Theology and Psychology

Princeton University Press recently put into my hands a collection I am looking forward to reading: On Theology and Psychology: The Correspondence of C.G. Jung and Adolf Keller, ed. Marianne Jehle-Wildberger (PUP, 2020), 336pp.

Before I get around to reading and reflecting on this new book, let me point out to those who didn't see it my interview late last year with Pia Sophia Chaudhari about her wonderful, insightful book on Jung and Orthodox patristic theology.

This new collection of correspondence, the publisher says, offers us

Jung's correspondence with one of the twentieth century's leading theologians and ecumenicists.

On Theology and Psychology brings together C. G. Jung's correspondence with Adolf Keller, a celebrated Protestant theologian who was one of the pioneers of the modern ecumenical movement and one of the first religious leaders to become interested in analytical psychology. Their relationship spanned half a century, and for many years Keller was the only major religious leader to align himself with Jung and his ideas. Both men shared a lifelong engagement with questions of faith, and each grappled with God in his own distinctive way.

Presented here in English for the first time are letters that provide a rare look at Jung in dialogue with a theologian. Spanning some fifty years, these letters reveal an extended intellectual and spiritual discourse between two very different men as they exchange views on the nature of the divine, the compatibility of Jungian psychology and Christianity, the interpretation of the Bible and figures such as Jesus and Job, and the phenomenon of National Socialism. Although Keller was powerfully attracted to Jung's ideas, his correspondence with the famed psychiatrist demonstrates that he avoided discipleship. Both men struggled with essential questions about human existence, spirituality, and well-being, and both sought common ground where the concerns of psychologists and theologians converge.

Featuring an illuminating introduction by Marianne Jehle-Wildberger, On Theology and Psychology offers incomparable insights into the development of Jung's views on theology and religion, and a unique window into a spiritual and intellectual friendship unlike any other.

Religion and Patriotism in Russia

The field of post-Soviet religious studies is an ever-expanding one, as books noted on here recently continue to show. Here is another recently published scholarly collection: Religion, Expression, and Patriotism in Russia: Essays on Post-Soviet Society and the State, eds. Kaarina Aitamurto, Sanna Turoma, and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover (Ibidem Press, 2019), 220pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The 2010s saw an introduction of legislative acts about religion, sexuality, and culture in Russia, which caused an uproar of protests. They politicized areas of life commonly perceived as private and expected to be free of the state's control. As a result, political activism and radical grassroots movements engaged many Russians in controversies about religion and culture and polarized popular opinion in the capitals and regions alike.

This volume presents seven case studies that probe into the politics of religion and culture in today's Russia. The contributions highlight the diversity of Russia's religious communities and cultural practices by analyzing Hasidic Jewish identities, popular culture sponsored by the Orthodox Church, literary mobilization of the National Bolshevik Party, cinematic narratives of the Chechen wars, militarization of political Orthodoxy, and moral debates caused by opera as well as film productions. The authors draw on a variety of theoretical approaches and methodologies, including opinion surveys, ethnological fieldwork, narrative analysis, Foucault's conceptualization of biopower, catachrestic politics, and sociological theories of desecularization.

The volume’s contributors are Sanna Turoma, Kaarina Aitamurto, Tomi Huttunen, Susan Ikonen, Boris Knorre, Irina Kotkina, Jussi Lassila, Andrey Makarychev, Elena Ostrovskaya, and Mikhail Suslov.

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..

Original Sin? Guilt? Neither?

Is there a topic more prone to abuse at the hands of tendentious pamphleteers and apologists than original sin? Is there a figure more prone to being turned into a theological grotesque than Augustine of Hippo, whether by Calvinist or Orthodox apologists? I confess I have no patience with these games. Nor do I have the least patience for those denying belief in original sin, evidence of which is manifestly available as soon, far, and near as the eye can see.

