The late Russian Empire experienced rapid economic change, social dislocation, and multiple humanitarian crises, enduring two wars, two famines, and three revolutions. A "pastoral activism" took hold as parish clergymen led and organized the response of Russia's Orthodox Christians to these traumatic events. In Russia's Social Gospel, Daniel Scarborough considers the roles played by pastors in the closing decades of the failing tsarist empire and the explosive 1917 revolutions. This volume draws upon extensive archival research to examine the effects of the pastoral movement on Russian society and the Orthodox Church. Scarborough argues that the social work of parish clergymen shifted the focus of Orthodox practice in Russia toward cooperative social activism as a devotional activity. He furthers our understanding of Russian Orthodoxy by illuminating the difficult position of parish priests, who were charged with both spiritual and secular responsibilities but were supported by neither church nor state. His nuanced look at the pastorate shows how social and historical traumas shifted perceptions of what being religious meant, in turn affecting how the Orthodox Church organized itself, and contributed to Russia's modernization.

A translation that uses traditional English of the marriage service as celebrated in the Orthodox Church. This consists of three parts: the betrothal, the crowning, and the removal of the crowns. This booklet has the texts for all the participants: priest, deacon, and chanter. It will also allow wedding guests who are unfamiliar with the service to follow it and will be particularly helpful when the service is celebrated in a language other than English. It does not contain any musical settings for the sung parts of the service.

This lucidly written biography of Aleksandr Men examines the familial and social context from which Men developed as a Russian Orthodox priest. Wallace Daniel presents a different picture of Russia and the Orthodox Church than the stereotypes found in much of the popular literature. Men offered an alternative to the prescribed ways of thinking imposed by the state and the church. Growing up during the darkest, most oppressive years in the history of the former Soviet Union, he became a parish priest who eschewed fear, who followed Christ's command "to love thy neighbor as thyself," and who attracted large, diverse groups of people in Russian society. How he accomplished those tasks and with what ultimate results are the main themes of this story. Conflict and controversy marked every stage of Men's priesthood. His parish in the vicinity of Moscow attracted the attention of the KGB, especially as it became a haven for members of the intelligentsia. He endured repeated attacks from ultraconservative, anti-Semitic circles inside the Orthodox Church. Fr. Men represented the spiritual vision of an open, non-authoritarian Christianity, and his lectures were extremely popular. He was murdered on September 9, 1990. For years, his work was unavailable in most church bookstores in Russia, and his teachings were excoriated by some both within and outside the church. But his books continue to offer hope to many throughout the world-they have sold millions of copies and are testimony to his continuing relevance and enduring significance. This important biography will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in religion, politics, and global affairs.

Shenoute the Great (c.347-465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.

The Akathistos Hymn, the most famous work of Byzantine hymnography, has been enshrined in the Orthodox liturgy since the year 626, and its image of the Virgin Mary has exerted a strong influence upon Marian poetry and literature. Anonymous, undated and highly rhetorical, the hymn has presented a challenge to scholars over the years.
This study has been undertaken by an innovative method. The approach brings new insights to the era which brought forth the hymn, and the metaphorical image of the Virgin becomes conceptually accessible to the modern-day reader. The investigation leads to the conclusion that the Council of Ephesus (431) constitutes the most likely historical context for the hymn's composition.
The book will be of value to all scholars of early Byzantine and Marian studies.

An invaluable tool for anyone seeking to learn the traditional liturgical language of the Slavic Orthodox churches. A historical introduction to the development of Church Slavonic is followed by detailed sections covering etymology, parts of speech, and syntax. This comprehensive work concludes with an article on the structure of liturgical chants.

The category of the 'West' has played a particularly significant role in the modern Eastern Orthodox imagination. It has functioned as an absolute marker of difference from what is considered to be the essence of Orthodoxy, and, thus, ironically, has become a constitutive aspect of the modern Orthodox self. The essays collected in this volume examines the many factors that contributed to the 'Eastern' construction of the 'West' in order to understand why the 'West' is so important to the Eastern Christian's sense of self.

