The bitter separation of Ukraine's Orthodox churches is a microcosm of its societal strife. From 1917 onward, church leaders failed to agree on the church's mission in the twentieth century. The core issues of dispute were establishing independence from the Russian church and adopting Ukrainian as the language of worship. Decades of polemical exchanges and public statements by leaders of the separated churches contributed to the formation of their distinct identities and sharpened the friction amongst their respective supporters. In The Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Nicholas Denysenko provides a balanced and comprehensive analysis of this history from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research, Denysenko's study examines the dynamics of church and state that complicate attempts to restore an authentic Ukrainian religious identity in the contemporary Orthodox churches. An enhanced understanding of these separate identities and how they were forged could prove to be an important tool for resolving contemporary religious differences and revising ecclesial policies. This important study will be of interest to historians of the church, specialists of former Soviet countries, and general readers interested in the history of the Orthodox Church.

The memoirs presented in Women of the Catacombs offer a rare close-up account of the underground Orthodox community and its priests during some of the most difficult years in Russian history. The catacomb church in the Soviet Union came into existence in the 1920s and played a significant part in Russian national life for nearly fifty years. Adherents to the Orthodox faith often referred to the catacomb church as the "light shining in the dark." Women of the Catacombs provides a first-hand portrait of lived religion in its social, familial, and cultural setting during this tragic period. Until now, scholars have had only brief, scattered fragments of information about Russia's illegal church organization that claimed to protect the purity of the Orthodox tradition. Vera Iakovlevna Vasilevskaia and Elena Semenovna Men, who joined the church as young women, offer evidence on how Russian Orthodoxy remained a viable, alternative presence in Soviet society, when all political, educational, and cultural institutions attempted to indoctrinate Soviet citizens with an atheistic perspective. Wallace L. Daniel's translation not only sheds light on Russia's religious and political history, but also shows how two educated women maintained their personal integrity in times when prevailing political and social headwinds moved in an opposite direction.

Sociocultural anthropologists have taken increasing interest in the global communities established by Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, but the many streams of Eastern Christianity have so far been neglected. "Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective" fills this gap in the literature. The essays in this pioneering collection examine the primary distinguishing features of the Eastern traditions - iconography, hymnology, ritual, and pilgrimage - through meticulous ethnographic analysis. Particular attention is paid to the revitalization of Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches that were repressed under Marxist-Leninist regimes.

Sociocultural anthropologists have taken increasing interest in the global communities established by Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, but the many streams of Eastern Christianity have so far been neglected. "Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective" fills this gap in the literature. The essays in this pioneering collection examine the primary distinguishing features of the Eastern traditions - iconography, hymnology, ritual, and pilgrimage - through meticulous ethnographic analysis. Particular attention is paid to the revitalization of Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches that were repressed under Marxist-Leninist regimes.

Despite the continued fascination with the Virgin Mary in modern and contemporary times, very little of the resulting scholarship on this topic extends to Russia. Russia's Mary, however, who is virtually unknown in the West, has long played a formative role in Russian society and culture. Framing Mary introduces readers to the cultural life of Mary from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet era. It examines a broad spectrum of engagements among a variety of people-pilgrims and poets, clergy and laity, politicians and political activists-and the woman they knew as the Bogoroditsa. In this collection of well-integrated and illuminating essays, leading scholars of imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia trace Mary's irrepressible pull and inexhaustible promise from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Focusing in particular on the ways in which both visual and narrative images of Mary frame perceptions of Russian and Soviet space and inform discourse about women and motherhood, these essays explore Mary's rich and complex role in Russia's religion, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and art. Framing Mary will appeal to Russian studies scholars, historians, and general readers interested in religion and Russian culture.

