Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Europe

Released at the beginning of this month is a fascinating-looking collection ranging widely over movements it is too easy to dismiss as composed of fanatics and freaks: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, eds., Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 339pp.

About this book, which is a softcover reprint of the 2017 original, the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the changes underwent by the Orthodox Churches of Eastern and Southeastern Europe as they came into contact with modernity. The movements of religious renewal among Orthodox believers appeared almost simultaneously in different areas of Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth and during the first decades of the twentieth century.

This volume examines what could be defined as renewal movement in Eastern Orthodox traditions. Some case studies include the God Worshippers in Serbia, religious fraternities in Bulgaria, the Zoe movement in Greece, the evangelical movement among Romanian Orthodox believers known as Oastea Domnului (The Lord’s Army), the Doukhobors in Russia, and the Maliovantsy in Ukraine. This volume provides a new understanding of processes of change in the spiritual landscape of Orthodox Christianity and various influences such as other non-Orthodox traditions, charismatic leaders, new religious practices and rituals.

Bulgarian Orthodoxy Under Communism

We have for the better part of two decades now seen an increasing number of books devoted to post-Soviet realities across central, southern, and eastern Europe. As those regions move further and further away from their communist past it sometimes becomes a bit easier to gain the beginnings of historical-critical perspective on them. A new book, just released, does that for Bulgaria, with chapter on the role of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which continues to struggle even today with its communist past: Bulgaria Under Communism, eds. Ivaylo Znepolski et al., (Routledge, 2018), 476pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The book traces the history of communist Bulgaria from 1944 to 1989. A detailed narrative-cum-study of the history of a political system, it provides a chronological overview of the building of the socialist state from the ground up, its entrenchment into the peaceful routine of everyday life, its inner crises, and its gradual decline and self-destruction. The book is the definitive and the most complete guide to Bulgaria under communism and how the communist system operates on a day-to-day level.

Orthodoxy and Nationalism

I drew attention to this collection edited by Lucian Leustean, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe, when it was published last year, and it has since then sat accusingly on my desk. I've picked it up several times and started it over the last few months, but always some interruption or other took me away from it. Only this week had a chance to devote some time to it.

Let me say straightaway that anybody with any interest in the vexed question of Orthodoxy and nationalism--as well as the wider religio-political history of southeastern Europe over the last 150 years--cannot be without this book. The introductory chapter, which cogently sets forth an overview of forms and causes of nationalism and various scholarly theories and treatments of it, is itself worth the price of the book.

After that, the book devotes chapters to Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the sunset of the Ottoman Empire and its millet system. The details unearthed considerably complicate conventional portraits about ethno-phyletism, the role of the French Revolution, and much else besides. This is a deeply fascinating book that has been smoothly edited.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Amidst the renewed interest in many Eastern Christian churches since 1991, several have been relatively neglected so far, including the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which has been (as I document in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity) deeply divided over its communist past. Recent news stories suggest that its patriarch is about to resign. One of the few recent books in English to give serious scholarly attention to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is James Lindsay Hopkins, The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship Between Church, Nation, and State in Bulgaria (Columbia University Press, 2009), 360pp.

About his book the publisher provids a pithy overview: 

After a discussion of the Byzantine and early Ottoman eras, the author examines church-state relationships in the latter Ottoman, Communist, and post-communist periods.