This Festschrift celebrates the joyful heart and retirement from thirty-five years of university teaching of Bishop Kallistos Ware, a person who has found his monastic "desert" among the "dreaming spires" of academia, and his "cell" in the lecture room. The Festschrift contains articles by renowned academics, which are based on historical, theological, and spiritual themes.

Orthodox Christianity came to Russia from Byzantium in 988, and in the ensuing centuries it has become such a fixture of the Russian cultural landscape that any discussion of Russian character or history inevitably must take its influence into account. Orthodox Russia is a timely volume that brings together some of the best contemporary scholarship on Russian Orthodox beliefs and practices covering a broad historical period--from the Muscovite era through the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Studies of Russian Orthodoxy have typically focused on doctrinal controversies or institutional developments.

Orthodox Russia concentrates on lived religious experience--how Orthodoxy touched the lives of a wide variety of subjects of the Russian state, from clerics awaiting the Apocalypse in the fifteenth century and nuns adapting to the attacks on organized religion under the Soviets to unlettered military servitors at the court of Ivan the Terrible and workers, peasants, and soldiers in the last years of the imperial regime. Melding traditionally distinct approaches, the volume allows us to see Orthodoxy not as a static set of rigidly applied rules and dictates but as a lived, adaptive, and flexible system.

Orthodox Russia offers a much-needed, up-to-date general survey of the subject, one made possible by the opening of archives in Russia after 1991.

Contributors include Laura Engelstein, Michael S. Flier, Daniel H. Kaiser, Nadieszda Kizenko, Eve Levin, Gary Marker, Daniel Rowland, Vera Shevzov, Thomas N. Tentler, Isolde Thyret, William G. Wagner, and Paul W. Werth.

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 "Memory Eternal," Sergei Kan combines anthropology and history, anecdote and theory to portray the encounter between the Tlingit Indians and the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska in the late 1700s and to analyze the indigenous Orthodoxy that developed over the next 200 years. As a native speaker of Russian with eighteen years of fieldwork experience among the Tlingit, Kan is uniquely qualified to relate little-known material from the archives of the Russian church in Alaska to Tlingit oral history and his own observations. By weighing the one body of evidence against the other, he has reevaluated this history, arriving at a persuasive new concept of "converged agendas"--the view that the Tlingit and the Russians tended to act in mutually beneficial ways but for entirely different reasons throughout the period of their contact with one another.

The Russian-American Company began operations in southeastern Alaska in the 1790s. Against a description of Tlingit culture at the time of the Russians' arrival, Kan examines Russian Orthodox theology, ritual practice, and missionary methods, and the Tlingit response to them. An uneasy symbiosis characterized the early era of the Russian-American Company, when the trading relationship outweighed any spiritual or social rapprochement.

A second, major focus of Kan's study is the Tlingit experience with American colonial domination. He attributes a sudden revival of Tlingit interest in Orthodoxy in the 1880s as their attempt to maintain independence in the face of concerted efforts by the newcomers (and especially Presbyterian missionaries) to Americanize them.

"Memory Eternal" shows the colonial encounter to be both a power struggle and a dialogue between different systems of meaning. It portrays Native Alaskans not as helpless victims but as historical agents who attempted to adjust to the changing reality of their social world without abandoning fundamental principals of their precolonial sociocultural order or their strong sense of self-respect.

Reflections on the theological aspect of the liturgy was the focus of Alexander Schmemann's intellectual life. He intuitively grasped and insisted upon the essentially theological character of all liturgical renewal. He recognized that the renewal of the church requires a rediscovery of the liturgy's own inherent theology, that same theology which once informed the whole of the church's life as well as the teachings and writings of the leaders of the Patristic age. This theological content which is inherent in the liturgy itself is designed by Schmemann as "liturgical theology". This collection of essays by the pre-eminent 20th-century Orthodox liturgical theologian is intended as a companion volume to his "Introduction to Liturgical Theology". Here can be traced the development of his thought, and particularly his increasingly precise articulation of the nature and method of liturgical theologyy. Here too can be found Schmemann's constant stress on liturgy as an eschatological and ecclesial event and he repeatedly challenges the liturgical movement in both East and West to rediscover these elements, which were so central in the life of the early Church.