The Xi'an Stele, erected in Tang China's capital in 781, describes in both Syriac and Chinese the existence of Christian communities in northern China. While scholars have so far considered the Stele exclusively in relation to the Chinese cultural and historical context, Todd Godwin here demonstrates that it can only be fully understood by reconstructing the complex connections that existed between the Church of the East, Sasanian aristocratic culture and the Tang Empire (617-907) between the fall of the Sasanian Persian Empire (225-651) and the birth of the Abbasid Caliphate (762-1258). Through close textual re-analysis of the Stele and by drawing on ancient sources in Syriac, Greek, Arabic and Chinese, Godwin demonstrates that Tang China (617-907) was a cosmopolitan milieu where multiple religious traditions, namely Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Christianity, formed zones of elite culture. Syriac Christianity in fact remained powerful in Persia throughout the period, and Christianity - not Zoroastrianism - was officially regarded by the Tang government as 'The Persian Religion'.Persian Christians at the Chinese Court uncovers the role played by Syriac Christianity in the economic and cultural integration of late Sasanian Iran and China, and is important reading for all scholars of the Church of the East, China and the Middle East in the medieval period.

The Yaysmawurk' is a liturgical collection of brief saints' lives arranged according to the day on which they were celebrated in the annual church calendar. The name comes from the first words of most of the daily entries: Y-aysm awur, that is, "On this day . . ." The collection was part of the great and varied Armenian liturgical tradition from the turn of the first millennium. The first Yaysmawurk' was translated from an existing Greek liturgical collection (the Synaxarion, "where the lives are all collected"). In fact, it is common knowledge that this Greek collection was the basis for nearly all such liturgical collections of the lives of the saints throughout the early Christian world. However, it was not a mere translation. Rather, it constituted a logical culmination of a long and steady development in the Armenian Church of what scholars today like to call the cult of the saints.

The Church of Jerusalem, the 'mother of the churches of God', influenced all of Christendom before it underwent multiple captivities between the eighth and thirteenth centuries: first, political subjugation to Arab Islamic forces, then displacement of Greek-praying Christians by Crusaders, and finally ritual assimilation to fellow Orthodox Byzantines in Constantinople. All three contributed to the phenomenon of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, but only the last explains how it was completely lost and replaced by the liturgy of the imperial capital, Constantinople. The sources for this study are rediscovered manuscripts of Jerusalem's liturgical calendar and lectionary. When examined in context, they reveal that the devastating events of the Arab conquest in 638 and the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 did not have as detrimental an effect on liturgy as previously held. Instead, they confirm that the process of Byzantinization was gradual and locally-effected, rather than an imposed element of Byzantine imperial policy or ideology of the Church of Constantinople. Originally, the city's worship consisted of reading scripture and singing hymns at places connected with the life of Christ, so that the link between holy sites and liturgy became a hallmark of Jerusalem's worship, but the changing sacred topography led to changes in the local liturgical tradition. Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem is the first study dedicated to the question of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, providing English translations of many liturgical texts and hymns here for the first time and offering a glimpse of Jerusalem's lost liturgical and theological tradition.

A moving and revealing exploration of Hasidic life, and one man's struggles with faith, family, and community

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world--only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression--turning on the radio--is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely.

Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.

Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907-2005), a convert to Orthodoxy in her early twenties and a central figure of Orthodox theology among Russian emigres in Paris, first began to reflect on the question of women in the priesthood in 1976. Initially supporting the general consensus that priesthood would be impossible for the Orthodox, she came to retract this view, finding a basis for female ordination in women's distinct spiritual charisms. Behr-Sigel later shifted the foundation of her case to personhood, inspired by the work of fellow Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky, and arrived at the conclusion that all the Orthodox arguments against the ordination of women were, in fact, heretical at root. In this volume, Wilson analyzes all of Behr-Sigel's writings about women and the priesthood across the whole sweep of her career, demonstrating the development of her thought on women over the last thirty years of her life. She evaluates her relationship to feminism, Protestantism and movements within Orthodoxy, finally drawing conclusions about this much-contested matter for the ongoing debate in both the East and the West.

