Muslim Converts to Greek Orthodoxy

I am greatly looking forward to reading this new study which will begin filling a very considerable gap in the literature on conversion: Proselytes of a New Nation: Muslim Conversions to Orthodox Christianity in Modern Greece by Stefanos Katsikas  (Oxford UP, 2022), 248pp. About this study the publisher tells us this:

Proselytes of a New Nation analyzes questions such as: Why did many Muslims convert to Greek Orthodoxy? What did conversion mean to the converts? What were their economic, social, and professional profiles? And how did conversion affect the converts' relationships with Muslim relatives in Greece and the Ottoman Empire?

Because Sharia law and the Ottoman legal system could keep Muslim apostates--Muslims who had converted to other religions--from inheriting family property, Stefanos Katsikas examines the ways in which conversion complicated family relations and often led to legal disputes. This volume also discusses the method used by the Greek state to adjudicate legal disputes on property issues between neophytes (converts) and their Muslim relatives.

Proselytes of a New Nation maintains that religious conversion in the era of nationalism was far more consequential for the convert, their family, and their social relations. Converts received not only community attention, but also national. Depending upon the religious affiliation and nationality of an individual, they regarded neophytes as either "traitors" or "heroes." Against this sociopolitical backdrop, conversion more drastically affected the social fabric of communities than in the pre-modern era, and more often led to violence and conflict.

Greek Evil Eyes

Not a week ago were my students insistently asking me everything I knew about the role of the evil eye in Greek Orthodox culture. I am now in the happy position of being myself able to learn more about this, and refer them to learn more from a forthcoming book: Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The Evil Eye in Greece by Eugenia Roussou  (Bloomsbury, October 2022), 216pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this: 

This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity.

Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the 'evil eye' produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture.

The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.

Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture

For more than a decade now, I have used Christos Yannaras's The Freedom of Morality in my moral theology courses to good effect. There are parts of the book--like every other of his books, at least among the ones I have read--that drive me to distraction by sometimes indolent polemicizing, but even that is redeemed somewhat in stirring up vigorous classroom discussion. (I rather suspect that may be part of his point, and that he would not be displeased to learn this.)

This summer a paperback edition of a book devoted to Yannaras, which first appeared in 2018, was published: Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture by Andreas Andreopoulos, Demetrios Harper (Routledge, 2020), 218pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. The work of Yannaras is virtually synonymous with a turn or renaissance of Orthodox philosophy and theology, initially within Greece, but as the present volume confirms, well beyond it. His work engages not only with issues of philosophy and theology, but also takes in wider questions of culture and politics.

With contributions from established and new scholars, the book is divided into three sections, which correspond to the main directions that Christos Yannaras has followed – philosophy, theology, and culture – and reflects on the ways in which Yannaras has engaged and influenced thought across these fields, in addition to themes including ecclesiology, tradition, identity, and ethics.

This volume facilitates the dialogue between the thought of Yannaras, which is expressed locally yet is relevant globally, and Western Christian thinkers. It will be of great interest to scholars of Orthodox and Eastern Christian theology and philosophy, as well as theology more widely.

Orthodox Liturgy Phenomenologically Understood

I wonder if the author this book, released late last year, has suddenly realized she may need to write a second volume, devoted to the phenomenology of Orthodox liturgy during a pandemic? I have been watching with great interest the diverse approaches taken to the question of whether to have liturgies in Orthodox temples with a "skeleton crew" as some have done; whether to cancel outright; whether to have everybody broadcast liturgy live on Facebook (etc.); or whether, as the Ecumenical Throne has recently decreed, to have only one broadcasted liturgy per diocese.

In any event, this looks to be an important new study by Christina M. Gschwandtner, Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy (Fordham UP, 2019), 352pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

What does it mean to experience and engage in religious ritual? How does liturgy structure time and space? How do our bodies move within liturgy, and what impact does it have on our senses? How does the experience of ritual affect us and shape our emotions or dispositions? How is liturgy experienced as a communal event, and how does it form the identity of those who participate in it? Welcoming Finitude explores these broader questions about religious experience by focusing on the manifestation of liturgical experience in the Eastern Christian tradition. Drawing on the methodological tools of contemporary phenomenology and on insights from liturgical theology, the book constitutes a philosophical exploration of Orthodox liturgical experience.

