Orthodox Christians, as well as other non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, have long been treated as insular and homogenous entities, distinctly different and separate from the rest of the Ottoman world. Despite this view prevailing in mainstream historiography, some scholars have suggested recently that non-Muslim life was not as monolithic and rigid as is often supposed. In an endeavour to understand the ties among Christians within the administrative, social and economic structures of the imperial and Orthodox Christian worlds, Ayse Ozil engages in a rarely undertaken comparative analysis of Ottoman, Greek and European archival sources. Using the hitherto under-explored region of Hudavendigar in the heartland of the empire as a case study, she questions commonplace assumptions about the meaning of ethno-religious community within a Middle Eastern imperial framework. Offering a more nuanced investigation of Ottoman Christians by connecting Ottoman and Greek history, which are often treated in isolation from one another, this work sheds new light on communal existence.

Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, formerly Timothy Ware, is unquestionably the best-known Orthodox theologian in the Western world today. The papers collected in this volume are designed to demonstrate the spread of his own interests and concerns and therefore range from the Desert Fathers to modern church dialogue, from patristics to church music, from the Philokalia to human "priesthood". In the course of a long career he has touched the lives of many people and there is a section of tributes concerned with his role as spiritual father, teacher, writer, pastor, theologian, and monk. In the epilogue the Metropolitan himself reflects on his many years as a pilgrim to Mount Athos. Most of the papers included in this volume were delivered at a conference convened by the Friends of Mount Athos at Madingley Hall, Cambridge, in 2015 in honour of Metropolitan Kallistos's eightieth birthday.

This volume contains the last part of John of Ephesus' (c. 507-c. 588) Ecclesiastical History in Syriac, covering the years 571-585. An introduction (in English) touches on the manuscript and the style and content of the work.

Many people today are uncertain about what they believe and how they should live. They seek for a tradition that demonstrates antiquity and possesses authenticity. This newly translated volume of the writings of the Orthodox spiritual teacher Ignatius Brianchaninov offers a vision of a life that flows from following Christ. The field is both a place of spiritual struggle and a garden in which to cultivate virtues. But are we willing to respond to the challenge of a life lived in accordance with the Christian Gospel? St Ignatius' writing is the Christian tradition at its deepest, intensely practical but also transcendent and mystical.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines the key 2008 publication of the Russian Orthodox Church on human dignity, freedom, and rights. It considers how the document was formed, charting the development over time of the Russian Orthodox Church's views on human rights. It analyzes the detail of the document, and assesses the practical and political impact inside the Church, at the national level and in the international arena. Overall, it shows how the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church has shifted from outright hostility towards individual human rights to the advocacy of "traditional values."

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first biography in English of an extraordinary polymath whose great genius was stifled and finally extinguished by the Soviet Union. "Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius" is the first biography in English of an extraordinary polymath whose genius was stifled and finally extinguished by the Soviet Union. Today Pavel Florensky is often referred to as the Russian da Vinci. Florensky was, at one and the same time, a supremely gifted philosopher, mathematician, physicist, inventor, engineer and theologian. He was also a poet and wrote studies of history, language and art. Although he taught philosophy for most of his working life, his interests were wide-ranging and profound and included the study of time and space, the theory of relativity, aspects of language, and the properties of materials and geology. His book "The Pillar and the Ground of Truth" is widely seen as a masterpiece of Russian Orthodox theology. Eminent Russian scholar Avril Pyman looks at Florensky's life, from his childhood as the son of a railroad engineer to his mysterious death, and provides a populist perspective on his achievements. "Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius" celebrates the life of this unjustly forgotten victim of the Soviet Union.

