|
|
Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Orthodox Churches
Though the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt is among the oldest
Christian communities in the world, it remained relatively unknown
outside of Egypt for most of its existence. In the wake of the Arab
Spring, however, this community was caught up in regional violence,
and its predicament became a cause for concern around the world.
Copts in Context examines the situation of the Copts as a minority
faith in a volatile region and as a community confronting modernity
while steeped in tradition. Nelly van Doorn-Harder opens Coptic
identity and tradition to a broad range of perspectives:
historical, political, sociological, anthropological, and
ethnomusicological. Starting with contemporary issues such as
recent conflicts in Egypt, the volume works back to topics-among
them the Coptic language, the ideals and tradition of monasticism,
and church historiography-that while rooted in the ancient past,
nevertheless remain vital in Coptic memory and understanding of
culture and tradition. Contributors examine developments in the
Coptic diaspora, in religious education and the role of children,
and in Coptic media, as well as considering the varied nature of
Coptic participation in Egyptian society and politics over
millennia. With many Copts leaving the homeland, preservation of
Coptic history, memory, and culture has become a vital concern to
the Coptic Church. These essays by both Coptic and non-Coptic
scholars offer insights into present-day issues confronting the
community and their connections to relevant themes from the past,
demonstrating reexamination of that past helps strengthen
modern-day Coptic life and culture.
At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be
available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open
Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
The Stranger at the Feast is a pathbreaking ethnographic study of
one of the world's oldest and least-understood religious
traditions. Based on long-term ethnographic research on the Zege
peninsula in northern Ethiopia, the author tells the story of how
people have understood large-scale religious change by following
local transformations in hospitality, ritual prohibition, and
feeding practices. Ethiopia has undergone radical upheaval in the
transition from the imperial era of Haile Selassie to the modern
secular state, but the secularization of the state has been met
with the widespread revival of popular religious practice. For
Orthodox Christians in Zege, everything that matters about religion
comes back to how one eats and fasts with others. Boylston shows
how practices of feeding and avoidance have remained central even
as their meaning and purpose has dramatically changed: from a means
of marking class distinctions within Orthodox society, to a marker
of the difference between Orthodox Christians and other religions
within the contemporary Ethiopian state.
How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear,
touch, and smell? Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of
scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual
practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when
performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act
that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader,
institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with
material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics,
candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether
touching upon the use of icons in age of digital and electronic
media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the
implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and
loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview
of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole
they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and
ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe,
the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear,
touch, and smell? Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of
scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual
practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when
performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act
that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader,
institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with
material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics,
candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether
touching upon the use of icons in age of digital and electronic
media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the
implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and
loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview
of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole
they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and
ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe,
the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
This Introduction aims to provide basic guidance to important areas
of Syriac studies. The relevance of Syriac studies to a variety of
other fields is explored. A brief orientation to the history of
Syriac literature is offered, and Syriac is set within the context
of the other Aramaic dialects. A thorough discussion on important
tools (Instrumenta Studiorum) is presented; topics include
grammars, dictionaries, the Bible in Syriac, histories of Syriac
literature, bibliographical aids and relevant series, periodicals,
and encyclopedias. This Introduction should prove useful both for
the student beginning Syriac studies and for scholars working in
adjacent fields.
John Bushnell's analysis of previously unstudied church records and
provincial archives reveals surprising marriage patterns in Russian
peasant villages in the 18th and 19th centuries. For some villages
the rate of unmarried women reached as high as 70 percent. The
religious group most closely identified with female peasant
marriage aversion was the Old Believer Spasovite covenant, and
Bushnell argues that some of these women might have had more agency
in the decision to marry than more common peasant tradition
ordinarily allowed. Bushnell explores the cataclysmic social and
economic impacts these decisions had on the villages, sometimes
dragging entire households into poverty and ultimate dissolution.
In this act of defiance, this group of socially, politically, and
economically subordinated peasants went beyond traditional acts of
resistance and reaction.
|
|