This volume brings together a set of fundamental contributions, many translated into English for this publication, along with an important introduction. Together these explore the role of Greek among Christian communities in the late antique and Byzantine East (late Roman Oriens), specifically in the areas outside of the immediate sway of Constantinople and imperial Asia Minor. The local identities based around indigenous eastern Christian languages (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, etc.) and post-Chalcedonian doctrinal confessions (Miaphysite, Church of the East, Melkite, Maronite) were solidifying precisely as the Byzantine polity in the East was extinguished by the Arab conquests of the seventh century. In this multilayered cultural environment, Greek was a common social touchstone for all of these Christian communities, not only because of the shared Greek heritage of the early Church, but also because of the continued value of Greek theological, hagiographical, and liturgical writings. However, these interactions were dynamic and living, so that the Greek of the medieval Near East was itself transformed by such engagement with eastern Christian literature, appropriating new ideas and new texts into the Byzantine repertoire in the process.

This book offers the first comprehensive examination and analysis of the receipt, transmission, and interpretation of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In Orthodoxy, the Old Testament has commonly been equated with the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible attested by fourth- and fifth-century Christian manuscripts. As Eugen Pentiuc shows throughout this work, however, the Eastern Orthodox Church has never closed the door to other text-witnesses or suppressed interpreters' efforts to dig into the less familiar text of the Hebrew Bible for key terms or reading variants. The first part of the book examines the reception of the Old Testament by the early Eastern Orthodox Church, considering such matters as the nature of divine revelation, the paradox of the inclusion of the Jewish scriptures in the Christian Bible, and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Pentiuc's investigation is not limited to the historic-literary sources but extends to the visual, imaginative, and symbolic aspects of the Church's living tradition. In the second part of the book he looks at the various ways Orthodox Christians have sought to assimilate the Old Testament in the spiritual, liturgical, and doctrinal fabric of their faith community. Special attention is given to liturgy (hymnody, lectionaries, and liturgical symbolism), iconography (frescoes, icons, illuminations), monastic rules and canons, conciliar resolutions, and patristic works in Greek, Syriac and Coptic. This wide-ranging and accessible work will serve not only to make Orthodox Christians aware of the importance of the Old Testament in their own tradition, but to introduce those who are not Orthodox both to the distinctive ways in which that community approaches scripture and to the modes of spiritual practice characteristic of Eastern Orthodoxy.

The journal Put', or The Way, was one of the major vehicles for philosophical and religious discussion among Russian emigres in Paris from 1925 until the beginning of World War II. This Russian language journal, edited by Nicholas Berdyaev among others, has been called one of the most erudite in all Russian intellectual history; however, it remained little known in France and the USSR until the early 1990s. This is the first sustained study of the Russian emigre theologians and other intellectuals in Paris who were associated with The Way and of their writings, as published in The Way. Although there have been studies of individual members of that group, this book places the entire generation in a broad historical and intellectual context. Antoine Arjakovsky provides assessments of leading religious figures such as Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florovsky, Nicholas and Vladimir Lossky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, and Afanasiev, and compares and contrasts their philosophical agreements and conflicts in the pages of The Way. He examines their intense commitment to freedom, their often contentious struggles to bring the Christian tradition as experienced in the Eastern Church into conversation with Christians of the West, and their distinctive contributions to Western theology and ecumenism from the perspective of their Russian Orthodox experience. He also traces the influence of these extraordinary intellectuals in present-day Russia, Western Europe, and the United States. Throughout this comprehensive study, Arjakovsky presents a wealth of arguments, from debates over "Russian exceptionalism" to the possibilities of a Christian and Orthodox version of socialist politics, the degree to which the church could allow its agenda to be shaped by both local and global political realities, and controversies about the distinctively Russian theology of Divine Wisdom, Sophia. Arjakovsky also maps out the relationships these emigre thinkers established with significant Western theologians such as Jacques Maritain, Yves-Marie Congar, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Danielou, who provided the intellectual underpinnings of Vatican II.

