Delves into recently declassified Soviet archival material to examine the Greek Catholic Church and the national movement in Galacia in the late 19th century, focusing on the way differing concepts of Rutherian nationality affected the perception and course of church affairs. Examines the influence of local ecclesiastical matters on the development and acceptance of divergent concepts of nationality, and explains implications and complications of the Greek Catholic Church's struggle to maintain it distinctive rites and customs. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Using Soviet archival materials declassified in the 1980s, John-Paul Himka examines a period during which the Greek Catholic church in Galicia was involved in a protracted, and at times bitter, struggle to maintain its distinctive, historically developed rites and customs. He focuses on the way differing concepts of Rutherian nationality affected the perception and course of church affairs while showing the influence of local ecclesiastical matters on the development and acceptance of these divergent concepts of nationality. The implications and complications of the Galician imbroglio are engagingly explained in this latest addition to Himka's work on nationality in late nineteenth-century Galicia. His analysis of the relationship between the church and the national movement is a valuable addition to the study of religion and national movements in East Europe and beyond.
This book investigates how the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine has affected the religious situation in these countries. It considers threats to and violations of religious freedom, including those arising in annexed Crimea and in the eastern part of Ukraine, where fighting between Ukrainian government forces and separatist paramilitary groups backed and controlled by Russia is still going on, as well as in Russia and Ukraine more generally. It also assesses the impact of the conflict on church-state relations and national religion policy in each country and explores the role religion has played in the military conflict and the ideology surrounding it, focusing especially on the role of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches, as well as on the consequences for inter-church relations and dialogue.
Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine reveals how and why religion has become a pivotal political force in a society struggling to overcome the legacy of its entangled past with Russia and chart a new future. If Ukraine is "ground zero" in the tensions between Russia and the West, religion is an arena where the consequences of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine keenly play out. Vibrant forms of everyday religiosity pave the way for religion to be weaponized and securitized to advance political agendas in Ukraine and beyond. These practices, Catherine Wanner argues, enable religiosity to be increasingly present in public spaces, public institutions, and wartime politics in a pluralist society that claims to be secular. Based on ethnographic data and interviews conducted since before the Revolution of Dignity and the outbreak of armed combat in 2014, Wanner investigates the conditions that catapulted religiosity, religious institutions, and religious leaders to the forefront of politics and geopolitics.
The opportunities opened up by the Gorbachev reforms have shown that religion is one of the most significant dynamic forces in Soviet society. Yet few scholars have attempted to relate the study of churches and religious movements in recent centuries to the politics and culture of the Soviet Union. To remedy this deficiency, leading western experts on Christianity in the Eastern Slav lands gathered at a conference in London on the occasion of the millennium of the baptism of Rus'. Their papers present unexpected and fascinating insights into an under-rated but crucial aspect of the life of the Soviet peoples.
After decades of official atheism, a religious renaissance swept through much of the former Soviet Union beginning in the late 1980s. The Calvinist-like austerity and fundamentalist ethos that had evolved among sequestered and frequently persecuted Soviet evangelicals gave way to a charismatic embrace of ecstatic experience, replete with a belief in faith healing. Catherine Wanner's historically informed ethnography, the first book on evangelism in the former Soviet Union, shows how once-marginal Ukrainian evangelical communities are now thriving and growing in social and political prominence. Many Soviet evangelicals relocated to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union, expanding the spectrum of evangelicalism in the United States and altering religious life in Ukraine. Migration has created new transnational evangelical communities that are now asserting a new public role for religion in the resolution of numerous social problems. Hundreds of American evangelical missionaries have engaged in "church planting" in Ukraine, which is today home to some of the most active and robust evangelical communities in all of Europe. Thanks to massive assistance from the West, Ukraine has become a hub for clerical and missionary training in Eurasia. Many Ukrainians travel as missionaries to Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. In revealing the phenomenal transformation of religious life in a land once thought to be militantly godless, Wanner shows how formerly socialist countries experience evangelical revival. Communities of the Converted engages issues of migration, morality, secularization, and global evangelism, while highlighting how they have been shaped by socialism. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. The open access edition is available at Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.
Examines the complex history of the Ukrainian conflict, explores the contending claims of the different churches, and analyzes the prospects for resolution.
As Ukraine struggles to find its national identity, modern Ukrainian Pagans offer an alternative vision of the Ukrainian nation. Drawing inspiration from the spiritual life of past millennia, they strive to return to the pre-Christian roots of their ancestors. Since Christianity dominates the spiritual discourse in Ukraine, Pagans are marginalized, and their ideas are perceived as radical. In The Return of Ancestral Gods, Mariya Lesiv explores Pagan beliefs and practices in Ukraine and amongst the North American Ukrainian diaspora. Drawing on intensive fieldwork, archival documents, and published sources not available in English, she allows the voices of Pagans to be heard. Paganism in Slavic countries is heavily charged with ethno-nationalist politics, and previous scholarship has mainly focused on this aspect. Lesiv finds it important to consider not only how Paganism is preached but also the way that it is understood on a private level. She shows that many Ukrainians embrace Paganism because of its aesthetic aspects rather than its associated politics and discusses the role that aesthetics may play in the further development of Ukrainian Paganism. Paganism in Eastern Europe remains underrepresented within Pagan studies, and this work helps to fill that gap. Extensive comparative references to various forms of Western Paganism allows English-speaking readers to better understand the world of Ukrainian Pagans.