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.

The Greek Orthodox Church in America

It's striking to see what apparently is a new imprint from Cornell University Press ("NIU Series in Orthodox Christian Studies"). It will release a volume in this series next June when it publishes The Greek Orthodox Church in America: A Modern History  by Alexander Kitroeff (2020), 324pp.

About this book we are told the following by the publisher:

In this deep history, Alexander Kitroeff shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants.

Assuming the responsibility of running day- and afternoon Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the Church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of the Greeks in the United States. The Orthodox Church did this by successfully balancing between the need to retain Old World traditions at the core of Orthodox Christianity while adapting to the American environment and to address the spiritual and secular needs of the younger generations steadily integrating into American society.

Kitroeff digs into these traditions, highlighting the American Church's dependency on the "mother church," the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople and the use of the Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. For several decades in the post-WWII era the Church reconciled its Old-World ties with the Americanization of the faithful, most significantly and controversially permitting the use of English in the liturgy. When, at the end of the twentieth century, the process of assimilation progressed to the extent of raising the possibility of the Church merging into a supra-ethnic American Orthodox Church the Patriarchate in Constantinople expressed strong disapproval. But today, as this rich biography of the Church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.

Cyprus Under the British

Cyprus seems to be coming in for some recent scrutiny, as a recent book, noted only last month, bears on parts of its history. Now another new book treats its more recent history: Christos Ioannides, Cyprus under British Colonial Rule: Culture, Politics, and the Movement toward Union with Greece, 1878–1954 (Lexington Books, 2019), 340pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This is a unique book that combines a political narrative with poetry to examine the role of culture and the fusion of religion and politics during the struggle against colonialism. The context is Britain’s geopolitical interests in the Middle East. The author utilizes a vital cultural source echoing the authentic voice of the people, Cypriot folk poems, which has remained virtually unknown to the English reader until now. Translated into English, they are interwoven into the book’s narrative to reflect the yearning for social justice and the political sentiments of the vast majority of the population, the peasants, in a rural society. Lawrence Durrell’s literary masterpiece, Bitter Lemons, his politico-cultural chronicle on British-ruled Cyprus, is also discussed critically.

The Greek Orthodox Church led the anti-colonial movement revolving around union with Greece. Through his intimate knowledge of Greek Orthodox practices, the author elucidates how religious customs and rituals were intertwined with the nationalist ideology to lead to political mobilization. In the process, culture, with its religious underpinnings, shaped politics. This dynamic has been the case from the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, to Eurasia and South East Asia. Prime examples are the Iranian revolution and the more recent Arab Spring, both of which caught the West by surprise. In Cyprus, the British, with their sense of superiority, remained alien to the local culture and discounted popular sentiment. The two rebellions that ensued caught Britain totally by surprise. This is a valuable case study on the convergence of religion and politics. Academics, students and non-specialists will find a captivating narrative on Britain’s colonial encounter in an idyllic but strategic island in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Christos Yannaras

There are certain names, by the force of their prose and the number of their books, which cannot be overlooked today, and Christos Yannaras is certainly in that category. I have used his books in classes for more than a decade now, and read some others. In the former category I have regularly assigned his Freedom of Morality.

That book seems emblematic of Yannaras in some ways--blustery and sprawling, desperately in need of an editor, prone to wild exaggerations and polemical tangents (especially about tiresome Orthodox bugbears such as "scholasticism" and "pietism"), and not a little bit idealistic. Still it contains some crucial insights well worth thinking about in depth.

