters, to pressing cultural topics or insights into international terrorism, as well as to contemporary science and global challenges.

God, Tsar, and People: The Political Culture of Early Modern Russia

I went through a monarchist phase in my youth, and still have something of a soft spot for various royalist and monarchist movements and histories. Though related to them by inter-marriage, the Romanov monarchs of Russia seem to have singularly and tragically lacked the ruthlessly pragmatic streak that their Windsor cousins used to survive the Great War and down to the present day. Nevertheless, there was a great deal of change and upheaval in Russia before this period, some of it told in this new book: Daniel B. Rowland, God, Tsar, and People: The Political Culture of Early Modern Russia (Northern Illinois University Press, 2020), 420pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

God, Tsar, and People brings together in one volume essays written over a period of fifty years, using a wide variety of evidence―texts, icons, architecture, and ritual―to reveal how early modern Russians (1450–1700) imagined their rapidly changing political world.

This volume presents a more nuanced picture of Russian political thought during the two centuries before Peter the Great came to power than is typically available. The state was expanding at a dizzying rate, and atop Russia's traditional political structure sat a ruler who supposedly reflected God's will. The problem facing Russians was that actual rulers seldom―or never―exhibited the required perfection. Daniel Rowland argues that this contradictory set of ideas was far less autocratic in both theory and practice than modern stereotypes would have us believe. In comparing and contrasting Russian history with that of Western European states, Rowland is also questioning the notion that Russia has always been, and always viewed itself as, an authoritarian country. God, Tsar, and People explores how the Russian state in this period kept its vast lands and diverse subjects united in a common view of a Christian polity, defending its long frontier against powerful enemies from the East and from the West.

Understanding World Christianity: Russia

Fortress Press recently sent me their catalogue of new and forthcoming publications, and in it I spied a book co-authored by a widely respected scholar I have heard at conferences over the years: Understanding World Christianity: Russia by Alexander S. Agadjanian and Scott M. Kenworthy (Fortress, 2021), 160pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Christianity is a global religion. It's a fact that is too often missed or ignored in many books and conversations. In a world where Christianity is growing everywhere but in the West, the Understanding World Christianity series offers a fresh, readable orientation to Christianity around the world. Understanding World Christianity is organized geographically, by nation and region. Noted experts, in most cases native to the area of focus, present a balanced history of Christianity and a detailed discussion of the faith as it is lived today. Each volume addresses six key "intersections" of Christianity in a given context, including the historical, denominational, sociopolitical, geographical, biographical, and theological settings. Understanding World Christianity: Russia offers a compelling glimpse into the vibrant and complex picture of Christianity in the Russian context. It's an ideal introduction for students, mission leaders, and any others who wish to know how Christianity influences, and is influenced by, the Russian context.

Saving Russian Iconography

At the end of this month will emerge a paperback edition of a lovely, important, fascinating book first published several years ago. For all those interested in Russian history, and in iconography, this book needs a place in your library: Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography, trans. Paul Grenier (Paraclete Press, 2020), 224pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

This dramatic history recounts the story of an aspect of Russian culture that fought to survive throughout the 20th century: the icon. Russian iconography kept faith alive in Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. As monasteries and churches were ruined, icons destroyed, thousands of believers killed or sent to Soviet prisons and labor camps, a few courageous iconographers continued to paint holy images secretly, despite the ever-present threat of arrest. Others were forced to leave Russia altogether, and while living abroad, struggled to preserve their Orthodox traditions. Today we are witness to a renaissance of the Russian icon, made possible by the sacrifices of this previous generation of heroes.

A New Biography of Stalin

The influence of Stalin on the destruction of Eastern Christian churches--Catholic and Orthodox--is notorious. I have read a couple biographies about him over the years, and now Princeton University Press has another one coming out this month: Ronald Grigor Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution (PUP, 2020, 896pp.

About this hefty new study, the publisher tells us this:

This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the twentieth century's most ruthless dictators.

