Elpenor's edition publishes the New Testament in the original Greek language, known also as "Koine." Coming from Byzantium and being used until our days in Greek speaking Orthodox Churches, this version can be regarded as the most authoritative form of the New Testament text.

Text according to the 1904/12 edition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Antoniades version) with corrections of typos made by the Church of Greece.

Illuminated with images of Byzantine manuscripts, photos of churches in Athos Holy Mount and in other places in Greece, Orthodox Icons and various Orthodox style drawings.

Reading the Bible in Greek supports a deeper understanding of biblical meanings, while by itself a contact with Greek elevates thinking.

Read more: The 1904 New Testament Edition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1599 * Corrections to the Patriarchal Greek Text of the New Testament: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1604 * Book Preface: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1555 * Preface to the 1904 edition (Summary): ellopos.com/blog/?p=1626

Like many Americans, the Eastern Orthodox converts in this study are participants in what scholars today refer to as the "spiritual marketplace" or quest culture of expanding religious diversity and individual choice-making that marks the post-World War II American religious landscape. In this highly readable ethnographic study, Slagle explores the ways in which converts, clerics, and lifelong church members use marketplace metaphors in describing and enacting their religious lives. Slagle conducted participant observation and formal semi-structured interviews in Orthodox churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Jackson, Mississippi. Known among Orthodox Christians as the "Holy Land" of North American Orthodoxy, Pittsburgh offers an important context for exploring the interplay of Orthodox Christianity with the mainstreams of American religious life. Slagle's second round of research in Jackson sheds light on the American Bible Belt where over the past thirty years the Orthodox Church in America has marshaled significant resources to build mission parishes. Relatively few ethnographic studies have examined Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States, and Slagle's book fills a significant gap. This lucidly written book is an ideal selection for courses in the sociology and anthropology of religion, contemporary Christianity, and religious change. Scholars of Orthodox Christianity, as well as clerical and lay people interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, will find this book to be of great appeal.

Of the three major branches of Christianity, Orthodoxy is the least known and most misunderstood. The A to Z of the Orthodox Church provides students, researchers, and specialists with a desk encyclopedia of the theology and theologians, saints, sinners, places and events of the Eastern Church. Two millennia of the religion are surveyed in over five hundred concise entries, concentrating primarily on the last 150 years. Includes an overview of the early Church through the Byzantine and Russian Empires, into the present multinational Orthodox presence in the ecumenical movement. Many of the general entries cannot be found elsewhere in English, and the comprehensive compilation of biographies of 19th- and 20th-century Orthodox theologians (American, Russian, Greek, and many other nationalities) is published here for the first time. This book includes a detailed 4,000-year chronology, illustrations, extensive bibliography, and an appendix listing the current canonical patriarchs and autocephalous churches.

During the first century, Saint Mark brought Christianity to Egypt and in so doing, formed the basis for the Coptic Orthodox Church. Today, Copts, members of the Coptic Church, compromise the largest Christian Community in the Middle East. The Coptic Church is more than 19 centuries old and has produced thousands of texts and biblical and theological studies. During the last half of the 20th century, however, economic and political discrimination has forced between 400,000 and one million Copts to emigrate from Egypt, with the majority settling in North America and Australia. The A to Z of the Coptic Church details the history of one of the oldest Christian churches. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and more than 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important people, organizations, and structures; the theology and practices of the church; its literature and liturgy; and monasteries and churches.

While Russian Orthodox theologians celebrated saints as paragons of virtue and piety whose lives were to be emulated in the search for salvation, ordinary believers routinely sought the assistance of the holy dead for commonplace and earthly matters. The Orthodox faithful were more likely to pray to the saints for help in the everyday concerns of health and home than for salvation. Evidence from miracle stories, devotional literature, parish records, diocesan reports, religious newspapers and magazines, and archival documents demonstrates how Orthodox men and women cultivated direct and literally hands-on relationships with their heavenly intercessors by visiting saintly shrines, touching and kissing miracle-working relics, and making pledges to repay the saints for miracles rendered. Exploring patterns of popular devotion to the cult of the saints in both late imperial and early Soviet Russia, Greene argues for an interpretation of Orthodoxy as a proactive faith grounded in the needs and realities of everyday life. Bodies like Bright Stars makes two significant contributions to the fields of Russian history and religious studies. First, it straddles the customary historiographical dividing line of 1917, illustrating how the devotional practices associated with the cult of the saints evolved from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the first decade of Soviet power. Greene shows that it was the adaptability of the cult of the saints that allowed Orthodoxy to remain relevant amid great political, social, and economic change. Secondly, the book underscores the role of materiality in Russian Orthodox religious practices and emphasizes what anthropologists of religion have described as the sacrality of place. Bodies like Bright Stars, the first book in NIU Press' Orthodox Christian Studies Series, will be of interest to Russian historians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion. Written in a clear and lively style, the book is suitable for both survey courses and advanced courses in Russian history and will also appeal to general readers of religious studies.