It is a facile temptation, devoutly to be avoided, to write Yannaras off as one more anti-Western Orthodox crank, of whom there seem to be not a few today. But Yannaras can indulge in those kinds of polemics (perhaps nowhere at greater length than in Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age) and still be worth your time because--unlike almost all other anti-Western Orthodox--he regularly turns the criticism back on Orthodoxy itself in welcome ways, as he does in this book in particular. This capacity for self-criticism, as I noted here, became obvious and welcome in 2011 when he gave a commencement address at Holy Cross in Brookline denouncing Orthodox zealots with their individualism, their idolization, their fundamentalism, and their fanaticism masquerading as Orthodox but in fact deeply modern and deeply Western.

Among his other books which I have read, and in some cases reviewed elsewhere, I'd draw attention to The Enigma of Evil. I'm not entirely convinced by its arguments, but again it raises some good questions (in between the usual shots at the West).

And I am just about to begin reading his Against Religion: the Alienation of the Ecclesial Event. It promises to be of interest in my own current work on Freud and theology, some of it discussed here where Yannaras's ideas on psychoanalysis (especially its Lacanian variant) were also noted and welcomed. In his essay on Lacan, Yannaras is a model of open learning, of "despoiling the Egyptians" that the Fathers so often practiced and recommended--but which few on-line apologists today seem to do.

There are many other books that could be mentioned, but the point of this entry is to draw your attention to a new book, and a forthcoming one later this year.

The new book is Metaphysics as a Personal Adventure, trans. Norman Russell (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2017), 212pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Christos Yannaras is a philosopher, theologian, and political thinker widely regarded as one of the most important Orthodox thinkers of the twentieth century. He sees theology along with philosophy not as an academic enterprise, but as a serious approach to reality in all the dimensions vital to life today. A controversial figure, he castigates much of what passes for Christianity in the East as well as in the West, calling it a religionization of faith. In this book he responds to searching questions concerning his work, setting his thinking as a whole in an integrated vision of knowledge, truth, relationship, and salvation.

And then, set for release in August of this year is a forthcoming study: Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture By Andreas Andreopoulos (Routledge, 2018), 243pp.

About this forthcoming work Routledge tells us the following:

Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. His work engages not only with issues of philosophy and theology, but also takes in wider questions of culture and politics. With contributions from established and new scholars this collection considers the four main strands of Yannaras’ work - philosophy, theology, ethics and culture - and reflects on the ways in which Yannaras has engaged and influenced thought across these fields. Christos Yannaras provides a foreword.

Wounded by Love

Earlier this month  I drew attention to another book published by Denise Harvey Publishers, a book that came back to mind in a conversation with Fr John Jillions. We were together at the Eleanor Malburg Eastern Churches Seminar in Cleveland in October, and in the course of his presentation he mentioned--having lived in Greece for part of the time he was doing his doctorate at Thessaloniki--this book as being one of the most spiritually profound works he has read: Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios (2012), 268pp.

About this book the publisher (who gives some excerpts here) tells us:

Saint Porphyrios, a Greek monk and priest who died in 1991, stands in the long tradition of charismatic spiritual guides in the Eastern Church which continues from the apostolic age down to figures such as Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Staretz Silouan in modern times. In this book he tells the story of his life and, in simple, deeply reflected and profoundly wise words, he expounds the Christian faith for today.

The vibrant personality of Saint Porphyrios at all times shines through his words with great transparency and charm. In his introduction to the Greek edition Bishop Irenaeus of Chania writes: 'The words of blessed Elder Porphyrios are the words of a holy Father, of a man with the gift of clear sight, who was ever retiring, humble, simple and ardent and whose life was a true and authentic witness to Christ, to His truth and to His joy. Through his presence, love, prayer, counsel and guidance he supported an untold number of people in the difficult hours of illness, mourning, pain, loss of faith and death. He is a god-bearing Father of our days, a true priest and teacher who in his ascetic way fell in love with Christ and faithfully served his fellow man.'

This book was compiled after Saint Porphyrios's death from an archive of notes and recordings of his reminiscences, conversations and words of guidance, and was first published in Greek in 2003. Since its publication in English in 2005 it has been reprinted seven times, most recently in 2015.