In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him. Suny draws on a wealth of new archival evidence from Stalin's early years in the Caucasus to chart the psychological metamorphosis of the young Stalin, taking readers from his boyhood as a Georgian nationalist and romantic poet, through his harsh years of schooling, to his commitment to violent engagement in the underground movement to topple the tsarist autocracy. Stalin emerges as an ambitious climber within the Bolshevik ranks, a resourceful leader of a small terrorist band, and a writer and thinker who was deeply engaged with some of the most incendiary debates of his time.

A landmark achievement, Stalin paints an unforgettable portrait of a driven young man who abandoned his religious faith to become a skilled political operative and a single-minded and ruthless rebel.

Reforms in the Late Romanov Period in Russia

Like periods before the French or American revolutions, it has been customary in some quarters to portray the period before the Russian Revolution as totally revanchist and reactionary. No wonder they revolted, we are told, since conditions were so unutterably awful. But recent scholarship has been chipping away at this for some time, highlighting several ante-revolutionary reform movements and their mixed success, challenging received notions of reactionary monoliths. One recently published book continues this work: The Lawful Empire: Legal Change and Cultural Diversity in Late Tsarist Russia by Stefan B. Kirmse (Cambridge UP, 2020), 310pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Russian Empire and its legal institutions have often been associated with arbitrariness, corruption, and the lack of a 'rule of law'. Stefan B. Kirmse challenges these assumptions in this important new study of empire-building, minority rights, and legal practice in late Tsarist Russia, revealing how legal reform transformed ordinary people's interaction with state institutions from the 1860s to the 1890s. By focusing on two regions that stood out for their ethnic and religious diversity, the book follows the spread of the new legal institutions into the open steppe of Southern Russia, especially Crimea, and into the fields and forests of the Middle Volga region around the ancient Tatar capital of Kazan. It explores the degree to which the courts served as instruments of integration: the integration of former borderlands with the imperial centre and the integration of the empire's internal 'others' with the rest of society.

We are also given the table of contents:

Introduction
1. Minority rights and legal integration in the Russian empire
2. Borderlands no more: Crimea and Kazan in the mid-nineteenth century
3. Implementing legal change: new courts for Crimea and Kazan
4. Images and practices in the new courts: the enactment of monarchy, modesty, and cultural diversity
5. Seeking justice: Muslim Tatars go to court
6. Confronting the state: peasant resistance over land and faith
7. Dealing with unrest: crime and punishment in the 'crisis years' 1878–79
Conclusion.

Solzhenitsyn and American Culture

The great University of Notre Dame Press just sent me advance page proofs of a book set for release in October: D.P. Deavel and J.H. Wilson, eds., Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: the Russian Soul in the West (UNDP, October 2020), 400pp.

The entire second part, consisting of four chapters, explicitly looks at the relationship between Solzhenitsyn and Russian Orthodoxy. About this collection the publisher further tells us this:

For many Americans of both right and left political persuasions, the Russian bear is more of a bugbear. On the right, the country is still mentally represented by Soviet domination. For those on the left, it is a harbor for reactionary values and neo-imperial visions. The reality, however, is that, despite Russia’s political failures, its rich history of culture, religion, and philosophical reflection―even during the darkest days of the Gulag―have been a deposit of wisdom for American artists, religious thinkers, and political philosophers probing what it means to be human in America.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stands out as the key figure in this conversation, as both a Russian literary giant and an exile from Russia living in America for two decades. This anthology reconsiders Solzhenitsyn’s work from a variety of perspectives―his faith, his politics, and the influences and context of his literature―to provide a prophetic vision for our current national confusion over universal ideals. In Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West, David P. Deavel and Jessica Hooten Wilson have collected essays from the foremost scholars and thinkers of comparative studies who have been tracking what Americans have borrowed and learned from Solzhenitsyn as well as his fellow Russians. The book offers a consideration of what we have in common―the truth, goodness, and beauty America has drawn from Russian culture and from masters such as Solzhenitsyn―and will suggest to readers what we can still learn and what we must preserve. The book will interest fans of Solzhenitsyn and scholars across the disciplines, and it can be used in courses on Solzhenitsyn or Russian literature more broadly.

