Turns of Faith, Search for Meaning

The book examines deep shifts in religious life of Russia and the post-Soviet world as a whole over the course of the last quarter of the century. It deals with transformations of the religious field, including ritual practices, national identity discourse, and Eastern Orthodoxy's tense negotiations with the State, secular society, and Western liberal globalism.

The book examines deep shifts in the religious life of Russia and the post-Soviet world as a whole. The author uses combined methods of history, sociology and anthropology to grasp transformations in various aspects of the religious field, such as changes in ritual practices, the emergence of a hierarchical pluralism of religions, and a new prominence of religion in national identity discourse. He deals with the Russian Church's new internal diversity in reinventing its ancient tradition and Eastern Orthodoxy's dense and tense negotiation with the State, secular society and Western liberal globalism. The volume contains academic papers, some of them co-authored with other scholars, published by the author elsewhere within the last fifteen years.

Autorentext

Alexander Agadjanian, Prof. Dr., graduated from Moscow State University and worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and at the Department of Religious Studies of Arizona State University. He currently teaches at the Center for the Study of Religions of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow. He has published extensively on religions in the modern world, including Buddhism and Orthodox Christianity.

Zusammenfassung
«Avec une copieuse bibliographie (39 p.), ce livre nous offre une analyse tres fine d'une société russe en quête d'identité ou les liens entre Église et État sont difficilement compréhensibles en Europe occidentale.»
(Revue Istina, 61/2015)

«[E]s handelt sich um ein in jeder Hinsicht empfehlenswertes Werk zu vielfältigen Themenfeldern des orthodoxen Christentums.»
(Margarete Zimmermann, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 7/2017)

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Inhalt

Contents: Russian Orthodox Church Eastern Christianity National identity Religious practices Religion and human rights Church-State relations Post-Soviet religiosity Globalization, religious pluralism Traditional and liberal values.