Orthodox Renewal in Eastern and Southern Europe

It is of course a self-congratulatory staple of some Orthodox apologists that their tradition alone has not changed, while various Catholic and Protestant traditions have changed out of all recognition, becoming ever worse heretics in the process. Needless to say, this is a piece of myth-making that does not enjoy intimate congress with the historical evidence, some of which is newly recorded in a book released this month: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, eds. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 339pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

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.

For those who wish to pursue the questions of how and where Orthodox traditions have changed in the past century, I would also direct you to the fascinating collection I reviewed elsewhere, which has recently been released in a more affordable paperback edition:  Innovation in the Orthodox Christian Tradition?: The Question of Change in Greek Orthodox Thought and Practice, eds. Trine Stauning Willert and Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Routledge, 2017), 298pp.

Orthodoxy and Islam in Greece

We are fortunate to be living in so fruitful an era when study of the many and messy encounters between Eastern Christians and Muslims continue to produced by scholars around the world focusing on different periods and places. To released in May is a new study by Greek author, Nikolaos-Nikodemos Anagnostopoulos: Orthodoxy and Islam: Theology and Muslim-Christian Relations in Modern Greece and Turkey (Routledge, 2017), 240 pages.

About this collection the publisher tells us:

Church History reveals that Christianity has its roots in Palestine during the first century and was spread throughout the Mediterranean countries by the Apostles. However, despite sharing the same ancestry, Muslims and Christians have been living in a challenging symbiotic co-existence for more than fourteen centuries in many parts of South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

This book analyses contemporary Christian-Muslim relations in the traditional lands of Orthodoxy and Islam. In particular, it examines the development of Eastern Orthodox ecclesiological thinking on Muslim-Christian relations and religious minorities in the context of modern Greece and Turkey. Greece, where the prevailing religion is Eastern Orthodoxy, accommodates an official recognised Muslim minority based in Western Thrace as well as other Muslim populations located at major Greek urban centres and the islands of the Aegean Sea. On the other hand, Turkey, where the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is based, is a Muslim country which accommodates within its borders an official recognised Greek Orthodox Minority.The book then suggests ways in which to overcome the difficulties that Muslim and Christian communities are still facing with the Turkish and Greek States.Finally, it proposes that the positive aspects of the coexistence between Muslims and Christians in Western Thrace and Istanbul might constitute an original model that should be adopted in other EU and Middle East countries, where challenges and obstacles between Muslim and Christian communities still persist.

This book offers a distinct and useful contribution to the ever popular subject of Christian-Muslim relations, especially in South-East Europe and the Middle East. It will be a key resource for students and scholars of Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

We are also given the table of contents:

 1. Introduction 2. Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople 3. The Development of the Autocephalous Greek Orthodox Church 4. Modern Historical Context of the States of Greece and Turkey as it Relates to the Minority Question 5. Methodology 6. Conclusion, Appendix 1 & 2

Eastern Christian Suffering in the Violent Decline of the Ottoman Empire

I've just had a chance to finish Eugene Rogan's splendid study, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (Basic Books, 2015), 512pp.

It is a very cogently written study that begins in the late 19th century, but is of course largely concentrated on the First World War, though with considerable attention paid to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13.

Parts of the book revisit well-trod territory for those who have some background in the history of the Great War--e.g., the chapter on the Allied attempt to invade by the Dardanelles and the related Gallipoli campaigns in 1915.

Parts of the book also show the great (and relatively underwhelming and only partially successful) attempts made by the Young Turks and their German patrons to arouse Muslim hatred against the Entente Powers by repeated calls for jihad, a term with which, alas, we have only become ever more familiar in the last hundred years. In the case of British India, this campaign produced almost no uprisings, so loyal were Indian subjects to the king-emperor George V. In most other places, it aroused only minimal attention for a variety of reasons. In all places, it seems, it was recognized by Arabs, Turks, Germans, and Brits alike as a political tool to be trotted out when convenient and retired when necessary. It does not seem to have had quite the same purchase as it does today in the hands of some (e.g., ISIS). Once again one sees the ease with which all parties--Muslim and non-Muslim alike--are able to use Islamic terminology, concepts, and practices as ideological tools in the service of empires and would-be nation-states.