Contributors: David P. Deavel, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Nathan Neilson, Eugene Vodolazkin, David Walsh, Matthew Lee Miller, Ralph C. Wood, Gary Saul Morson, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., Micah Mattix, Joseph Pearce, James F. Pontuso, Daniel J. Mahoney, William Jason Wallace, Lee Trepanier, Peter Leithart, Dale Peterson, Julianna Leachman, Walter G. Moss, and Jacob Howland..

Muslims in Russia

My favourite course to teach focuses on Eastern Christian encounters with Islam. We look at a number of countries with substantial Orthodox presence alongside Islam--both historic and current--and so that includes of course Russia, which presents a very different series of encounters from, say, Egypt or Lebanon. A new book looks especially at the jurisprudence of those encounters in the Romanov empire:  Sharīʿa in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1550-1917,
eds. Paolo Sartori, Danielle Ross (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 384pp.

Some of the virtues of this book, according to the publisher, are that it

• Studies the formulation, transmission and application of Islamic law under Russian colonial rule
• Presents the theory and application of Islamic law in the Volga-Ural region, the Kazakh Steppe, the north Caucasus and Central Asia from the 1550s to 1917
• Draws comparisons between Islamic law in Russia and elsewhere in the colonial world
• Based upon important, but largely unstudied print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian and the Turkic languages
• Brings together the work of an international collective of scholars of Islam in Russia

Additionally the publisher says this:

This book looks at how Islamic law was practiced in Russia from the conquest of the empire’s first Muslim territories in the mid-1500s to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the empire’s Muslim population had exceeded 20 million. It focuses on the training of Russian Muslim jurists, the debates over legal authority within Muslim communities and the relationship between Islamic law and ‘customary’ law. Based upon difficult to access sources written in a variety of languages (Arabic, Chaghatay, Kazakh, Persian, Tatar), it offers scholars of Russian history, Islamic history and colonial history an account of Islamic law in Russia of the same quality and detail as the scholarship currently available on Islam in the British and French colonial empires.

Russian Orthodox Nationalism During the Gorbachev Years

As I noted on here recently, we have seen, and are still seeing, a slew of books on post-Soviet religiosity in Eastern Europe. Released earlier this year is a unique volume that backs up into the last days of the Soviet period to take a look: Sophie Kotzer, Russian Orthodoxy, Nationalism and the Soviet State during the Gorbachev Years, 1985-1991 (Routledge, 2020), 188pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

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.

Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought

I have been delighted to be asked to contribute to several Oxford handbooks and collections over the last few years. But even before doing so I recognized how valuable these books were, which very often feature leading scholars in various fields giving a helpfully comprehensive treatment of a given area. That will be no different in a forthcoming handbook late this year: The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought, eds. George Pattison, Randall A. Poole, and Caryl Emerson (Oxford UP, November 2020), 736pp.

About this collection the press tells us this:

The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought is an authoritative new reference and interpretive volume detailing the origins, development, and influence of one of the richest aspects of Russian cultural and intellectual life - its religious ideas. After setting the historical background and context, the Handbook follows the leading figures and movements in modern Russian religious thought through a period of immense historical upheavals, including seventy years of officially atheist communist rule and the growth of an exiled diaspora with, e.g., its journal The Way. Therefore the shape of Russian religious thought cannot be separated from long-running debates with nihilism and atheism. Important thinkers such as Losev and Bakhtin had to guard their words in an environment of religious persecution, whilst some views were shaped by prison experiences. Before the Soviet period, Russian national identity was closely linked with religion - linkages which again are being forged in the new Russia. Relevant in this connection are complex relationships with Judaism.

