'Martin's book is the delighted exclamation of someone who has learnt - is learning - to swim in the ocean that is Orthodoxy: "Come on in; it is lovely here!"'Andrew Louth Until now, there has been little in the way of an accessible guide for those who seek to become or live as Orthodox Christians. A new convert himself, Martin Dudley is familiar with the questions, feelings and challenges that arise. He explains that, to grasp Orthodoxy, we must think and act as the Orthodox do. This involves suspending the Western analytical tendency and allowing free rein to the synthetic tendency, which enables us to detect a unity and perceive, however dimly, the interaction between the parts and the whole in relation to God and the Church. The author draws on a wealth of material, from the Church Fathers to straight-talking Mother Thekla, to explore the essentials of belief. He provides guidance on participating in the Liturgy, the requirements for fasting, confession and Orthodox prayer. In celebrating the culture of Orthodoxy - shaped by many different ethnicities and languages, gloriously expressed in art, music and literature - this volume fully conveys the rigour and joy of becoming and being Orthodox.

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.

This book explores how traces of the energies and dynamics of Orthodox Christian theology and anthropology may be observed in the clinical work of depth psychology. Looking to theology to express its own religious truths and to psychology to see whether these truth claims show up in healing modalities, the author creatively engages both disciplines in order to highlight the possibilities for healing contained therein. Dynamis of Healing elucidates how theology and psychology are by no means fundamentally at odds with each other but rather can work together in a beautiful and powerful synergia to address both the deepest needs and deepest desires of the human person for healing and flourishing.

The Church of Jerusalem, the 'mother of the churches of God', influenced all of Christendom before it underwent multiple captivities between the eighth and thirteenth centuries: first, political subjugation to Arab Islamic forces, then displacement of Greek-praying Christians by Crusaders, and finally ritual assimilation to fellow Orthodox Byzantines in Constantinople. All three contributed to the phenomenon of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, but only the last explains how it was completely lost and replaced by the liturgy of the imperial capital, Constantinople. The sources for this study are rediscovered manuscripts of Jerusalem's liturgical calendar and lectionary. When examined in context, they reveal that the devastating events of the Arab conquest in 638 and the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 did not have as detrimental an effect on liturgy as previously held. Instead, they confirm that the process of Byzantinization was gradual and locally-effected, rather than an imposed element of Byzantine imperial policy or ideology of the Church of Constantinople. Originally, the city's worship consisted of reading scripture and singing hymns at places connected with the life of Christ, so that the link between holy sites and liturgy became a hallmark of Jerusalem's worship, but the changing sacred topography led to changes in the local liturgical tradition. Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem is the first study dedicated to the question of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, providing English translations of many liturgical texts and hymns here for the first time and offering a glimpse of Jerusalem's lost liturgical and theological tradition.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II--a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup--is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image. In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country--Vladimir Putin among them--proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith. Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent argues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.

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.

In The Way of a Pilgrim, an unknown pilgrim describes his wanderings through mid-nineteenth century Russia and Siberia, from one holy place to another, in search of the way of prayer. R. M. French's superb translation conveys the charm of the original text, as well as brilliantly communicating the spiritual truths of the gospel. In the much-loved sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way, the narrator shares more of his story, as desire burns within him to discover deeper experiences of prayer, and to draw closer to the heart of God.

This is a collection of documents on church-state relations in modern history. It collects virtually all of the major documents associated with the evolution of the post-Reformation churches - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - in their relationship to the simultaneously developing modern state in the West.

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.

A moving and revealing exploration of Hasidic life, and one man's struggles with faith, family, and community

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world--only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression--turning on the radio--is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely.

Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.

'Why anyone would pick up a book with that formidable title eludes me,' writes Philip Yancey of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. 'But one day I did so and my faith has never recovered. I was experiencing a time of spiritual dryness in which everything seemed stale, warmed over, lifeless. Orthodoxy brought freshness and, above all, a new spirit of adventure.' 'We direly need another Chesterton today, I think. In a time when culture and faith have drifted even further apart, we could use his brilliance, his entertaining style, and above all his generous and joyful spirit. He managed to propound the Christian faith with as much wit, good humour and sheer intellectual force as anyone in this century.' Since its first publication in 1908, this classic work has represented a pivotal step in the adoption of a credible faith by many other Christian thinkers, including C. S. Lewis. Written as a spiritual autobiography, it stands as a remarkable and inspirational apologetic for Christianity.