This valuable study explores the Russian Enlightenment with reference to the religious Enlightenment of the mid to late eighteenth century. Grounded in close reading of the sermons and devotional writings of Platon (Levshin), Court preacher and Metropolitan of Moscow, the book examines the blending of European ideas into the teachings of Russian Orthodoxy. Highlighting the interplay between Enlightenment thought and Orthodox enlightenment, Elise Wirtschafter addresses key questions of concern to religious Enlighteners across Europe: humanity's relationship to God and creation, the distinction between learning and enlightenment, the role of Christian love in authority relationships, the meaning of free will in a universe governed by Divine Providence, and the unity of church, monarchy, and civil society. Countering scholarship that depicts an Orthodox religious culture under assault from European modernity and Petrine absolutism, Wirtschafter emphasizes the ability of Russia's educated churchmen to assimilate and transform Enlightenment ideas. The intellectual and spiritual vitality of eighteenth-century Orthodoxy helps to explain how Russian policymakers and intellectuals met the challenge of European power while simultaneously coming to terms with the broad cultural appeal of the Enlightenment's universalistic human rights agenda. Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia defines the Russian Enlightenment as a response to the allure of European modernity, as an instrument of social control, and as the moral voice of an emergent independent society. Because Russia's enlightened intellectuals focused on the moral perfectibility of the individual human being, rather than social and political change, the originality of the Russian Enlightenment has gone unrecognized. This study corrects images of a superficial Enlightenment and crisis-ridden religious culture, arguing that in order to understand the humanistic sensibility and emphasis on individual dignity that permeate Russian intellectual history, and the history of the educated classes more broadly, it is necessary to bring Orthodox teachings into the discussion of Enlightenment thought. The result is a book that explains the distinctive origins of modern Russian culture while also allowing scholars to situate the Russian Enlightenment in European and global history.

Research indicates that on average, Americans change their religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Today, a number of evangelical Christians are converting to Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. Longtime Evangelicals often fail to understand the attraction of these non-Evangelical Christian traditions. Journeys of Faith examines the movement between these traditions from various angles. Four prominent converts to Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Evangelicalism and Anglicanism describe their new faith traditions and their spiritual journeys into them. Response chapters offer respectful critiques. Contributors include Wilbur Ellsworth (Eastern Orthodoxy), with a response by Craig Blaising; Francis J. Beckwith (Roman Catholicism), with Gregg Allison responding; Chris Castaldo (Evangelicalism) and Brad Gregory s Catholic response; and Lyle Dorsett (Anglicanism), with a response by Robert Peterson. This book will provide readers with first-hand accounts of thoughtful Christians changing religious affiliation or remaining true to the traditions they have always known. Pastors, counselors and students of theology will gain a wealth of insight into current faith migration within the church today."

This important collection of essays by a pioneer in the field focuses on the history and culture of a conservative religious tradition whose adherents have fought to preserve their beliefs and practices from the 17th century through today. Old Belief had its origins in a protest against liturgical reforms in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-1600s and quickly grew into a complex torrent of opposition to the Russian state, the official church, and the social hierarchy. For Old Believers, periods of full religious freedom have been very brief--from 1905 to 1917 and since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Crummey examines the ways in which Old Believers defend their core beliefs and practices and adjust their polemical strategies and way of life in response to the changing world. Opening chapters survey the historiography of Old Belief, examine the methodological problems in studying the movement as a Russian example of "popular religion," and outline the first decades of the history. Particular themes of Old Believer history are the focus of the rest of the book, beginning with two sets of case studies of spirituality, culture, and intellectual life. Subsequent chapters analyze the diverse structures of Old Believer communities and their fate in times of persecution. A final essay examines publications of contemporary scholars in Novosibirsk whose work provides glimpses of the life of traditional believers in the Soviet period.

"Old Believers in a Changing World" will appeal to scholars and students of Russian history, to those interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, and to those with an interest in the comparative history of religious movements.

