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Books > Christianity > Orthodox Churches
The early twenty-first century has seen an explosion of animation.
Cartoon characters are everywhere-in cinema, television, and video
games and as brand logos. There are new technological objects that
seem to have lives of their own-from Facebook algorithms that
suggest products for us to buy to robots that respond to human
facial expressions. The ubiquity of animation is not a trivial
side-effect of the development of digital technologies and the
globalization of media markets. Rather, it points to a paradigm
shift. In the last century, performance became a key term in
academic and popular discourse: The idea that we construct
identities through our gestures and speech proved extremely useful
for thinking about many aspects of social life. The present volume
proposes an anthropological concept of animation as a contrast and
complement to performance: The idea that we construct social others
by projecting parts of ourselves out into the world might prove
useful for thinking about such topics as climate crisis, corporate
branding, and social media. Like performance, animation can serve
as a platform for comparisons of different cultures and historical
eras. Teri Silvio presents an anthropology of animation through a
detailed ethnographic account of how characters, objects, and
abstract concepts are invested with lives, personalities, and
powers-and how people interact with them-in contemporary Taiwan.
The practices analyzed include the worship of wooden statues of
Buddhist and Daoist deities and the recent craze for cute vinyl
versions of these deities, as well as a wildly popular video
fantasy series performed by puppets. She reveals that animation is,
like performance, a concept that works differently in different
contexts, and that animation practices are deeply informed by local
traditions of thinking about the relationships between body and
soul, spiritual power and the material world. The case of Taiwan,
where Chinese traditions merge with Japanese and American popular
culture, uncovers alternatives to seeing animation as either an
expression of animism or as "playing God." Looking at the
contemporary world through the lens of animation will help us
rethink relationships between global and local, identity and
otherness, human and non-human.
The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian
gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury
gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, from the
Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia. This book reproduces all of the
Garima illuminated pages for the first time, and presents extensive
comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those
studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern
Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated
books. 316 colour illustrations. Preface and photographs by Michael
Gevers. Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain
ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of
the different versions of the same material in the gospels.
Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by
Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our
understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel
collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames,
portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and
the unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are explored.
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.
Orthodox Christian theology is often presented as the direct
inheritor of the doctrine and tradition of the early Church. But
continuity with the past is only part of the truth; it would be
false to conclude that the eastern section of the Christian Church
is in any way static. Orthodoxy, building on its patristic
foundations, has blossomed in the modern period. This volume
focuses on the way Orthodox theological tradition is understood and
lived today. It explores the Orthodox understanding of what
theology is: an expression of the Church's life of prayer, both
corporate and personal, from which it can never be separated.
Besides discussing aspects of doctrine, the book portrays the main
figures, themes and developments that have shaped Orthodox thought.
There is particular focus on the Russian and Greek traditions, as
well as the dynamic but less well-known Antiochian tradition and
the Orthodox presence in the West.
Orthodox Christians today have no lack of resources on monastic
spirituality. And yet startlingly little has been done to
critically engage the monastic tradition and adapt its ancient
wisdom for the Orthodox faithful living in today's complex society.
A Layman in the Desert aims to bridge this crucial gap. Working
with the Conferences of St John Cassian, Opperwall constructs a
kind of relationship handbook that shows us how the desert saints
of old can help us build healthy, Christ-centered relationships
with our spouses, children, friends, and coworkers.
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.
Writing in the tradition of biblical exegetes, such as St John
Chrysostom, Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria, and St Theophan the
Recluse, the work of Archbishop Averky (Taushev) 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. Using the best of prerevolutionary Russian sources, these
writings also remained abreast of developments in Western biblical
scholarship, engaging with it directly and honestly. In this second
of three planned volumes, the author explains the significance of
the Church's earliest history, as recorded in the Book of Acts.
Questions of authorship and time of composition are also addressed.
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. This present volume is
the first translation of these texts into English. it is an
indispensable addition to the library of every student of the New
Testament.
This introduction describes the life of the Orthodox Churches of the Christian East from the accession of the Emperor Constantine in 312 up to the year 2000. It discusses the distinctive Orthodox approaches to the themes of liturgy, theology, monastic life and spirituality, iconography, popular religion, mission, politics and the schism between East and West. The final chapter examines the response of the Churches to the new freedom following the collapse of communism and the prospects for the future.
In modern Russia, the question is raised about the revival of the
spirituality of the population, which increases interest in
studying the history of the church. In the pre-revolutionary
period, the Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire had a significant
impact on the formation of national culture and statehood. Actively
cooperating with the state, the Orthodox Church has accumulated
vast experience in the field of education, missionary work, and
charity. This experience in today's Russia can be used to solve the
most important tasks in the moral education of young people who
will contribute to the future of Russia. Examining the Relationship
Between the Russian Orthodox Church and Secular Authorities in the
19th and 20th Centuries focuses on the system of spiritual
education, the social and psychological characteristics of the
clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the tradition of
Orthodox pilgrimage. It explores the key areas of charitable and
educational activities of the Orthodox Church during the period of
religious transformation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Covering
topics such as missionary activity, secular authority, and church
land tenure, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource
for historians, anthropologists, sociologists, researchers in
politics and religion, librarians, students and faculty of higher
education, and academicians.
This book is a critical study of the interaction between Russian
Church and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. At a time of rising nationalist movement throughout
Europe, Orthodox patriots advocated for the place of the Church as
a unifying force, central to the identity and purpose of the
burgeoning, yet increasingly religiously diverse Russian Empire.
Their views were articulated in a variety of ways. Bishops such as
Metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky - a founding hierarch of the
Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia - and other members of the
clergy expressed their vision of Russia through official
publications (including ecclesiastical journals), sermons, the
organization of pilgrimages and the canonization of saints. On the
other hand, religious intellectuals (such as the famous philosopher
Vladimir Soloviev and the controversial former-Marxist Sergey
Bulgakov) promoted what was often a variant vision of the nation
through the publication of books and articles. Even the once
persecuted Old Believers, emboldened by a religious toleration
edict of 1905, sought to claim a role in national leadership. And
many - in particularly famous painter Mikhail Vasnetsov - looked to
art and architecture as a way of defining the religious ideals of
modern Russia. Whilst other studies exist that draw attention to
the voices in the Church typified as "liberal" in the years leading
up to the Revolution, this work introduces the reader to a wide
range of "conservative" opinion that equally strove for spiritual
renewal and the spread of the Gospel. Ultimately neither the
"conservative" voices presented here nor those of their
better-known "liberal" protagonists were able to prevent the
calamity that befell Russia with the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.
Grounded in original research conducted in the newly accessible
libraries and archives of post-Soviet Russia, this study is
intended to reveal the wider relevance of its topic to an ongoing
discussion of the relationship between national or ethnic
identities on the one hand and the self-understanding of Orthodox
Christianity as a universal and transformative Faith on the other.
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.
A new English translation of the two apologetic works by the
9th-century East Syrian theologian 'Ammar al-Basri. The Book of the
Proof and The Book of Questions and Answers were written to defend
Christian beliefs in the face of Muslim criticism.
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