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 art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the present volume.

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.

St. Elizabeth was a grand daughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Ireland, and the sister of the last Czarina Alexandra. Following the assassination of her husband, the Grand Duke Serge, in 1905, she became a nun. This short work sets forth in the Grand Duchess's own words her vision for monastic life in inner city early twentieth century Moscow. The style is very different from that of better-known monastic rules, as for example of St. Benedict. Through it the reader is offered a glimpse into the daily life of this short-lived but fruitful outreach to the poor of pre-revolutionary Russian society. A short life of the new martyr, murdered by the Bolsheviks, is provided at the end of the work. Well illustrated with black and white photos.

This provocative study examines the role of today's Russian Orthodox Church in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Russia has one of the fastest-growing rates of HIV infection in the world - 80 per cent from intravenous drug use - and the Church remains its only resource for fighting these diseases. Jarrett Zigon takes the reader into a Church-run treatment center where, along with self-transformational and religious approaches, he explores broader anthropological questions - of morality, ethics, what constitutes a 'normal' life, and who defines it as such. Zigon argues that this rare Russian partnership between sacred and political power carries unintended consequences: even as the Church condemns the influence of globalization as the root of the problem it seeks to combat, its programs are cultivating citizen-subjects ready for self-governance and responsibility, and better attuned to a world the Church ultimately opposes.

Arguing that human beings yearn to be rooted in something greater than themselves and to know enduring joy and peace whatever the circumstances, this classic early 20th-century text examines higher consciousness and the divine mysticism of Eastern Christianity. Written by a Russian philosopher and theologian, this book explores the differences between Christian philosophy and other systems and discusses the beliefs of sainted men and women, such as Francis of Assisi, Seraphim of Sarov, and Simeon the New Theologian. Musing upon martyrdom in the epoch of the first two Ecumenical Councils, this book also contains ruminations on the writings of Leo Tolstoy as well as a conversation between him and the author.

We experience Orthodox Joy most prayerfully and powerfully during the Divine Liturgy. Focusing on seven virtues, this book offers practical advice for our daily journey by calling us to strive towards living a different virtue every day. After receiving the Eucharist with a deep and abiding joy during Mass, our most joyful union and communion with God, we dedicate each day of the week to these virtues: Monday, Humility; Tuesday, Purity; Wednesday, Holiness; Thursday, Love; Friday, Longsuffering; Saturday, Prayer; and Sunday, our return to Joy: The Joy of Orthodoxy. Deacon David Lochbihler, J.D., celebrated The Joy of Orthodoxy on the day of his Diaconate Ordination during the Feast of Saint Patrick in 2019 at Saint Patrick Orthodox Church in Virginia. He also teaches fourth grade at The Fairfax Christian School in Northern Virginia. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame and cum laude from the University of Texas School of Law, Deacon David worked as a Chicago attorney for three years before becoming a teacher and coach for three decades. He earned Master's degrees in Elementary Education, Biblical Studies, and Orthodox Theology. His varsity high school basketball and soccer teams captured four N.V.I.A.C. conference championships. Deacon David authored Prayers to Our Lady East and West in 2021.

Deification in the Greek patristic tradition was the fulfilment of the destiny for which humanity was created - not merely salvation from sin but entry into the fullness of the divine life of the Trinity. This book, the first on the subject for over sixty years, traces the history of deification from its birth as a second-century metaphor with biblical roots to its maturity as a doctrine central to the spiritual life of the Byzantine Church. Drawing attention to the richness and diversity of the patristic approaches from Irenaeus to Maximus the Confessor, Norman Russell offers a full discussion of the background and context of the doctrine, at the same time highlighting its distinctively Christian character.

The century and a quarter following the Council of Nicaea (AD325) has been called the 'Golden Age of Patristic Literature'. It is this period that Henry Bettenson covers in this companion volume to The Early Christian Fathers, selecting from the writings of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, and other Fathers of the Christian Chruch. Their central concerns were to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity after the Nicene conclusions, and to enunciate the doctrine of the divinity ahd humanity of Christ. The writings served to clarify if not to solve the issues and they continue to be value and relevant for all who wish to understand Christian doctrine. As in The Early Christian Fathers, Bettenson translated everything afresh and provided some annotation and brief sketches of the lives of each of the Fathers represented in the selection.