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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Orthodox Churches
During Russia's late imperial period, Orthodox churchmen,
professionally trained theologians, and an array of social
commentators sought to give meaning to Russian history and its
supposed backwardness. Many found that meaning in asceticism. For
some, ascetic religiosity prevented Russia from achieving its
historical destiny. For others, it was the means by which the
Russian people would realize the Kingdom of God, thereby saving
Holy Russia and the world from the satanic forces of the West.
Patrick Lally Michelson's intellectual history of asceticism in
Russian Orthodox thought traces the development of these competing
arguments from the early nineteenth century to the early months of
World War I. He demonstrates that this discourse was an imaginative
interpretation of lived Orthodoxy, primarily meant to satisfy the
ideological needs of Russian thinkers and Orthodox intellectuals as
they responded to the socioeconomic, political, and cultural
challenges of modernity.
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