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.

Jennifer Hedda analyzes the ideas and activities of the parish clergy serving in St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, in order to discover how the Russian Orthodox Church responded theologically and pastorally to the profound social, economic, and cultural changes that transformed Russia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The challenges of modernity forced the Orthodox clergy, like other members of educated society, to re-examine their interpretation of the Church's earthly mission and their own role in fulfilling it. During the mid-19th century, Orthodox theologians began to argue that the church had a responsibility to society as well as to individuals, and to assert that its mission was to lead believers in building a society that manifested the gospel principles of love, mercy, charity, and justice. The idea of creating the kingdom of God on earth inspired many clergymen, who dramatically increased their social outreach work in the last two decades of the 19th century: preaching during church services, teaching outside their churches, organizing charities, establishing temperance societies, and engaging in a host of other activities that involved them in the daily lives of their parishioners. The clergy's work culminated in 1905, when a workers' organization established by an Orthodox priest became a mass political movement whose activities sparked a revolution. His Kingdom Come challenges many common assumptions about the Orthodox Church as a weak and passive institution that did not respond to the demands of the modern world--demonstrating that it played an active and creative role in late imperial society, albeit on its own terms rather than those of its secular critics. This book will be of particular interest to those who study the politics and society of Russia in the imperial period, the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the modern era, the relationship of religious institutions to society and culture, and the history of religious-social thought in other post-Enlightenment societies.

"The Church of the Holy Spirit," written by Russian priest and scholar Nicholas Afanasiev (1893-1966), is one of the most important works of twentieth-century Orthodox theology. Afanasiev was a member of the "Paris School" of emigre intellectuals who gathered in Paris after the Russian revolution, where he became a member of the faculty of St. Sergius Orthodox Seminary. "The Church of the Holy Spirit," which offers a rediscovery of the eucharistic and communal nature of the church in the first several centuries, was written over a number of years beginning in the 1940s and continuously revised until its posthumous publication in French in 1971.Vitaly Permiakov's lucid translation and Michael Plekon's careful editing and substantive introduction make this important work available for the first time to an English-speaking audience. "Nicholas Afanasiev is perhaps the most important ecclesiologist of modern times in the Orthodox world. "The Church of the Holy Spirit "is a very important book, a magnum opus, demonstrating that Afanasiev himself is undoubtedly a major twentieth-century theologian." --John McGuckin, Nielsen Professor of Early Ecclesiastical History, Union Theological Seminary "One of the great contributions of the Second Vatican Council was its recovery of a Eucharistic ecclesiology. Yet over a decade before the council, one of the most influential theologians of the Eastern Orthodox communion, Nicholas Afanasiev, was helping his own tradition recover its Eucharistic foundations. The publication of one of his most significant works, " The Church of the Holy Spirit," which the University of Notre Dame Press has now made available in English translation, will allow contemporary readers to discover the provocative, insightful and sometimes idiosyncratic perspectives of this seminal Orthodox theologian." --Richard R. Gaillardetz, Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies, University of Toledo. "Fr. Nicholas Afanasiev's" The Church of the Holy Spirit" is truly a seminal work of the twentieth-century, an indispensable monument of theological reflection on the Church and her Liturgy. Written over many years, in sustained engagement with the historical experience of the Church and contemporary Eastern and Western theology, the work became itself a catalyst in both eucharistic practice and ecclesiological reflection. This splendid English translation will provide the opportunity for Afanasiev's contribution to be more fully appreciated and critically appropriated." --Rev. Dr. John Behr, Dean, St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary

Despite over 200 million adherents, Eastern Orthodox Christianity attracts little scholarly attention. While more-covered religions emerge as powerful transnational forces, Eastern Orthodoxy appears doggedly local, linked to the ethnicity and land of the now marginalized Eastern Europe. But Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age brings together new and nuanced understandings of the Orthodox churches--inside and outside of Eastern Europe--as they negotiate an increasingly networked world. The picture that emerges is less of a people stubbornly refusing modernization, more of a people seeking to maintain a stable Orthodox identity in an unstable world. For anyone interested in the role of Eastern Orthodoxy in the 21st century, this volume provides the place to begin.