The chapters on the Arab Revolt, which began 100 years ago this past June, are very interesting to watch the intrigue between Britain and the Hashemite tribes of Arabia. This gives rise to plots between Arabs and Brits against the Ottoman Turks; between Arabs and the Turks against the British; between the British and the French (e.g., the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement) against the Arabs; and then between the British, French, and Russians against the Turks and possibly with the Arabs onside, but clearly in a dependent role. Fascinating too is the sudden creation of a "king" in the Arab world in the person of Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, who gave himself the regal title and status. Most monarchies tend to be shabby (if disguised) ramshackle affairs of sordid origins, but this one is especially déshabillé.

There is also a very well done chapter on the Armenian Genocide which also gives considerable attention to the slaughter of the Assyrian Christians at the same time--to say nothing of the campaign to drive the Greeks out of western Anatolia. For those who want to understand the genocide in its wider context, this book does a very good job. But for those who want the genocide summed up without reading any number of the many lengthy studies of it, this book's chapter does a good job in conveying the details succinctly without sparing the reader some of the details of the horrors faced--horrors that stagger one to this very day.

Rogan's treatment of the slaughter of Armenian Christians draws considerably on a first-hand eye-witness report, Armenian Golgotha, one of the first ever written, by Grigoris Balakian, an Armenian priest who barely survived, and who was forced to witness the genocide in all its manifold horrors

Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul

For the Greeks, Ottomans, and musicians in your life: Indiana University Press is set to release today, January 2nd, a new study that you will want to order as a continuing celebration of Christmas, or perhaps a pre-Theophany gift. In any event, it is a welcome study in an area that has long cried out for more research: Orthodox music in all its diversity. 

Merih Erol, Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul: Nation and Community in the Era of Reform (IU Press, 2016), 288pp.

About this book we are told:

During the late Ottoman period (1856–1922), a time of contestation about imperial policy toward minority groups, music helped the Ottoman Greeks in Istanbul define themselves as a distinct cultural group. A part of the largest non-Muslim minority within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire, the Greek Orthodox educated elite engaged in heated discussions about their cultural identity, Byzantine heritage, and prospects for the future, at the heart of which were debates about the place of traditional liturgical music in a community that was confronting modernity and westernization. Merih Erol draws on archival evidence from ecclesiastical and lay sources dealing with understandings of Byzantine music and history, forms of religious chanting, the life stories of individual cantors, and other popular and scholarly sources of the period. Audio examples keyed to the text are available online.

Russian and Greek Identities

I've met the author of this book several times at conferences, where his lectures are always both fascinating and entertaining. Much of his earlier research and presentations were indeed precisely on questions of Greek religious and political identity, and the complexities of both that he unearthed were very interesting indeed. Now we have a book-length treatment of relations between two major European Orthodox powers: Russia and the Making of Modern Greek Identity, 1821-1844 (Oxford, 2015), 304pp.

About this book we are told:

The birth of the Greek nation in 1830 was a pivotal event in modern European history and in the history of nation-building in general. As the first internationally recognized state to appear on the map of Europe since the French Revolution, independent Greece provided a model for other national movements to emulate. Throughout the process of nation formation in Greece, the Russian Empire played a critical part. Drawing upon a mass of previously fallow archival material, most notably from Russian embassies and consulates, this volume explores the role of Russia and the potent interaction of religion and politics in the making of modern Greek identity. It deals particularly with the role of Eastern Orthodoxy in the transformation of the collective identity of the Greeks from the Ottoman Orthodox millet into the new Hellenic-Christian imagined community. Lucien J. Frary provides the first comprehensive examination of Russian reactions to the establishment of the autocephalous Greek Church, the earliest of its kind in the Orthodox Balkans, and elucidates Russia's anger and disappointment during the Greek Constitutional Revolution of 1843, the leaders of which were Russophiles. Employing Russian newspapers and "thick journals" of the era, Frary probes responses within Russian reading circles to the reforms and revolutions taking place in the Greek kingdom. More broadly, the volume explores the making of Russian foreign policy during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-55) and provides a distinctively transnational perspective on the formation of modern identity.