New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought brings to the light and discusses a strand in contemporary Greek public debate that is often overlooked, namely progressive religious actors of a western orientation. International - and Greek - media tend to focus on the extreme views and to categorise positions in the public debate along well known dichotomies such as traditionalists vs. modernsers. Demonstrating that in late modernity, parallel to rising nationalisms, there is a shift towards religious communities becoming the central axis for cultural organization and progressive thinking, the book presents Greece as a case study based on empirical field data from contemporary theology and religious education, and makes a unique contribution to ongoing debates about the public role of religion in contemporary Europe.

Church Slavonic, one of the world's historic sacred languages, has experienced a revival in post-Soviet Russia. Blending religious studies and sociolinguistics, this is the first book devoted to Church Slavonic in the contemporary period. It is not a narrow study in linguistics, but uses Slavonic as a passkey into various wider topics, including the renewal and factionalism of the Orthodox Church; the transformation of the Russian language; and the debates about protecting the nation from Western cults and culture. It considers both official and popular forms of Orthodox Christianity, as well as Russia's esoteric and neo-pagan traditions. Ranging over such diverse areas as liturgy, pedagogy, typography, mythology, and conspiracy theory, the book illuminates the complex interrelationship between language and faith in post-communist society, and shows how Slavonic has performed important symbolic work during a momentous chapter in Russian history. It is of great interest to scholars of sociolinguistics and of religion, as well as to Russian studies specialists.

The present volume focuses on the relationship with communism of Romania's most important religious denominations and their attempt to cope with that difficult past which continues to cast an important shadow over their present. For the first time ever, this volume considers both the majority Romanian Orthodox Church and significant minority denominations such as the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches, the Reformed Church, the Hungarian Unitarian Church, and the Pentecostal Christian Denomination. It argues that no religious group (except the Greek Catholic Church, which was banned from 1948 until 1989) escaped collaboration with the communists. After 1989, however, most denominations had little desire to tackle their tainted past and make a clean start. In part, this was facilitated by the country's deficient legislation that did not encourage the pursuit of lustration, which in turn did not lead to a serious movement of elite renewal in the religious realm. Instead, a strong process of reproduction of the old elites and their adaptation to democracy has been the dominant characteristic of the post-communist period.

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.

This work deals with the role of the Petrine ministry in the ecumenical relationship between the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Catholic Church. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church traces her origin to the Church of St Thomas Christians, founded by St Thomas, the Apostle who reached the south Indian state of Kerala in 52 AD. The book explores the Ecclesiologies of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the St Thomas Christians of India and the Catholic Church from a dogmatic-juridical-historical perspective. The author tries to mediate between the two Churches in order to support them in the reviewing process of their history and Ecclesiology and re-establishing the unity for which Jesus Christ prayed: "Holy father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one" (Jn 17, 11). The author in his role as mediator makes a few suggestions for solving the problems related to the concept of the Petrine ministry on a universal level in the light of the Communion Ecclesiology of Vatican II, the studies of the various unofficial ecumenical dialogue commissions and the analysis of the experience of the Syro Malabar Church, one of the 22 sui iuris Churches in the Catholic Church.

The Russian church is central to an understanding of early Russian and Slav history, but for many years there has been no accessible, up-to-date introduction to the subject in English - until now. The late John Fennell's last book, is a masterly survey of the development, nature and role of the early Church in Russia from Christianization of the country in 988, through Kievan and Tatar poeriods to 1448 when the Russian Church finally became totally independent of its mother-church in Byzantium.