Along comes a new book that puts Christians of different traditions into dialogue with one another on this topic, and it includes (as you would expect) strong reflections and rebuttals from the venerable Orthodox scholar Andrew Louth alongside several others in Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views, eds. J. B. Stump and Chad Meister (IVP Academic, June 2020), 200pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

"What is this that you have done?" Throughout the church's history, Christians have largely agreed that God's good creation of humanity was marred by humanity's sinful rebellion, resulting in our separation from God and requiring divine intervention in the saving work of Christ. But Christians have disagreed over many particular questions surrounding humanity's fall, including the extent of original sin, the nature of the fall, the question of guilt, how to interpret the narratives from Genesis, and how these questions relate to our understanding of human origins and modern science. This Spectrum Multiview book presents five views on these questions: Augustinian-Reformed, Moderate Reformed, Wesleyan, Eastern Orthodox, and a Reconceived view. Each contributor offers both an articulation of their own view and responses to the other views in question. The result is a robust reflection on one of the most central―and controversial―tenets of the faith. Views and Contributors:

• An Augustinian-Reformed View (Hans Madueme, Covenant College)
• A Moderate Reformed View (Oliver Crisp, The University of St. Andrews)
• A Wesleyan View (Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary)
• An Eastern Orthodox View (Andrew Louth, Durham University)
• A Reconceived View (Tatha Wiley, University of St. Thomas)

Orthodox Revivalism in Russia

My students, being American, always comment on their puzzlement at Russians who identify as Orthodox but rarely if ever darken the door of a church, frequent the sacraments, or indeed have themselves or family members baptized at all. That phenomenon is front and centre in a book set for release this fall: Milena Benovska, Orthodox Revivalism in Russia: Driving Forces and Moral Quests (Routledge, October 2020), 240pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

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.

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.

Syria in the Crusades

If you have any interest in the history and rise of Islam, and of its encounters with Eastern Christians, and especially of the Crusades, then the name of Carole Hillenbrand needs to be on your bibliography. Her previous works, including her very large earlier book, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, are rich in detail.

She has a new book out, an impressive and diverse scholarly collection: Syria in Crusader Times: Conflict and Co-Existence, ed. Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 400pp.
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About this collection the publisher tells us this:

Presenting numerous interconnected insights into life in Greater Syria in the twelfth century, this book covers a wide range of themes relating to Crusader-Muslim relations. Some chapters deal with various literary sources, including little-known Crusader chronicles, a jihad treatise, a lost Muslim history of the Franks, biographies, letters and poems. Other chapters look at material culture, from coins to urban development, internal relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and between Crusader and Oriental Christians, and the role of the Turkmen. New insights into the career of Saladin are revealed, for example through the work of a little-known propagandist at his court, and Saladin's use of gift-giving for political purposes, as well as neglected aspects of the rule of his family dynasty, the Ayyubids, which succeeded him. Special attention is paid to the Christians residing in the Middle East, from Italians to Melkites and Armenians.

Oxford Handbook of Christmas

I feel very confident in saying that everybody who has lived through 2020 so far would like to rocket forward to Christmas and the end of this horrendous year, when we find under our trees not just vaccines and economic recovery, but many other gifts as well too lovely to imagine at this difficult hour.

Well one such gift is currently slated for January 2021 release, which will likely work for those keeping Christmas on the Julian calendar; but perhaps that date will change. In any event, here at least is a foretaste of The Oxford Handbook of Christmas, ed. Timothy Larsen (Oxford UP, 2021), 640pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us this:

The Oxford Handbook of Christmas provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of all aspects of Christmas across the globe, from the specifically religious to the purely cultural. The contributions are drawn from a distinguished group of international experts from across numerous disciplines, including literary scholars, theologians, historians, biblical scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, art historians, and legal experts. The volume provides authoritative treatments of a range of topics, from the origins of Christmas to the present; decorating trees to eating plum pudding; from the Bible to contemporary worship; from carols to cinema; from the Nativity Story to Santa Claus; from Bethlehem to Japan; from Catholics to Baptists; from secularism to consumerism.

Christmas is the biggest celebration on the planet. Every year, a significant percentage of the world's population is draw to this holiday--from Cape Cod to Cape Town, from South America to South Korea, and on and on across the globe. The Christmas season takes up a significant part of the entire year. For many countries, the holiday is a major force in their national economy. Moreover, Christmas is not just a modern holiday, but has been an important feast for most Christians since the fourth century and a dominant event in many cultures and countries for over a millennium. The Oxford Handbook of Christmas provides an invaluable reference point for anyone interested in this global phenomenon.

Religion and National Identity in Eastern Europe

This collection, set for release in early August, features the respected historian Barbara Skinner and a series of other international experts looking at the complicated relations between various Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and their respective and often changing national homelands--especially Lithuania, Russia, and Ukraine: Entangled Interactions between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Yoko Aoshima (Academic Studies Press, August 2020), 220pp.