In nineteenth-century Russia, religious culture permeated politics at the highest levels, and Orthodox Christian groups-including refugees from the Russo-Ottoman wars as well as the church itself-influenced Russian domestic and foreign policy. Likewise, Russian policy with the Ottoman Empire inspired the creation of a holy place in ethnically and religiously diverse Crimea. Looking to the monastic state of Mount Athos in Greece, Orthodox Church authorities in the mid-1800s attempted to create a monastic community in Crimea, which they called "Russian Athos." The Crimean War catalyzed the Russian Christianization that had begun decades earlier and decimated Crimea's Muslim population. Wartime propaganda portrayed Crimea as the cradle of Russian Christianity, and by the end of the war, the Black Sea Region acquired a Christian identity. The same interplay of religion, politics, and culture has found new ground in Crimea today as its sacred monuments and ruins lie vulnerable to abuse by nationalist groups sparring over the land. Christianizing Crimea is the first English language work to analyze the Christian renewal in Crimea. Drawing on archives in Odessa, Simferopol, and St. Petersburg that to date have remained untapped by Western scholars, Kozelsky provides both a fascinating case study of past and present religious nationalism in Eastern Europe and an examination of the political conflicts and compromises endemic to holy places. She explores the diverse strategies of church expansion, the importance of Byzantine history and the Greek population, the assimilation of local pagan and Tatar traditions into sacred narratives, the crafting of Russian identity through print culture, and Crimea's re-Christianizing in the post-Soviet era. Kozelsky's unique approach joins the fields of contemporary history, religion, and archaeology to show how Crimea has been reshaped as a holy place. Christianizing Crimea will appeal to both scholars and general readers who are interested in past and current religious and political conflicts.

This edition of Mar Jacob of Sarug's (d. 521) homily on Epiphany discusses John the Baptist's role in washing the church, the bride of Christ, preparing and sanctifying her for the Bridegroom. The volume constitutes a fascicle of The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain the original Syriac text of Jacob's surviving sermons, fully vocalized, alongside an annotated English translation.

In "Keeping the Faith, Jennifer jean Wynot presents a clear and concise history of the trials and evolution of Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents and the important roles they have played in Russian culture, both spiritually and politically, from the abortive reforms of 1905 to the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. She shows how, throughout the Soviet period, Orthodox monks and nuns continued to provide spiritual strength to the people, in spite of severe persecution, and despite the ambivalent relationship the Russian state has had toward the . Russian church since the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Focusing her study on two provinces, Smolensk and Moscow, Wynot describes the Soviet oppression and the clandestine struggles of the monks and nuns to uphold the traditions of monasticism and Orthodoxy. Their success against heavy odds enabled them to provide a counterculture to the Soviet regime. Indeed, of all the pre- 1917 institutions, the Orthodox Church proved the most resilient. Why and how it managed to persevere despite the enormous hostility against it is a topic that continues to fascinate both the general public and historians. Based on previously unavailable Russian archival sources as well as written memoirs and interviews with surviving monks and nuns, Wynot analyzes the monasteries' adaptation to the Bolshevik regime. She challenges standard Western assumptions that Communism effectively killed the Orthodox Church in Russia. She shows that in fact, the role of monks and nuns in Orthodox monasteries and convents is crucial, and that they are largely responsible for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. "Keeping the Faith offers a newperspective that will be of interest to students of Russian history and Communism, as well as scholars of church state relations.

Living Icons presents an intimate portrait of holiness as exemplified in the lives and thoughts of ten people of faith in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In this inspiring volume, Michael P. Plekon introduces readers to a diverse and unusual group of men and women who strove to put the Gospel of Christ into action in their lives.

The "living icons" Plekon describes were, among other things, priests, theologians, writers, and caregivers to the homeless and poor. One was an artist who became the greatest icon painter in this century; another was assassinated for his teachings in post-Soviet Russia. These remarkable people of faith lived through times of great suffering: forced emigration, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Many of them were criticized, if not condemned, by ecclesiastical opponents and authorities. Yet each demonstrate a unique pattern for holiness, illustrating that the path to sainthood is open to all.

With the fall of state socialism, Eastern Orthodox churches and monasteries are being reopened and receiving renewed interest from believers and nonbelievers alike. Plekon calls to our attention people like Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1759-1832), a monk, mystic, counselor, healer, and visionary; Father Alexander Man (1935-1990), a Russian whose writings after Glasnost ultimately led to his tragic assassination; Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945), a painter, poet, and political activist who was killed in a concentration camp for hiding her Jewish neighbors; and Father Lev Gillet (1893-1980), one of the twentieth century's greatest spiritual teachers.