By the Rivers of Byzantium We Sat and Wept as We Thought of....Greek Orthodox Hymns?

At long last we have, in the last decade, been seeing more scholarly works on Eastern Christian music. Set for release the first of next year is a promising new study that will further our understanding not just of Eastern Orthodox music and liturgics, but also of Orthodox-Muslim relations in the sunset of the Ottoman Empire: Merih Erol, Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul: Nation and Community in the Era of Reform (Indiana University Press, 2016), 278pp.

About this book we are told:

During the late Ottoman period (1856–1922), a time of contestation about imperial policy toward minority groups, music helped the Ottoman Greeks in Istanbul define themselves as a distinct cultural group. A part of the largest non-Muslim minority within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire, the Greek Orthodox educated elite engaged in heated discussions about their cultural identity, Byzantine heritage, and prospects for the future, at the heart of which were debates about the place of traditional liturgical music in a community that was confronting modernity and westernization. Merih Erol draws on archival evidence from ecclesiastical and lay sources dealing with understandings of Byzantine music and history, forms of religious chanting, the life stories of individual cantors, and other popular and scholarly sources of the period. Audio examples keyed to the text are available online.

Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium

Just when I've about despaired of any further point in remaining on Facebook, with its capacity to hoover up huge amounts of time for little to no substantial purpose, along comes someone posting of a new book that had escaped my attention: Andrew Walker White, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 284pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study, Andrew Walker White explores the origins of Byzantine ritual - the rites of the early Greek Orthodox Church - and its unique relationship with traditional theatre. Tracing the secularization of pagan theatre, the rise of rhetoric as an alternative to acting, as well as the transmission of ancient methods of musical composition into the Byzantine era, White demonstrates how Christian ritual was in effect a post-theatrical performing art, created by intellectuals who were fully aware of traditional theatre but who endeavoured to avoid it. The book explores how Orthodox rites avoid the aesthetic appreciation associated with secular art, and conducts an in-depth study (and reconstruction) of the late Byzantine Service of the Furnace. Often treated as a liturgical drama, White translates and delineates the features of five extant versions, to show how and why it generated widely diverse audience reactions in both medieval times and our own.

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.

Render Unto the Sultan

As I have repeatedly noted on here, there is much we still need to learn, or in some cases re-learn, about the encounters, varied and various according to time and place, between Eastern Christians and Muslims. That is as true for two neighbors encountering one another across the Anatolian plateau as it is for leaders at the highest levels of Church and empire. We need, moreover, to deepen our understanding of Church-state relations in the East if only so that we can finally move beyond tired stereotypes of "caseropapism" and other slogans. A book set for release early next month should shed welcome light here: Tom Papademetriou, Render unto the Sultan: Power, Authority, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the Early Ottoman Centuries (Oxford UP, 2015), 288pp.

About this book we are told:

The received wisdom about the nature of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire is that Sultan Mehmed II reestablished the Patriarchate of Constantinople as both a political and a religious authority to govern the post-Byzantine Greek community. However, relations between the Church hierarchy and Turkish masters extend further back in history, and closer scrutiny of these relations reveals that the Church hierarchy in Anatolia had long experience dealing with Turkish emirs by focusing on economic arrangements. Decried as scandalous, these arrangements became the modus vivendi for bishops in the Turkish emirates.

Primarily concerned with the economic arrangements between the Ottoman state and the institution of the Greek Orthodox Church from the mid-fifteenth to the sixteenth century, Render Unto the Sultan argues that the Ottoman state considered the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical hierarchy primarily as tax farmers (mültezim) for cash income derived from the church's widespread holdings. The Ottoman state granted individuals the right to take their positions as hierarchs in return for yearly payments to the state. Relying on members of the Greek economic elite (archons) to purchase the ecclesiastical tax farm (iltizam), hierarchical positions became subject to the same forces of competition that other Ottoman administrative offices faced. This led to colorful episodes and multiple challenges to ecclesiastical authority throughout Ottoman lands.