About this collection, whose table of contents you can read here, the publisher tells us this:

This book elucidates the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases within Central and Eastern Europe. Through these analyses, contributors demonstrate how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness. Starting with the pre-modern era, essays examine the long-term transformation of religious, political, and social situations of the region. In addition, the book considers the impact of imperial powers, which tended to be linked with a universal religion. Light is also shed on the multifaceted nature of nations, which contribute to a new vision of the historical transformation of the region that enriches the general theories of nationalism.

Herbert McCabe's Legacy

I have previously on here, and elsewhere, talked about what I have learned from the English Dominican Herbert McCabe, who died nearly two decades ago now. In a time when, in this country, too much of Catholic Christianity has veered rightward and in some instances become little more than a capitalistic cult around that vile figure in the White House, McCabe keeps alive hope for some of us that it is possible to be perfectly orthodox in theology and perfectly radical in working for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. (Dorothy Day, of course, is the other hopeful and helpful model here.)

So I am very cheered indeed to report the recent publication of Franco Manni's new book, Herbert McCabe: Recollecting a Fragmented Legacy (Cascade, 2020), 300pp.

About this welcome new work the publisher tells us this:

Herbert McCabe struck those who met him (Alasdair MacIntyre, Anthony Kenny, Terry Eagleton, Denys Turner) or those who read his writings (David Burrell, Stanley Hauerwas) for his high intelligence. He was the most intelligent philosopher after the death of Karl Popper. His philosophical inquiries on God and the Human Being have yet to be properly understood, not because they were abstruse (clarity was McCabe’s inexorable sword!) but because of their dizzying depth, for which many are not yet prepared.

This is the first comprehensive study of McCabe, a person who preferred speaking to writing and left only the short—fragmented and dispersed—texts of his lectures and sermons. But in this book, to use David Burrell’s words, Manni has “managed to get inside McCabe’s mind” and assemble together for the first time the disiecta membra of a powerful system of thought.

Islam and Christianity: Politics and Scriptures

The new Paulist Press catalogue landed here the other day and there I spied a new book that will be of interest to those who want to explore both the similarities and the differences in Islam and Christianity: Christopher Frechette, How the Qur'an Interprets the Bible (Paulist, 2020), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Non-Muslims are often surprised to learn that the Qur'an relates episodes and events from the lives of multiple characters who are also found in the biblical text. While the ways the two traditions present these stories often have much in common, they are never identical. Sometimes the Qur'an includes elements or themes that are not present in the biblical account. Such details point to ways in which the Qur an interprets prior traditions, and such interpretations are similar to how Jewish and Christian Scriptures also interpret prior traditions. Focusing on the lives and roles of a number of well-known characters, this introductory book explores and compares the interpretive dimensions of Islamic, Jewish, and Christians Scriptures.

On Black Icons of the Jewish Jesus and His Mother

This moving and powerful image, of the Mother of God cradling her dead Son, is making the rounds today for obvious reasons, and it has set off some foolish white people who claim to be Catholic while understanding little about theology and even less about iconography. So herewith a brief note about some relevant books on iconography, which I teach regularly, with special reference to a tradition I deeply love, the Ethiopian.

General Studies:

Of the three primary traditions of iconography one finds in the Christian East, the Ethiopian is perhaps the least known. The Byzantine tradition is of course far and away the most widely and popularly practiced, not least because of its associations with the empire of that name. When people typically think of Eastern or Orthodox iconography, it is the Byzantine style that they almost invariably imagine and turn to. There are hundreds of books about this tradition, including many that have been published just in the last two decades, and most of these by Western Christians suddenly "inventing" (in both senses of the word) the tradition and eager to explore its riches. Searching on here using the relevant labels (at bottom of this post) will bring up dozens and dozens of posts about recent publications, scholarly and popular. If you asked me to name just 3 for those with no background, I would recommend the following:

First, for your average Roman Catholic today, start with Sr Jeana Visel's book (which I reviewed here). Second, for those desiring more historical and theological depth, then Lossky's book has long been a standard text. Third, for still more depth and detail, Ouspensky's two-volume set has long had an obligatory place on every bibliography.