A history of the White Monastery federation of Upper Egypt. Founded in the fourth century, the White Monastery communities form one of Coptic Christianity's largest, most prosperous and longest-lived locations. The book reconstructs their story through archaeological and textual sources, and assesses their place within the world of Late Antiquity. Founded in the fourth century and best known for the zealous and prolific third abbot, Shenoute of Atripe, these monasteries have survived from their foundation in the golden age of Egyptian Christianity until today. At its peak in the fifth to the eighth centuries, the White Monastery federation was a hive of industry, densely populated and prosperous. It was a vibrant community that engaged with extra-mural communities by means of intellectual, spiritual and economic exchange. It was an important landowner and a powerhouse of the regional economy. It was a spiritual beacon imbued with the presence of some of Christendom's most famous saints, and it was home to a number of ordinary and extraordinary men and women, who lived, worked, prayed and died within its walls. 81 b/w illustrations, 11 colour plates & 7 tables

This comprehensive work represents a complete but accessible survey of everything related to the Orthodox Church's divine services and is helpfully illustrated throughout. The author begins with a discussion of the nature and origin of Divine worship. He describes the church building, the clergy who perform divine services and their vestments, and the cycles of public worship. The services of Great Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy are reviewed in detail, as are festal services, and different services of need: Baptism and Chrismation, Confession, Ordination, Matrimony, Unction, Prayer Services, Monastic Tonsure and Burial, and the Consecration of a Church. The reader will also find a rare discussion of the rite of the Coronation and Anointing of the Tsar. This manual was originally translated and printed before the Russian Revolution. It is suitable both as an introduction to Orthodox worship for the inquirer and as a convenient handbook for those already familiar with the intricacies of Orthodox services.

Following a survey of the biblical and classical background, Wisdom in Christian Tradition offers a detailed exploration of the theme of wisdom in patristic, Byzantine, and medieval theology, up to and including Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas in Greek East and Latin West, respectively. Three principal levels of Christian wisdom discourse are distinguished: wisdom as human attainment, wisdom as divine gift, and wisdom as an attribute or quality of God. This journey through Wisdom in Christian Tradition is undertaken in conversation with modern Russian Sophiology, one of the most popular and widely discussed theological movements of our time. Sophiology is characterized by the idea of a primal pre-principle of divine-human unity ('Sophia') manifest in both uncreated and created forms and constituting the very foundation of all that is. Sophiology is a complex phenomenon with multiple sources and inspirations, very much including the Church Fathers. Indeed, fidelity to patristic tradition was to become an ever-increasing feature of its self-understanding and self-articulation, above all in the work of its greatest exponent, Fr Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944). This 'unmodern turn' (as it is here christened) to patristic sources has, however, long been fiercely contested. This book is the first to evaluate thoroughly the nature and substance of Sophiology's claim to patristic continuity. The final chapter offers a radical re-thinking of Sophiology in line with patristic tradition. This constructive proposal maintains Sophiology's most distinctive insights and most pertinent applications while divesting it of some its more problematic elements.

In recent years a new interest in the Eastern Churches has emerged in the Western Churches both Catholic and Protestant. The reader of this work will find answers to such fundamental questions as Who are Eastern Catholics?" "How did the Eastern Catholic Churches originate?" "Who are Orthodox Christians?" "How do Orthodox Christians differ from Eastern Catholics?" "Why do so many diverse Eastern Churches exist?"

While it cannot answer all these questions thoroughly, this concise booklet can help interested laity, theological students, and ministers come to understand and respect Eastern Catholicism for its many contributions to the universal Catholic Church.

This book, written by a leading Orthodox theologian, offers a serious re-examination of the role of women in the Church. For Orthodox and Roman Catholics, especially, the question of women's ordination must be asked "from the inside" and not only "from the outside". This book does not suggest final answers, but raises issues and defines their relative importance.

This book explores the history and evolution of Inochentism, a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian and Romanian borderlands of what is now Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. Inochentism centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as socially and politically subversive by Soviet and Romanian state authorities. Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on hagiographies, oral testimonies, press reports, state legislation and a wealth of previously unstudied police and secret police archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of 'liminality' in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes a systematic historical study of an Eastern European 'home-grown' religious movement taking a 'grass-roots' approach to the problem of minority religious identities in twentieth century Eastern Europe. Consequently, it will be of great interest to scholars of new religions movements, religious history and Russian and Eastern European studies.

In 1988 Russian Orthodox Christians celebrated the millenium of Christianity in Russia. This text examines the state of Christianity in Russia today, questioning whether religion is really freely exercised in contemporary Russia. It looks back to the past for historical explanations of present ills. Some estimates put the number of Christian worshippers in Russia as at least 30 million. Soviet officials and Russian churchmen affirm that religion is "free", but other authoritive sources publish reports of Christians being imprisoned or sent to penal work camps or internal exile. Some believe that Russian Christians who suffer harassment, imprisonment or exile represent the only true Church. This study attempts to discover the truth from these various differing factions.