Severos, patriarch of Antioch, was one of the most important ecclesiastical figures of the first half of the sixth century, a time when the reception, or not, of the Council of Chalcedon (451) was still a matter of much dispute. As an opponent of the Council, Severos had to flee from his patriarchal see to Egypt in 518 when Justin came to the throne and imperial policy changed. Summoned by Justinian to Constantinople in 536, he won over Anthimos, the patriarch of Constantinople, but in the reaction to this unexpected turn of events, both he and Anthimos were anathematised at a synod in the capital and his writings were condemned to be burnt. Regarded as a schismatic by the Greek and Latin Church, he is commemorated as a saint in the Syrian Orthodox Church, and so it is only in Syriac translations from Greek that the majority of his voluminous writings are preserved. The first of the two biographies translated in this volume was written by Zacharias, a fellow law student in Beirut. The purpose of the work was to counter a hostile pamphlet and it happens to shed fascinating light on student life at the time; composed during Severos' own lifetime, it covers up to his election as patriarch in 512; the second biography comprises Severos' whole life, and its author, writing only shortly after Severos' death in 538, was probably a monk of the monastery of Qenneshre, on the Euphrates, a stronghold of Severos' supporters. In this volume for the Translated Texts for Historians series, the Anonymous Life of Severos is translated for the first time into English alongside a fully annotated translation of the Life of Severos by Zacharias scholastikos, all of which is preceded by an introduction providing the historical setting and background.

This book provides the basic "skeleton" for all the services of the Orthodox Church, into which variable texts from other sources are inserted. The work is presented in a well-bound large print format. Using traditional English the book has the fixed texts for all the daily services of the Orthodox Church. Clear rubrics set out in red ink explain how the form of the services varies between Sundays and weekdays, fasting seasons etc. This edition also includes extracts from the variable texts of the Menaion, Triodion and Pentecostarion. An absolute must for any student of Christian liturgy.

In recent years, the Russian Orthodox Church has become a more prominent part of post-Soviet Russia. A number of assumptions exist regarding the Church s relationship with the Russian state: that the Church has always been dominated by Russia s secular elites; that the clerics have not sufficiently fought this domination and occasionally failed to act in the Church s best interest; and that the Church was turned into a Soviet institution during the twentieth century. This book challenges these assumptions. It demonstrates that church-state relations in post-communist Russia can be seen in a much more differentiated way, and that the church is not subservient, very much having its own agenda. Yet at the same time it is sharing the state s, and Russian society s nationalist vision.

The book analyses the Russian Orthodox Church s political culture, focusing on the Putin and Medvedev eras from 2000. It examines the upper echelons of the Moscow Patriarchate in relation to the governing elite and to Russian public opinion, explores the role of the church in the formation of state religious policy, and the church s role within the Russian military. It discusses how the Moscow Patriarchate is asserting itself in former Soviet republics outside Russia, especially in Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus. It concludes by re-emphasising that, although the church often mirrors the Kremlin s political preferences, it most definitely acts independently. "

Basilio Petra sees Christos Yannaras (b. 1935) as a philosopher and theologian whose refiguring, on the one hand, of Heidegger's refusal to define being in ontic terms and, on the other, of Wittgenstein's willingness to admit the inexpressible character of the mystical has led him to articulate a powerful vision of true human existence. This bold interpretation outlines the passage from an ontic 'mode of nature' governed by necessity to a 'mode of self-transcendence and self-offering' beyond the limitations of decay and death. In his native Greece, Yannaras revolutionised the way theology had been done for much of the twentieth century. This book examines the trajectory of Yannaras' thought from his initial encounter with Heidegger's philosophy to his formulation (via the tradition of the Greek Fathers) of a modern critical ontology. It is for both advanced students of philosophy and the growing scholarly audience interested in Yannaras' work. Written in accessible language that does not compromise intellectual rigour, it is the only survey of the development of Yannaras' philosophical thought as a whole.

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of Eastern Christian churches in Europe, the Middle East, America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it examines both Orthodox and Oriental churches from the end of the Cold War up to the present day. The book offers a unique insight into the myriad church-state relations in Eastern Christianity and tackles contemporary concerns, opportunities and challenges, such as religious revival after the fall of communism; churches and democracy; relations between Orthodox, Catholic and Greek Catholic churches; religious education and monastic life; the size and structure of congregations; and the impact of migration, secularisation and globalisation on Eastern Christianity in the twenty-first century.