In addition to religious thinkers such as Philaret, Chaadaev, Khomiakov, Kireevsky, Soloviev, Florensky, Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Shestov, Frank, Karsavin, and Alexander Men, the Handbook also looks at the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art, film, and the novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Ideas, institutions, and movements discussed include the Church academies, Slavophilism and Westernism, theosis, the name-glorifying (imiaslavie) controversy, the God-seekers and God-builders, Russian religious idealism and liberalism, and the Neopatristic school. Occultism is considered, as is the role of tradition and the influence of Russian religious thought in the West.

Here, also, is the table of contents on which you will recognize many names featured, reviewed, or interviewed on here over the years:

FOREWORD, Metropolitan Hilarion Of Volokalamsk
INTRODUCTION

PART I HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
1: Christianity in Rus' and Muscovy, David Goldfrank
2: The Orthodox Church and Religious Life in Imperial Russia, Nadieszda Kizenko
3: The Orthodox Church and Religion in Revolutionary Russia, 1894-1924, Vera Shevzov
4: Russian Religious Life in the Soviet Era, Zoe Knox

PART II THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
5: The Theological-Aesthetic Vision of Metropolitan Filaret, Oleg V. Bychkov
6: Russian Orthodox Thought in the Church's Clerical Academies, Patrick Lally Michelson
7: Petr Chaadaev and the Slavophile-Westernizer Debate, G. M. Hamburg
8: Slavophilism and the Origins of Russian Religious Philosophy, Randall A. Poole
9: Nihilism, Victoria Frede
10: Dostoevsky, George Pattison
11: Tolstoy, Caryl Emerson
12: Vladimir Soloviev as a Religious Philosopher, Catherine Evtuhov

PART III THE RELIGIOUS-PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE, 1900-1922
13: God-seeking, God-building, and the New Religious Consciousness, Erich Lippman
14: Theosis in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Religious Thought, Ruth Coates
15: The Liberalism of Russian Religious Idealism, Randall A. Poole
16: Sergei Bulgakov's Intellectual Journey, 1900-1922, Regula M. Zwahlen
17: Pavel Florensky: At the Boundary of Immanence and Transcendence, Christoph Schneider
18: The Personalism of Nikolai Berdiaev, Ana Siljak
19: The Name-Glorifiers (Imiaslavie) Controversy, Scott M. Kenworthy
20: Judaism and Russian Religious Thought, Dominic Rubin

PART IV ART IN RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
21: Russian Religious Aesthetics in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Victor V. Bychkov
22: 'Musical Metaphysics' in Late Imperial Russia, Rebecca Mitchell
23: Furor Liturgicus: The Religious Concerns of Russian Poetry, Martha M. F. Kelly
24: The Icon and Visual Arts at the Time of the Russian Religious Renaissance, Clemena Antonova

PART V RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT ABROAD
25: The Way, The Journal of the Russian Emigration (1925-1940), Antoine Arjakovsky
26: Berdyaev and Christian Existentialism, George Pattison
27: Lev Shestov: The Meaning of Life and the Critique of Scientific Knowledge, Ramona Fotiade
28: Sergius Bulgakov in Exile: The Flowering of a Systematic Theologian, Fr. Robert F. Slesinski
29: Semyon Frank, Philip Boobbyer
30: Lev Karsavin, Martin Beisswenger
31: Varieties of Neopatristics: Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Alexander Schmemann, Paul L. Gavrilyuk
32: 'The Work': The Teachings of G. I. Gurdieff and P. D. Ouspensky in Russia and Beyond, Steven J. Sutcliffe And John P. Wilmett

PART VI RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN SOVIET RUSSIA
33: Alexei Losev: 'The Last Russian Philosopher' of the Silver Age, Sr. Theresa Obolevitch
34: Religious Thought and Experience in the Prison Camps, Andrea Gulotta
35: Seeking God and Spiritual Salvation in Russian Cinema, Alina Birzache
36: Mikhail Bakhtin, Caryl Emerson
37: Alexander Men and Russian Religious Thought in the Post-Soviet Situation, Katerina Kocandrle Bauer And Tim Noble