From the writings of Jingjing, a monk in the eighth century, to essays from contemporary church leaders and academics, Chinese theology offers distinct perspectives within the world church on matters from sin and salvation to Confucian-Christian practice and Marxist materialism. Chloe Starr draws together the writings of Chinese theologians for an English-speaking audience, providing a much-needed resource for scholars and general readers. This anthology, based on He Guanghu and Daniel H. N. Yeung's Sino-Christian Theology Reader ( ), presents an extensive selection of ecclesial and scholarly theological writings from mainland China and provides explanatory context of the historical and theological background for each pre-modern and early twentieth-century text, along with brief biographies of the authors. Ecumenical in scope, A Reader in Chinese Theology brings God to new light through a variety of sources: early Church of the East texts; Roman Catholic writings from the Ming and Qing; singular Taiping treatises; twentieth-century Protestant writings across the church spectrum; and an assortment of academic essays showcasing "Sino-Christian theology" from the Reform Era (1978-).

The work of Archbishop Averky (Taushev) stands apart in an intellectual climate that prizes innovation over tradition, headlines over the Truth, and intellectualism over divine revelation. Writing in the tradition of biblical exegetes such as St John Chrysostom and Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, Archbishop Averky provides a commentary that is firmly grounded in the teaching of the Church, manifested in its liturgical hymnography and the works of the Holy Fathers. Analyzing all four Gospels chronologically and simultaneously, he allows the reader to see the life of Christ as an unfolding narrative in accessible, direct language. Using the best of pre-Revolutionary Russian sources, Archbishop Averky also remained abreast of developments in Western biblical scholarship, engaging with it directly and honestly. He was adamant, however, about the primary importance of Patristic exegesis in understanding the Scriptures. He approaches the Gospels first and foremost not as a literary work of antiquity, but as the revelation of Jesus Christ as God in the flesh. Archbishop Averky's commentaries on the New Testament have become standard textbooks in Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary and have been published in Russia to widespread acclaim. They will be an indispensable addition to the library of every student of the Gospels.

This period of revitalization included the overturning of the Ecclesiastical Regulation of 1721, which had stifled the Church and led to schism between Church and State. The planned National Sobor was convened only to have its work cut off by revolution and civil war.

In the current age where democratic and egalitarian ideals have preeminence, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, among other hierarchically organized religious traditions, faces the challenging questions: "Why is hierarchy maintained as the model of organizing the church, and what are the theological justifications for its persistence?" These questions are especially significant for historically and contemporarily understanding how Orthodox Christians negotiate their spiritual ideals with the challenges of their social and ecclesiastical realities. To critically address these questions, this book offers four case studies of historically disparate Byzantine theologians from the sixth to the fourteenth-centuries-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Niketas Stethatos, and Nicholas Cabasilas-who significantly reflect on the relationship between spiritual authority, power, and hierarchy in theoretical, liturgical, and practical contexts. Although Dionysius the Areopagite has been the subject of much scholarly interest in recent years, the applied theological legacy of his development of "hierarchy" in the Christian East has not before been explored. Relying on a common Dionysian heritage, these Byzantine authors are brought into a common dialogue to reveal a tradition of constructing authentic ecclesiastical hierarchy as foremost that which communicates divinity.

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.

This book examines and compares, from an interdisciplinary perspective of Religious Studies and International Relations, the conduct and rhetoric of the Orthodox Churches of Greece and Cyprus vis-a-vis the process. This study focuses on the conditionality of their "sense of belonging" in the European Union (EU) as their predisposition is dependent, in part, on their sense of "being", as well as on their perception of an ideal type of Europeanness. In this context, this book offers insights on how the Greek and Cypriot Churches, as soft power actors of domestic and European capacity, perceive Europeanness and Otherness; thereby, the compatibility of the personified Greek and Cypriot states with the EU as a post-Westphalian political-cultural entity comes into view.

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps-Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshippers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early Church. Whether they are Greek, Russian, or American, Orthodox Christians are united by a common tradition and faith that binds them together despite differences in culture. True, the road has not always been smooth-Orthodox history is littered with tales of schisms and divisions, of persecutions and martyrdom, from the Sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to the experience of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union. Still, today Orthodoxy remains a vibrant part of the religious landscape, not only in those lands where it has made its historic home (Greece, Russia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe), but also increasingly in the West. Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction explores the enduring role of this religion, and the history, beliefs, and practices that have shaped it.