Tom Papademetriou demonstrates that minority communities and institutions in the Ottoman Empire, up to now, have been considered either from within the community, or from outside, from the Ottoman perspective. This new approach allows us to consider internal Greek Orthodox communal concerns, but from within the larger Ottoman social and economic context.

Render Unto the Sultan challenges the long established concept of the 'Millet System', the historical model in which the religious leader served both a civil as well as a religious authority. From the Ottoman state's perspective, the hierarchy was there to serve the religious and economic function rather than the political one.

New Voices in Greek Orthodoxy

The Greek Church today, like most Christian bodies, seems to be riven between a reactionary and retrograde crowd (led by bishops who wrote that silly letter last spring to the pope, which I discussed here) on the one hand, and, on the other, led also by those willing to recognize that the world today has changed and the Church has to figure out how to respond to that without retreating into a patristic fundamentalism and other pathologies. In witness of this changed situation, I recently reviewed elsewhere a fascinating collection, Innovation in the Orthodox Christian Tradition?: The Question of Change in Greek Orthodox Thought and Practice, which looks at Greek Orthodox Christians in Greece itself but also in North America and Australia and how, at various points in their history, they have negotiated very significant changes.

Now another book looks at change of that longstanding problem to afflict all Eastern Christians, viz., nationalism: Trine Stauning Wilert, New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought: Untying the Bond between Nation and Religion: Difference Is Everything (Ashgate, 2014), 197pp.

About this book we are told:

New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought brings to the light and discusses a strand in contemporary Greek public debate that is often overlooked, namely progressive religious actors of a western orientation. International - and Greek - media tend to focus on the extreme views and to categorise positions in the public debate along well known dichotomies such as traditionalists vs. modernsers. Demonstrating that in late modernity, parallel to rising nationalisms, there is a shift towards religious communities becoming the central axis for cultural organization and progressive thinking, the book presents Greece as a case study based on empirical field data from contemporary theology and religious education, and makes a unique contribution to ongoing debates about the public role of religion in contemporary Europe.

19th Century Greeks and Constantinopolitans

Peter Lang has recently published two books both treating Greek Orthodox Christians in the nineteenth century: Maria Mandamadiotou, The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene (2013), 250pp. 

About this book we are told:

This book focuses on the modernization of the Greek Orthodox community of Mytilene the capital of Lesbos, an island located in the north-east Aegean the changes it underwent, and its responses to the ever-changing political situation between 1876 and 1912. The author argues that the position of leading community members, particularly journalists, and their receptivity towards the social and political changes of the period, went hand-in-hand with their 'ethnic' and political aspirations for the role of the Greek Orthodox ethnos in the Empire. In relation to the competition among various 'imperialisms' and 'nationalisms' then developing around Mytilene's Christians, the author shows that Ottoman reforms were successful in encouraging them to co-opt local interest such that concern for the growth of the specific community was directly linked to the survival of the Ottoman Empire.

Peter Lang is also reprinting an unsurpassed tome from the turn of the twentieth century: Ivan Sokolov, The Church of Constantinople in the Nineteenth Century: An Essay in Historical Research (2013), 1025pp.

About this book we are told:

Ivan Sokolov's work, first published in 1904, begins with a balanced overview of the situation of the Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule from the fall of Constantinople (1453) to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The author then gives a detailed description of the external situation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from 1789 to 1900. This is followed by a discussion of the career and activity of each patriarch during this period, their relations with the bishops, their initiatives in the field of education, their regulations concerning marriage, and their work with parishes and monasteries. The book concludes with a thorough analysis of the administration of the Patriarchate during these years. Although written over a hundred years ago, this classic work has not been superseded. It is based on original sources, particularly on the patriarchal archives, to which few scholars have had access. No other existing study deals with the nineteenth-century Ecumenical Patriarchate in such a systematic and specific way. It constitutes an invaluable tool of reference. Translated from the Russian.