Living Icons, which includes a foreword by Lawrence S. Cunningham, brings to life the beautiful, and oftenunfamiliar, spirituality of the Eastern Orthodox Church through some of its most remarkable members. It shows with simplicity and clarity that Christ and the Gospel are often manifested in extraordinary ways in the lives of ordinary people.

Converging Worlds describes the interplay between peasant religious life and the broader social and cultural transformation of late tsarist Russia. Through a detailed examination of religious practices and ceremonies among the peasantry in the province of Voronezh, Chulos challenges existing conceptions of religion in Russia and sheds new light on the development of modern national identity. Age-old rituals, customs, and beliefs helped peasants to adapt to industrialization and modernization by providing a spiritual and psychological framework for change. The dependable rhythms of village holidays and rituals marking the stages of human life gave the peasantry a sense of stability and comfort as their traditions slowly unraveled in the face of urban culture. Encouraged by educated Russians who traveled the countryside in search of the ideal national type, peasant communities began to reconstruct tales of their village origin. These stories linked people in remote locales to the central events and heroes of imperial Russian history. Village and urban cultural worlds clashed over peasant demands for the devolution of political, cultural, and social authority. By the time revolutionary fervor ignited the countryside in 1905, the village faithful demonstrated a new confidence in their ability to shape their own future-and Russia's-as they agitated for greater control over local religious life. By 1917, peasant disenchantment reached new heights and helped to create a new popular Orthodoxy that no longer looked to tsar and church as valid sources of authority and identity. As peasant believers took control of their local religious life, they inadvertently aided antireligious activists in driving religion underground, thereby estranging future generations from a fundamental pillar of their cultural heritage.

Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin analyzes questions of nationality and religious identity in nineteenth-century Russian history as reflected in the life of Jesuit priest Ivan Gagarin. A descendent of one of Russia's most ancient and politically powerful families, Father Ivan Gagarin, S.J. (1814-1882) dedicated his life to creating a union between the Orthodox and Catholic churches that would preserve the dogmatic and traditional beliefs of both.

Traditional understandings of Russian identity have emanated from the perspective of the dominant Orthodox religion; this captivating study uses the unionist work of Gagarin to illumine Russia's national identity from the perspective of Roman Catholicism. Seeing his unionist proposals as necessary for the preservation of Russian stability, Gagarin found himself in frequent opposition to the Orthodox Church. While Gagarin believed that Church union would preserve Russia from the threats of communism and revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church believed that union would mean the sacrifice of religious truth, ecclesial independence and religious orthodoxy.

Jeffrey Beshoner's even-handed analysis reveals that the Roman Catholic Church presented its own share of barriers to attempts at church union. Ivan Sergeevich Gagarin examines Roman Catholic attitudes of superiority vis-a-vis the Orthodox Church and argues that the nineteenth- century Roman Catholic Church simply did not possess the humility or respect for Eastern beliefs that church union required.

Despite the failure of his unionist activity, Gagarin exerted important influence on such contemporary and later Roman Catholic and Russian thinkers as Pope Plus IX, Alexei Khomiakov and VladimirSolovev. As the collapse of communism has permitted Russia to again seek its national identity in Russian Orthodoxy, Gagarin's ideas and perspectives on the relationship between national and religious identity continue to prove relevant.

John Chryssavgis explores the sacred dimension of the natural environment, and the significance of creation in the rich theological history and spiritual classics of the Orthodox Church, through the lens of its unique ascetical, liturgical and mystical experience. The global ecological crisis affecting humanity's air, water, and land, as well as the planet's flora and fauna, has resulted in manifest fissures on the image of God in creation. Chryssavgis examines, from an Orthodox Christian perspective, the possibility of restoring that shattered image through the sacramental lenses of cosmic transfiguration, cosmic interconnection, and cosmic reconciliation. The viewpoints of early theologians and contemporary thinkers are extensively explored from a theological and spiritual perspective, including countering those who deny that God's creation is in crisis. Presenting a worldview advanced and championed by the Orthodox Church in the modern world, this book encourages personal and societal transformation in making ethical and economic choices that respect creation as sacrament.