Finally, for those who clearly do not understand the doctrinal approval (albeit ambivalent) given to the use of images, and who do not realize that such approval said absolutely nothing at all about what we today would call "racial" or "ethnic" differences, then this new book--one of several in an invaluable series from Liverpool University Press--will bear careful reading about the acts of Nicaea II in 787. Precisely as the defined and received doctrinal teaching of the Catholic and Orthodox Church, and precisely because it was, after all, given at an ecumenical (="whole inhabited world") gathering, we should not expect to find the diverse divines there assembled forbidding or requiring that Christ, the Theotokos, and the angels and saints be portrayed as Africans or Greeks or Copts, Romans or Armenians "for all are one in Christ Jesus."

The Coptic Tradition:

But there are other traditions within the Christian East, including the Coptic, which differs sharply from the Byzantine for all sorts of complex historical (and other) reasons we will not get into here. But this tradition lacks the vast number of books in English that the Byzantine tradition has. For those who read French, this is not a bad, if now dated, overview. For those who want a scholarly overview of iconography in all the so-called Oriental Churches, including the Coptic and Ethiopian, then Christine Chaillot's book reads like a dissertation.

For those who want to begin to understand the historical complexities around what could even be said to constitute "a tradition," as though such a thing exists in isolation from other traditions, then Magdi Guirguis's recent book will take you into some fascinating cultural alleyways.

To see Coptic iconography situated in a wider cultural context, there are numerous books, including this one, this one, and this one. I would also recommend the respected work of the scholar Nelly Van Doorn-Harder in several places, including this book which has a chapter on Coptic art.

Ethiopian Christianity and Iconography:

And now to the Ethiopian tradition. For some general studies that will give you historical context, there are several recent volumes. See, e.g., this one. For those who read German, this book (which I have only skimmed) appears to offer a wide-ranging overview. Like the Guirguis book above, this scholarly study looks at the complex cultural connections between Ethiopian iconography in a period of turbulence and transition.

Narrowing in slightly on Ethiopian churches and monasteries, which of course feature icons, we are starting to see several books devoted to these appear in English in the last decade, including this one. Just this year we had an historical overview of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. I have not read it yet, but the author, John Binns, is a respected scholar at Cambridge whose other works I have read and recommended.

This book treats just one form of images/symbols, viz., Ethiopian crosses. This book, from the invaluable Gorgias Press (which all those interested in Eastern Christianity should keep regular eye on), does something similar in a more scholarly way.

This book looks at royal connections between Ethiopian art and court.

This book looks at illustrated Ethiopian manuscripts at Oxford. Similarly, this book looks at Ethiopian illustrated gospel books.

Finally, turning to iconography proper, let me end by recommending two "coffee table" type books I sometimes look at again and again just for the sheer exuberance and joy of the colours and details: African Zion: The Sacred Art of Ethiopia by M. Heldman and S. Munro-Hay. Published by Yale University Press in 1993, there are still copies floating around for those who are interested.

And then this hefty collection, now twenty years old, but still worth tracking down: Ethiopian Icons : Catalogue of the Collection of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Addis Ababa University by Stanislaw Chojnacki.

There is, let me note in conclusion, still ample work to be done here studying this tradition if there are aspiring graduate students out there. There are, as I noted at the outset, often dozens of new books in English alone in one year alone devoted to the Byzantine tradition alone. The Coptic and Ethiopian (to say nothing at all of other lesser known Eastern Christian traditions--e.g., the Georgian, Armenian, Syro-Malabar, etc.) traditions are still comparatively poorly understood by anglophone historians and theologians; but the Ethiopian is a profound, venerable, beautiful tradition deserving of all the once and future love we call scholarship that we can devote to it.

Hearing Voices or Hearing God?

Historically of course when psychology, psychiatry, or psychoanalysis has turned to something called "religion" (a definition of which is not at all an agreed-upon thing), it is very often done so in reductionist and simplistic ways at best; at worst it has pathologized "religion" as the province of neurotic people.

More recently, however, some clinicians and others have attempted to move beyond such an approach, trying to understand "religious" practices and beliefs on their own terms, and even realizing that some of them are practiced by perfectly healthy people. I have shown some examples of this on this blog and elsewhere.

Now we have a new book that will add to and enrich this discussion. I'm looking forward to reading Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us About Religions by Robert N. McCauley and George Graham (Oxford University Press, 2020), 280pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

A man with schizophrenia believes that God is instructing him through the public address system in a bus station. A nun falls into a decades-long depression because she believes that God refuses to answer her prayers. A neighborhood parishioner is bedeviled with anxiety because he believes that a certain religious ritual must be repeated, repeated, and repeated lest God punish him. To what extent are such manifestations of religious thinking analogous to mental disorder? Does mental dysfunction bring an individual closer to religious experience or thought? Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences explores these questions using the tools of the cognitive science of religion and the philosophy of psychopathology.

Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained as the cultural activation of our natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but which are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context.

The authors examine hallucinations of the voice of God and of other supernatural agents, spiritual depression often described as a "dark night of the soul," religious scrupulosity and compulsiveness, and challenges to theistic cognition that Autistic Spectrum Disorder poses. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity.

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.

Byzantine Sex, Gender, and Race

The world "intersectionality" evokes anxious sneers from some people who rarely give evidence of any serious thought, much less any thought informed by history or psychology. But the term, however much it may appear a species of contemporary jargon, simply refers to what good scholars have always done: examine connections between multiple phenomena.

Forthcoming in October is a book that does this for some of the most explosive issues of our time and indeed of all time: Roland Betancourt, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages  (Princeton University Press, October 2020), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

While the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around matters of sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities. Roland Betancourt explores these issues in the context of the Byzantine Empire, using sources from late antiquity and early Christianity up to the early modern period. Highlighting nuanced and strikingly modern approaches by medieval writers, philosophers, theologians, and doctors, Betancourt offers a new history of gender, sexuality, and race.

Betancourt weaves together art, literature, and an impressive array of texts to investigate depictions of sexual consent in images of the Virgin Mary, tactics of sexual shaming in the story of Empress Theodora, narratives of transgender monks, portrayals of same-gender desire in images of the Doubting Thomas, and stereotypes of gender and ethnicity in representations of the Ethiopian Eunuch. He also gathers evidence from medical manuals detailing everything from surgical practices for late terminations of pregnancy to save a mother’s life to a host of procedures used to affirm a person’s gender. Showing how understandings of gender, sexuality, and race have long been enmeshed, Byzantine Intersectionality offers a groundbreaking look at the culture of the medieval world.

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

The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus

Forthcoming in August is a paperback edition of a book first published in September 2019: Sean Griffin, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 285pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study is the first to analyze how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. The result was a myth of Christian origins for Rus - a myth promulgated even today by the Russian government - which reproduced the Christian origins myth of the Byzantine Empire. The book uncovers this ritual subtext and reconstructs the intricate web of liturgical narratives that underlie this foundational text of pre-modern Slavic civilization.

Revolution, Memory, and Religion in Contemporary Ukraine

Well do I recall standing in a freezing sleet/snow mix on Parliament Hill in the capital city of Her Britannic Majesty's senior dominion in 2004 with many other Ukrainian Canadians showing support for the Orange Revolution. Before and since then I have always tried to keep an eye on the various developments in the country in which I spent the summer of 2001 teaching, a country I would love to return to if given the chance.

Since 2004, of course, much has happened. The analysis of those developments continues to catch up with events on the ground, as here with a recent scholarly collection, Three Revolutions: Mobilization and Change in Contemporary Ukraine I: Theoretical Aspects and Analyses on Religion, Memory, and Identity, eds. Pawel Kowal and Georges Mink (Ibidem Press, 2019), 800pp.

About this collection the publisher tells us this:

Volume One of Three Revolutions presents the overall research and discussions on topics related to the revolutionary events that have unfolded in Ukraine since 1990. The three revolutions referred to in this project include: the Revolution on Granite (1990); the Orange Revolution (2004–2005); and the Euromaidan Revolution (2013–2014). The project’s overall goal was to determine the extent to which we have the right to use the term “revolution” in relation to these events. Moreover, the research also uncovered the methodological problems associated with this task. Lastly, the project investigated to what extent the three revolutions are connected to each other and to what extent they are detached.Hence, the research in this volume not only discusses the theoretical aspects but also provides new analyses on such issues as religion, memory, and identity in Ukraine.