Michael Plekon's Tradition Alive presents a collection of essays highlighting not only the vibrant tradition of 20th century Eastern Orthodox thought, but also the necessity of its inclusion in the theological canon constructed mainly by Western Christian thinkers. Ranging from the thought of the first generation of Russian ZmigrZs to contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians, the essays in Tradition Alive point toward a positive theology that is convinced of the immanence of the holy spirit despite a world torn apart by revolution, violence, and despair. The contributors profess their faith in the transforming presence of Christ and the divine dimensions of the church by looking to the meaning and power of tradition in the practices of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. By focusing on the Orthodox Church's ecclesial and liturgical character, the authors emphasize the living character of the Christian tradition. With many contributions difficult, if not impossible, to access until now, Tradition Alive presents a brave and distinctive effort to enliven Western theology by looking to the theology of the East.

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.

The 1917 revolutions that gave birth to Soviet Russia had a profound impact on Russian religious life. Social and political attitudes toward religion in general and toward the Russian Orthodox Church in particular remained in turmoil for nearly 30 years. During that time of religious uncertainty, a movement known as "renovationism," led by reformist Orthodox clergy, pejoratively labeled "red priests," tried to reconcile Christianity with the goals of the Bolshevik state. But Church hierarchy and Bolshevik officials alike feared clergymen who proclaimed themselves to be both Christians and socialists. This innovative study, based on previously untapped archival sources, recounts the history of the red priests, who, acting out of religious conviction in a hostile environment, strove to establish a church that stood for social justice and equality. Red Priests sheds valuable new light on the dynamics of society, politics, and religion in Russia between 1905 and 1946.

Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia illuminates the significant role of Russian Orthodox thought in shaping the discourse of educated society during the imperial and early Soviet periods. Bringing together an array of scholars, this book demonstrates that Orthodox reflections on spiritual, philosophical, and aesthetic issues of the day informed much of Russia's intellectual and cultural climate. Volume editors Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt provide a historical overview of Russian Orthodox thought and a critical essay on the current state of scholarship about religious thought in modern Russia. The contributors explore a wide range of topics, including Orthodox claims to a unique religious Enlightenment, contests over authority within the Russian Church, tensions between faith and reason in academic Orthodoxy, the relationship between sacraments and the self, the religious foundations of philosophical and legal categories, and the effect of Orthodox categories in the formation of Russian literature.

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.

In this path-breaking study, Fr. Alexander Webster convincingly demonstrates that a distinctive pacifist trajectory, characterized by the moral virtues of non-violence, nonresistance, voluntary kenotic suffering, and universal forgiveness, has endured through two millennia of Eastern Orthodox history in unbroken continuity with the ancient Church. Webster consults a vast array of primary texts including Holy Scripture, patristic writing through the Byzantine era that terminated in AD 1453, Orthodox canon law from the Seven Ecumenical Councils and other Byzantine Greek legal sources among others. Of interest to historians and to students of theology and religion.

From the reopening of the churches to the expressions of religious charity to the revival of monasticism, signs of recovery of Eastern Orthodox religious culture are evident throughout the former Soviet lands. While occasioned in part by the death of communism, the new religious consciousness is rooted in living traditions that antedate by centuries the relatively brief period of Soviet rule. Addressing these living traditions, this volume's essays highlight both historical and contemporary sources of religious identity. Seeking God examines the roots and recovery of Orthodox religious culture in Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. The authors of the essays are leading international authorities on Orthodoxy, and their contributions reflect the growing scholarly interest in Orthodox popular culture, as well as the linkage of confessional identity with nationalism in the Eastern Orthodox world. Following an introduction by Stephen K. Batalden and an opening essay on the life and work of Father Aleksandr Men', the essays deal with such topics as Old Believers, women's religious communities, schism and cultural conflict, architecture, contemporary politics of the Russian Bible, and sources for studying Eastern Christianity.

The glory of the Italian Renaissance came not only from Europe's Latin heritage, but also from the rich legacy of another renaissance - the palaeologan of late Byzantium. This nexus of Byzantine and Latin cultural and ecclesiastical relations in the Renaissance and Medieval periods is the underlying theme of the diverse and far-ranging essays in ""Constantinople and the West"". Addressing the disputed, provocative question of Palaeologan influence on Italian Renaissance humanism, the author systematically demonstrates that Byzantine scholars were not merely transmitters of ancient Greek writings to the West. More significantly, the Byzantine emigre scholars in Italy, through their intimate knowledge of the Alexandrian and Byzantine traditions, alone were able to unlock and authentically interpret the more difficult texts of Aristotle, Plato, Hermogenes, and other Greek thinkers. Geanakoplos shows that the Byzantine refugee scholars and their Italian disciples were able to promote a fusion of elements of both the Italian and Palaeologan renaissances. Other essays concern the careers of influential Palaeologan humanists such as Theodore Gaza, the leading secular Aristotelian of the early Italian Renaissance, and John Argyropoulos, who was probably chiefly responsible for shifting the emphasis of Florentine humanism from rhetoric to Platonic philosophy. The essays in the second half of the book deal primarily with ecclesiastical relations. The author probes deeply into encounters between Greek and Roman churches at councils in Lyons, Florence, and elsewhere, which reflect the centuries of recurring religious schism and attempted reunion. He also offers a revealing glimpse of the Greek exaltation, and of Hagia Sophia and its properties, after Constantinople's liberation from Latin rule in 1261. While all of the essays have been printed previously, the author has revised and brought them entirely up to date for this volume. ""Constantinople and the West"" should be invaluable to those interested in the Byzantine and Italian Renaissance, and reward students of Medieval history, church history, and those who are interested in the comparative history of the East and West.