PART VII ASSESSMENTS
38: Tradition in the Russian Theological World, Rowan Williams
39: The Influence of Russian Religious Thought on Western Theology in the Twentieth Century, Paul Valliere
40: The Tradition of Christian Thought in the History of Russian Culture, Igor I. Evlampiev

Catching up with the Armenians

If you read my first book on the papacy, or my book last year on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, then you will know (with more detail than you could possibly want!) just how deep my admiration and love for the Armenian Church is. I focus primarily on their utterly unique ecclesial structures, but there is so much to admire in their forbearance in the face of a singular history of suffering and genocide, in their liturgical and theological traditions and, perhaps mundanely, in their hospitality and food which I have been very graced to receive on several occasions.

2020 is promising to be a banner year for further scholarly studies about the Armenian Church. We started off in January with Monastic Life in the Armenian Church: Glorious Past - Ecumenical Reconsideration edited by Jasmine Dum-Tragut and Dietmar W. Winkler (Lit Verlag, 2020), 224pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Monasticism is a vital feature of Christian spiritual life and has its origins in the Oriens Christianus. The present volume contains studies on Armenian Monasticism from various perspectives. The task is not only to produce historical studies. The aim is also to contribute to and reflect on monasticism today. Authors come from the Armenian Apostolic Catholicosate of Ejmiacin, the Holy See of Cilicia, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the  Armenian-Catholic Church, as well as from the Benedictine and  Franciscan Orders of the Catholic Church. The experts reflected on the glorious past of Armenian monasticism and agreed to evaluate future challenges ecumenically to give more insight into both past and present Armenian monasticism.

In early June, Stanford University Press is bringing out Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire by Richard E. Antaramian (SUP, 2020), 224pp.

About this book the publisher offers us this précis:

The Ottoman Empire enforced imperial rule through its management of diversity. For centuries, non-Muslim religious institutions, such as the Armenian Church, were charged with guaranteeing their flocks' loyalty to the sultan. Rather than being passive subjects, Armenian elites, both the clergy and laity, strategically wove the institutions of the Armenian Church, and thus the Armenian community itself, into the fabric of imperial society. In so doing, Armenian elites became powerful brokers between factions in Ottoman politics—until the politics of nineteenth-century reform changed these relationships. In Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire, Richard E. Antaramian presents a revisionist account of Ottoman reform, relating the contention within the Armenian community to broader imperial politics. Reform afforded Armenians the opportunity to recast themselves as partners of the state, rather than as brokers among factions. And in the course of pursuing such programs, they transformed the community's role in imperial society. As the Ottoman reform program changed how religious difference could be employed in a Muslim empire, Armenian clergymen found themselves enmeshed in high-stakes political and social contests that would have deadly consequences.

Finally in mid-July we will have the publication of Russia's Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801-1914 by Stephen Badalyan Riegg (Cornell University Press, 2020), 328pp.

About this book the publisher provides this blurb:

Russia's Entangled Embrace traces the relationship between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora that populated Russia's territorial fringes and navigated the tsarist empire's metropolitan centers.

By engaging the ongoing debates about imperial structures that were simultaneously symbiotic and hierarchically ordered, Stephen Badalyan Riegg helps us to understand how, for Armenians and some other subjects, imperial rule represented not hypothetical, clear-cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian architects of empire imagined Armenians as being politically desirable. These circumstances included the familiarity of their faith, perceived degree of social, political, or cultural integration, and their actual or potential contributions to the state's varied priorities.

Based on extensive research in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yerevan, Russia's Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian government relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Analyzing the complexities of this imperial relationship―beyond the reductive question of whether Russia was a friend or foe to Armenians―allows us to study the methods of tsarist imperialism in the context of diasporic distribution, interimperial conflict and alliance, nationalism, and religious and economic identity.