Holy Fathers, Secular Sons is the first study of the Orthodox clergy's contribution to Russian society. Prior to the 1860s, clergymen's sons were not allowed to leave the castelike clergy in large numbers. When permission was granted, they responded by entering free professions and political movements in droves. Challenging the standard view of educated pre-revolutionary Russians as largely westernized, secular, and patricidal, Laurie Manchester demonstrates that the clergymen's sons did retain their fathers' values. This was true even of the minority who became atheists. Drawing on the clergy's commitment to moral activism, anti-aristocratism, and nationalism, clergymen's sons believed they could, and should, save Russia. The consequence was a cultural revolution that helped pave the way for the 1917 revolutions. Using a massive array of previously untapped archival and published sources--including lively first-hand autobiographical writings of over two hundred clergymen's sons--Manchester constructs a composite biography of their childhoods, educations, and adult lives. In a highly original approach, she explores how they employed the image of the clerical family to structure their political, professional, and personal lives. Manchester's work provides a window into an extremely significant but little-known world of Russian educated culture while contributing to histories of lived religion, private life, and memory, as well as to debates over secularization, modernity, and revolution. Holy Fathers, Secular Sons powerfully challenges the assumptions that radical change cannot be inspired by tradition and that the modern age is inherently secular.

"The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature" examines how modern Orthodox Christian thinkers have answered the most pressing political, legal, and ethical questions of our time. It discusses the enduring teachings of important Orthodox Christian intellectuals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leading contemporary scholars analyze these thinkers' views on the nature and purpose of law and authority, the limits of rule and obedience, the care of the needy and innocent, the ethics of war and violence, and the separation of church and state, among other themes. A diverse and powerful portrait of Orthodox Christian legal and political thought, this volume underscores the various ways Orthodox Christian intellectuals have shaped modern debates over the family, the state, religion, and society. The book concentrates on Russian philosophers Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) and Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958); Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948); Russian nun and social reformer Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945); and Romanian theologian Dumitru St?niloae (1903-1993).

Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

This book examines the part played by monks of Mount Athos in the diffusion of Orthodox monasticism throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. It focuses on the lives of outstanding holy men in the history of Orthodoxy who have been drawn to the Mountain, have absorbed the spirit of its wisdom and its prayer, and have returned to the outside world, inspired to spread the results of their labours and learning. In a remarkable demonstration of what may be termed 'soft power' in action, these men have carried the image of Athos to all corners of the Balkan peninsula, to Ukraine, to the very far north of Russia, across Siberia and the Bering Strait into North America, and most recently (when traditional routes were closed to them by the curtain of communism) to the West. Their dynamic witness is the greatest gift of Athos to a world thirsting for spiritual guidance.

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.

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.

The Festschrift in Honor of Professor Paul Nadim Tarazi includes a collection of articles discussing the latest scholarly findings in the field of the Old Testament studies. Scholars from around the world conducting research in the Old Testament text, theology, canon, interpretation, and criticism have contributed their recent findings in the fields of their research and teaching to this volume.

Passage into the modern world left the Russian icon profoundly altered. It fell into new hands, migrated to new homes, and acquired new forms and meanings. Icons were made in the factories of foreign industrialists and destroyed by iconoclasts of the proletariat. Even the icon's traditional functions--whether in the feast days of the church or the pageantry of state power--were susceptible to the transformative forces of modernization. In Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and Modernity, eleven scholars of Russian history, art, literature, cinema, philosophy, and theology track key shifts in the production, circulation, and consumption of the Russian icon from Peter the Great's Enlightenment to the post-Soviet revival of Orthodoxy. Alter Icons shows how the twin pressures of secular scholarship and secular art transformed the Russian icon from a sacred image in the church to a masterpiece in the museum, from a parochial craftwork to a template for the avant-garde, and from a medieval interface with the divine to a modernist prism for seeing the world anew.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Robert Bird, Elena Boeck, Shirley A. Glade, John-Paul Himka, John Anthony McGuckin, Robert L. Nichols, Sarah Pratt, Wendy R. Salmond, and Vera Shevzov.

Originally published in 1999, The Rites of Christian Initiation was haled for its clarity and comprehensiveness. Kalian McDonnell, OSB, called it the best overall treatment of Christian initiation available, and Paul Bradshaw predicted it would be the standard textbook on the subject for very many years to come." The current edition draws on new translations of early texts on baptism as well as recent scholarship on the early traditions in the East and West. It is sure to replace itself as the new standard reference on the rites of Christian initiation.

Maxwell E. Johnson's expanded and revised text provides a more complete view of the history and interpretation of the rites in the Eastern Church, including two chapters that explore the pre-Nicene Eastern and Western traditions in detail. Revisiting the theology of baptism, this edition also provides more nuanced positions on the Eastern and Western traditions. Finally, recent liturgical developments in American Protestant churches, particularly Lutheran, as well as the ongoing development of the RCIA and confirmation practices of Catholics, made it necessary to revisit the place and meaning of these rites in the church today.