This is the fourth volume of a detailed and systematic exposition of the history, canonical structure, doctrine, moral and social teaching, liturgical services, and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. The purpose of this series is to present Orthodox Christianity as an integrated theological and liturgical system, in which all elements are interconnected. Volume One focused on the history and canonical structure of the Orthodox Church; Volume Two on the fundamental teachings of the Church, grounded in Scripture and Tradition; Volume Three on the unique aspects of Orthodox art as expressed in its architecture, icons, and liturgical music. In Volume Four the history, structure, and meaning of the Church's liturgical services-including the daily, weekly, yearly, and festal cycles-are explored and explained. Both beginners and experts can benefit from this thorough examination of Orthodox worship and liturgical life. In the services of the Church, heaven and earth meet. As St Vladimir's envoys to Constantinople said, "We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth.... We only know that God dwells among men. We cannot forget that beauty."

It is October 1592. Christopher Marlowe, the most accomplished playwright in London, has written The Massacre at Paris for his company, the Lord Admiral's Men. Bubonic plague has hit outlying parishes, forcing theaters to close and postponing the season. Ordinarily, the Rose Theatre would debut Marlowe's work, but its subject-the St. Bartholomew Day's Massacre-is unpleasant and mightinflame hostilities against Catholics and their sympathizers, such as merchants on whom trade depends. A new company, the Lord Strange's Men, boasts a young writer, William Shakespeare, who is said to have several barnburners in the queue. A competition is called to decide which company will reopen the theaters. Who will most effectively represent the nation's ideals and energies, its humor and grandeur? One troupe will gain supremacy, primarily for literary but also for cultural, religious, and political reasons.

For more than five hundred years the life and work of John of Damascus (c. 655-c.745) have been the subject of a very extensive literature, scholarly and popular, in which it is often difficult to get one's bearings. Through the studies included here (of which 6 appear in a translation into English made specially for this volume), Vassa Kontouma provides a critical review of this literature and attempts to answer several open questions: the author and date of composition of the official Life of John, the philosophical significance of the Dialectica (a study which has its first publication here), the original structure of the Exposition of the Orthodox faith, the identity of ps.-Cyril, the authenticity of the Letter on Great Lent, and questions of Mariology. She also opens new vistas for research along four main lines: the life of John of Damascus and its sources, Neochalcedonian philosophy, systematic theology in Byzantium, and Christian practices under the Umayyads.

This is the second volume of a detailed and systematic exposition of the history, canonical structure, doctrine, moral and social teaching, liturgical services, and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. The purpose of this series is to present Orthodox Christianity as an integrated theological and liturgical system, in which all elements are interconnected. Theology finds its expression and is shaped in the liturgical experience and church art-including icons, singing, and architecture. The services, in their turn, influence the ascetic practice and the personal piety of each Christian; they shape the moral and social teaching of the Church as well as its relation to other Christian confessions, non-Christian religions, and the secular world. The first volume provided an account of the historical arc of the Orthodox Church during the first ten centuries after Christ's nativity, then examined the canonical structure of the Orthodox Church. This volume examines the sources of Orthodox doctrine in Scripture and Tradition; its teaching on God in Trinity and Unity, in his essence and in his energies; on the world and man; on Jesus Christ, the incarnate God; on the Church, the body of Christ; on the Theotokos, Mary; and on eschatology, the last things.

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.

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.

* This important work offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of the Orthodox Church available, providing a detailed account of its historical development, as well as exploring Orthodox theology and culture * Written by one of the leading Orthodox historians and theologians in the English-speaking world * Offers an in-depth engagement with the issues surrounding Orthodoxy's relationship to the modern world, including political, cultural and ethical debates * Considers the belief tradition, spirituality, liturgical diversity, and Biblical heritage of the Eastern Churches; their endurance of oppressions and totalitarianisms; and their contemporary need to rediscover their voice and confidence in a new world-order * Recipient of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 award