This book examines the key 2008 publication of the Russian Orthodox Church on human dignity, freedom, and rights. It considers how the document was formed, charting the development over time of the Russian Orthodox Church's views on human rights. It analyzes the detail of the document, and assesses the practical and political impact inside the Church, at the national level and in the international arena. Overall, it shows how the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church has shifted from outright hostility towards individual human rights to the advocacy of "traditional values."

From 1807, when the first Protestant missionary arrived in China, to the 1920s, when a new phase of growth began, thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians laboured, often under very adverse conditions, to lay the groundwork for a solid, healthy, and self-sustaining Chinese church. Following an Introduction that sets the scene and surveys the entire period, 'Builders of the Chinese Church' contains the stories of nine leading pioneers: seven Western missionaries and two Chinese. Here we meet Robert Morrison, the heroic translator; Liang Fa, the first Chinese evangelist; missionary-scholar James Legge; J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission; converted opium addict Pastor Hsi, Overcomer of Demons; Griffith John and Jonathan Goforth, both indefatigable preachers; and the idealistic advocates of education and reform, W.A.P. Martin and Timothy Richard. Readers will be inspired by their courage, devotion, and sheer perseverance in arduous work, and will gain a better understanding of the origins of the two 'branches' of today's Chinese Protestantism.

With approximately 200 to 300 million adherents worldwide, Orthodox Christianity is among the largest branches of Christianity, yet it remains relatively understudied. This book examines the rich and complex entanglements between Orthodox Christianity and globalization, offering a substantive contribution to the relationship between religion and globalization, as well as the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and the sociology of religion - and more broadly, the interdisciplinary field of Religious Studies. While deeply engaged with history, this book does not simply narrate the history of Orthodox Christianity as a world religion, nor does it address theological issues or cover all the individual trajectories of each subgroup or subdivision of the faith. Orthodox Christianity is the object of the analysis, but author Victor Roudometof speaks to a broader audience interested in culture, religion, and globalization. Roudometof argues in favor of using globalization instead of modernization as the main theoretical vehicle for analyzing religion, displacing secularization in order to argue for multiple hybridizations of religion as a suitable strategy for analyzing religious phenomena. It offers Orthodox Christianity as a test case that illustrates the presence of historically specific but theoretically distinct glocalizations, applicable to all faiths.

A composite book of essays from ten scholars, Divine Essence and Divine Energies provides a rich repository of diverse opinion about the essence-energy distinction in Orthodox Christianity - a doctrine which lies at the heart of the often-fraught fault line between East and West, and which, in this book, inspires a lively dialogue between the contributors. The contents of the book revolve around several key questions: In what way were the Aristotelian concepts of ousia and energeia used by the Church Fathers, and to what extent were their meanings modified in the light of the Christological and Trinitarian doctrines? What theological function does the essence-energy distinction fulfil in Eastern Orthodoxy with respect to theology, anthropology, and the doctrine of creation? What are the differences and similarities between the notions of divine presence and participation in seminal Christian writings, and what is the relationship between the essence-energy distinction and Western ideas of divine presence?A valuable addition to the dialogue between Eastern and Western Christianity, this book will be of great interest to any reader seeking a rigorously academic insight into the wealth of scholarly opinion regarding the essence-energy distinction.

Written as the First World War was finally drawing to a close, A. Clutton-Brock's reflections on the Kingdom of Heaven examine this challenging theological concept in light of the great religious, political and moral uncertainties thrown up by the conflict. In particular, Clutton-Brock contends that historically Christian orthodoxy has not sufficiently emphasised the role of the Kingdom in salvation, given its importance in the ministry and teaching of Christ. To preserve a religious vision capable of interacting with the modern, industrial world, Christian orthodoxy must carefully consider the scope and importance of political practice, the role of the individual in the realisation of the Kingdom, and the profound implications of reconciling the facts of the universe with the most sincerely held beliefs.

The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity and the home to a number of Eastern Churches with millions of followers. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the various denominations in the modern Middle East and will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars and students studying theology, history and politics.