Post-Communist Romanian Orthodoxy

The number of books treating post-communist religion and much else in Eastern Europe seems to have picked up pace again. Later this summer we shall have another: The Orthodox Church and National Identity in Post-Communist Romania by Adrian Velicu (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2020), 178pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the Romanian Orthodox Church’s arguments on national identity to legitimize its own place in a post-communist Romania. The work traces the clergy’s deployment of the concepts of Christian Orthodoxy and Latin legacy as part of an uncharted constellation of arguments in contemporary intellectual history. A survey of public intellectuals’ opinions on national identity complements the Church’s views. The investigation attempts to offer an insight into the Church’s efforts to re-assert itself, given free rein in a post-dictatorial world of accelerated modernization. After clarifying and surveying the Church’s claims on institutional and national identity, the book then also explores the secular ideas on the subject. The subsequent analysis treats this material as “speech acts” (statements doing, not only saying, something) which are occasionally out of sync. Against a background of secularization, the Church’s rhetoric articulates a distinct line of thought in the post-89 intellectual landscape.

Inochentism in Russian and Romanian Orthodoxy

I've only heard a couple of papers at conferences over the years about Inochentism, so I'm no expert, but it has always fascinated me. Now I can indulge in learning much more about this movement thanks to a new book by James A. Kapalo, Inochentism and Russian Orthodoxy: Religious Dissent in the Russian and Romanian Borderlands. of Resistance (Routledge, 2019), 296pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the history and evolution of a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian borderlands of Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. It centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, known to his followers as the ’Prophet of Fire’, who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as politically subversive by Soviet state authorities. This book charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on oral testimonies, folk narratives and previously unstudied secret police and church archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization has played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of ’liminality’ in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes the first systematic study in the English language of an Eastern European ’home-grown’ religious movement taking a ’grass-roots’ ethnographic approach to the problem of minority religious identities in post-Socialist Eastern Europe.

Ronald Heine on Origen's Life and Thought

One of the several interesting "rehabilitations" we have seen in the last several decades of previously controverted figures is of course Origen. We've already seen, thanks to Augustine Casiday, that Origen's supposed "disciple" Evagrius has been exonerated of various charges against him. Now it seems increasingly hard to sustain some of the charges against Origen as well.

For an overview of his life, which has been much studied in the last 15 years or so, we have a new book by Ronald Heine: Origen: An Introduction to His Life and Thought (Cascade, 2019), 182pp. I previously interviewed Heine here about an earlier work on Origen.

Heine is a well-known Origen scholar, and author, editor, and/or translator of such previous works as The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St Matthew as well as Origen's Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 13-32.

About this new book of his, the publisher tells us this:

The late second and early third century was a turbulent time in the Roman Empire and in the relationship between the empire and the church. Origen was the son of a Christian martyr and was himself imprisoned and tortured in his late life in a persecution that targeted leaders of the church. Deeply pious and a gifted scholar, Origen stands as one of the most influential Christian teachers in church history, and also one of the most controversial. This introduction to Origen begins by looking at some of the circumstances that were formative influences on his life. It then turns to some key elements in his thought. The approach here differs from that taken by most earlier studies by working from the central position that Scripture had for Origen. Heine argues that Origen’s thought, in his later life especially, reflects his continual interaction with the Bible.

La Belle Provence est une Hotbed of Religious Craziness?

My dear friend, the Archpriest Robert Anderson, lived in Aylmer, Quebec on chemin de la Montagne, enabling him to refer to himself as a real mountain-top hermit, which he was in his own charming and inimitable ways. After the turn of the century until his shocking death in December 2010, I visited that house many times for drinks, dinner, discussion, and then in the summers went up regularly to cut the grass and look after the place as he spent every year from late June through August teaching in Ukraine and then often visiting family in Greece and other parts of Europe. One summer, after debating which day of the week to go up to cut the grass, and indifferently thinking it didn't really matter, I rather suddenly decided to go up mid-afternoon only to be greeted with this bizarre hissing noise as I unlocked the house and went in. It sounded like water but I thought that impossible...until I went to the basement where his vast library (I'd estimate at least 3500 volumes) was kept, and where the pump on his well had burst, and was showering the entire basement in water! There was a good inch or more on the floor by the time I got there and had to hire a plumber to come fix the pump. But praise God we lost almost no books or the liturgical paraphernalia he kept in his wee basement chapel.

In any event Fr Bob, had spent long stretches of his student years in and around Paris, where he became fluent in French (as he was in several other languages, most self-taught, including Ukrainian). He would go on to teach French and theology in Catholic schools for over 30 years. So he was always fascinated by francophone culture in Canada and, in a Flannery O'Connor vein, used to speak to me regularly of how much he thought Quebec was haunted by its recently rejected Catholic past coming out of the Révolution tranquille. His experience was that you just had to waft a bit of incense and trot out some Gregorian chant and you could immediately, if only briefly and not permanently, evoke waves of nostalgia from Quebecois Catholics.