"Maxwell E. Johnson, PhD, is professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has published in "Worship" and is the editor of and contributor to "Living Water, Sealing Spirit: Readings on Christian Initiation" (Liturgical Press, 1995) and the revised and expanded edition of E.C. Whitaker, "Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy" (Liturgical Press and S.P.C.K., 2003), to which this study serves as a companion volume.""

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 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 Men (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 often unfamiliar, 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.

The Church Singer's Companion (or Sputnik Psalomshchika) is an "obikhod" or standard book of music. It is an indispensable reference for any kliros in the Russian Church. it contains melodies in square notation for the chanted portions of Vespers, Matins, and Divine Liturgy, as well as additional material from throughout the Church year. This new printing is a convenient library-bound hardcover. The book stays open by itself, freeing the precantor's hands to conduct!

A complete prayer book in the Slavonic language printed with the Cyrillic (old orthography) alphabet. Includes morning and evening prayers, the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, various Akathists and Canons annd much more besides.

After the 1917 Revolution in Russia, the Bosheviks launched a massive assault on religion. Although we know a great deal about how the Bolsheviks went about doing this--propaganda, persecution of clergy and laity, seizing church property--scholars have not devoted much attention to the other side of the story: the people who were being persecuted and how they responded to their persecutors.

Glennys Young shows how ordinary Russian peasants devised ways of asserting their religious faith during the difficult period of New Economic Policy, 1921-28, when the Party-state was ideologically obsessed with eradicating religion. Faced with persecution, torture, and the creation of antireligious organizations such as the League of the Godless, Orthodox clergy and laity organized themselves against the Bolsheviks. They revived factional politics, even using the village soviets, the intended cornerstone of Soviet power in the countryside, to defend their religious interests. When they achieved some degree of success in their resistance, the Bosheviks were forced to respond and adapt their strategies--a conclusion that scholars have not put forward previously.

Based on extensive research in archives and published sources, Young's book will force historians of Soviet Russia to confront religious issues as central to rural politics. Her work also draws upon cultural anthropology and theories of peasant politics, making it of great interest to any scholars studying the processes of secularization and desacralization in other cultures.

"It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us," the apostles declared at the conclusion of their council described in Acts 15. This apostolic council was only the first of many councils as Christians sought to discern the will of God in the midst of historic challenges. The faithful continued to struggle to express that apostolic faith in new words, new languages, new places, and new times. Many issues-the interaction of science and faith, divinity and humanity, the relationship between Church and State, how differing religious communities can learn to live together in common geographic areas and political systems-will still seem familiar and pertinent. This is the story of that struggle from the days of the New Testament up to the fall of the city of Constantinople (AD 1453). It is the story of the Christian community in the eastern Mediterranean which eventually became known as the Byzantine Empire. Each chapter examines the personalities and theology that were inextricably entwined at the heart of the conflicts, debates, and events that shaped the medieval world and the modern cultures of Greece, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

The relationship between the Syrian Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire and the Church of England developed substantially between 1895 and 1914, as contacts between them grew. As the character of this emerging relationship changed, it contributed to the formation of both churches' own 'narratives of identity'. The wider context in which this took place was a period of instability in the international order, particularly within the Ottoman Empire, culminating in the outbreak of the First World War, effectively bringing this phase of sustained contact to an end. Narratives of Identity makes use of Syriac, Garshuni, and Arabic primary sources from Syrian Orthodox archives in Turkey and Syria, alongside Ottoman documents from the Basbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi, Istanbul, and a range of English archival sources. The preconceptions of both Churches are analysed, using a philosophical framework provided by the work of Paul Ricoeur, especially his concepts of significant memory (anamnesis), translation, and the search for mutual recognition. Anamnesis and translation were extensively employed in the formation of 'narratives of identity' that needed to be understood by both Churches. The identity claims of the Tractarian section of the Church of England and of the Ottoman Syrian Orthodox Church are examined using this framework. The detailed content of the theological dialogue between them, is then examined, and placed in the context of the rapidly changing demography of eastern Anatolia, the Syrian Orthodox 'heartland'. The late Ottoman state was characterised by an increased instability for all its non-Muslim minorities, which contributed to the perceived threats to Ottoman Syrian Orthodoxy, both from within and without. Finally, a new teleological framework is proposed in order to better understand these exchanges, taking seriously the amamnetic insights of the narratives of identity of both the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of England from 1895 to 1914.