In place of an often repressive Catholicism (or so the myths run in Quebec, where its Catholic phase, especially under Maurice Duplessis, is sometimes called la grande noirceur), what developed in that province after 1965 was often a fascinating but bizarre mixture of hyper-reactionary Catholicism, "new agey" cults, very liberal and often strange (and drug addled) "spiritual" practices, and much else besides. It was fascinating to discuss with him, who had a hilariously well-honed taste for kitsch, which Quebec still abounds in.

All this is just a long preface to say how much he would have been fascinated by a brand-new book: The Mystical Geography of Quebec:Catholic Schisms and New Religious Movements, eds., S.J. Palmer, Susan J., M. Geoffroy, and P.L.Gareau (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 287pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This study of new religious movements in Quebec focuses on nine groups—including the notoriously violent Solar Temple; the iconoclastic Temple of Priapus; and the various “Catholic” schisms, such as those led by a mystical pope; the Holy Spirit incarnate; or the reappearance of the Virgin Mary. Eleven contributing authors offer rich ethnographies and sociological insights on new spiritual groups that highlight the quintessential features of Quebec's new religions (“sectes” in the francophone media). The editors argue that Quebec provides a favorable “ecology” for alternative spirituality, and explore the influences behind this situation: the rapid decline of the Catholic Church after Vatican Il; the “Quiet Revolution,” a utopian faith in Science; the 1975 Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms; and an open immigration that welcomes diverse faiths. The themes of Quebec nationalism found in prophetic writings that fuel apocalyptic ferment are explored by the editors who find in these sectarian communities echoes of Quebec’s larger Sovereignty movement.

Liturgical Mysticism

I have used David Fagerberg's Theologia Prima in my classes for fifteen years now. And after reading that one book, students always very enthusiastically seek out his other writings, including, more recently, Liturgical Asceticism. But he has several others worth your time, including the one discussed here in my interview with him.

At the very end of last year, his latest book was published: Liturgical Mysticism (Emmaus Academic, 2019), 200pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Some think that liturgy is formal, public, and for ordinary people, while mysticism is uncontrollable, private, and for extraordinary saints. Is there a connection between the two? In this volume, David Fagerberg proposes that mysticism is the normal crowning of the Christian life, and the Christian life is liturgical.

We intuitively sense that liturgy and theology and mysticism have an affinity. Liturgical theology should reveal liturgy’s mystical heart. Liturgical theology asks “What happens in liturgy?” and liturgical mysticism asks “What happens to us in liturgy?”, and perfects our interior liturgy. In Liturgical Mysticism, Fagerberg directs the reader to look fixedly at Christ, who is the Mystery present in liturgy, and who bestows his resurrection power upon his adopted children.

In the Shadow of Constantine

Interest in Byzantine history always seems to remain relatively high, and will be further fed in July with the publication of a book in the publisher's New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture series: The Sons of Constantine, AD 337-361:In the Shadows of Constantine and Julian, eds., Nicholas Baker-Brian, and Shaun J. Tougher (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 466pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This edited collection focuses on the Roman empire during the period from AD 337 to 361. During this period the empire was ruled by three brothers: Constantine II (337-340), Constans I (337-350) and Constantius II (337-361). These emperors tend to be cast into shadow by their famous father Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor (306-337), and their famous cousin Julian, the last pagan Roman emperor (361-363). The traditional concentration on the historically renowned figures of Constantine and Julian is understandable but comes at a significant price: the neglect of the period between the death of Constantine and the reign of Julian and of the rulers who governed the empire in this period. The reigns of the sons of Constantine, especially that of the longest-lived Constantius II, mark a moment of great historical significance. As the heirs of Constantine they became the guardians of his legacy, and they oversaw the nature of the world in which Julian was to grow up. The thirteen contributors to this volume assess their influence on imperial, administrative, cultural, and religious facets of the empire in the fourth century.

Nationalism and Conservatism in Orthodox Churches

The problem of nationalism within the Christian East is so well known as to almost be something of a commonplace. But that doesn't mean the problem has gone away, or does not shape-shift as the years go by, or is unworthy of continued study and critique. A recently published collection looks at all these issues anew: S.B. Ramet, ed., Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe:Nationalism, Conservativism, and Intolerance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 267pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

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.