Chris J. Chulos, Converging worlds

European History Quarterly, 2006

This short and pithy book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Russian rural society in the late Imperial period. Its objectives are ambitious and laudable, seeking to illuminate how peasant understandings of Orthodoxy, national and local identities evolved, and the role of religion among Orthodox peasants in their course towards modern 'nationhood'. Chulos seeks to redress the tendency in historiography to marginalise and trivialise peasant religion, and in the process he

Folklorica, 2010

Church History, 2012

The American Historical Review, 1998

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2010

It would be of little exaggeration to say that much of Russian discourse in the imperial and early émigré periods (circa 1721-1927) was informed by the lexicon, liturgy, and theology of Russian Orthodoxy. The Church's extensive educational system, whatever its many failings, trained thousands of clergy and hundreds of theologians who spoke to the faithful in various Russian Orthodox idioms that were then refracted in the conversations and cultural production of educated society (obrazovannoe obshchestvo). As members of that society began to engage contemporary European thought, they often did so from a selfconsciously Orthodox perspective cultivated at home, learned at church, and articulated in Orthodox print culture. Differences between the Russian people (narod) and the peoples of Europe and Asia were frequently cast as spiritual distinctions between true believers (pravoslavnye) and apostates or pagans, especially during periods of military conflict, which in turn were often experienced through an Orthodox matrix of biblical narrative, Church history, and liturgical commemoration. Imperial decrees, like the Emancipation Manifesto of 1861, were invested with the "Grace of God, " structured by the necessity of "Divine Providence, " and guided by "Divine assistance. " Sacraments of the Church, such as baptism and confession, generated specific notions of belonging among Orthodox believers and helped to shape their individual and collective psychologies. Orthodox liturgy, hesychastic piety, and monastic eldership (starchestvo) were imagined by some of Russia's most important authors, including N. V. Gogol' and F. M. Dostoevsky, to engender a type of religious disposition that could heal the fractured mind in an age thought to be marked by anomie. Even 3 k 4 m i c h e l s o n and k o r n b l at t of practice and institution shaped by time, place, culture, and personality that accurately reflects the historical reality of that confession. 1 Nearly a decade before this shift toward the study of Russian Orthodoxy and its institutions, scholars of Russian literature and intellectual history began to focus their attention on another aspect of religion in modern Russia, namely the religious philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the earliest developments in this regard in post-Soviet, English-language scholarship was the international Conference on Russian Religious Thought hosted by the University of Wisconsin in 1993. 2 That event brought together more than thirty historians, Slavists, theologians, and philosophers to discuss the spiritual categories, philosophical systems, literary heritages, and cultural influences of V. S. Solov' ev, S. N. Bulgakov, N. F. Fedorov, S. L. Frank, and P. A. Florenskii. The principal result of that conference was the publication of Russian Religious Thought, coedited by Judith Kornblatt and Richard Gustafson, in 1996. 3 That volume, which in many ways constitutes the foundation of and impetus behind this collection of essays, broadly applied a textual hermeneutics to the study of religious ideas and thinkers. The intent of Russian Religious Thought and similar studies that followed was to analyze representative texts for an array of largely extra-historical purposes: to illuminate how Russian religious philosophy engaged and can still address epistemological and ontological questions; to familiarize non-specialists with the seemingly alien content of Russia's religious culture; to put Russian religious thinkers in cross-confessional dialogue with some of the leading theologians of Western Christendom, while simultaneously complicating the basic categories of Protestant and Catholic thought; to demonstrate the universality of Russian religious terminology in the philosophical quest to express the absolute; and to identify currents in Russian thought that might help construct a usable past for contemporary Russia. 4 Despite this enthusiasm for Russian religious thought in the post-Soviet era, which has seen the publication of important monographs, articles, source collections, and English-language translations, 5 its impact on broader trends in the study of Russian history and culture has been minimal. This is especially true in regards to the turn in scholarship toward religious practice and institutions, which has almost entirely, and sometimes explicitly, disregarded Russian Orthodox theology, as well as the broader subject of Russian religious thought, as retrograde, elitist, or well-worn. 6 As such, our knowledge of how the theological tenets of Russian Orthodoxy informed the discursive patterns and ideological structures of Russian literary culture and intellectual history has not kept pace with advancements in studies about lived Orthodoxy or the Russian Church. 7

Political Theology, 2018

Church History, 2012

When the Bolsheviks began the anti-religious campaign to undermine popular Orthodoxy after the Russian Revolution, their first target was the cult of saints' relics. Though much about the campaign was misguided, they were not wrong in connecting popular piety with the cult of saints and their relics, as Robert Greene demonstrates so eloquently in this fascinating monograph. The monograph is divided equally between the cult of relics before the Revolution and the Soviet campaign against them. Greene argues against the stereotype of Russian popular religiosity as "ignorant" and "superstitious," asserting instead that the faithful maintained their devotion to saints' relics because they believed that relics had demonstrated their usefulness through miracles. Further, he argues that the Soviet campaign against the relics ultimately failed to achieve its aim because anti-religious activists mistakenly believed that relics must be "incorrupt" and that, by exposing them to be (in many cases) mere bones, people would automatically lose their faith. They were proven quite wrong, however, for many Orthodox believers continued to venerate the relics of the very saints who had thus been "exposed."

Social History, 2006

Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 2004

This article presents a case study of one rural sacred place in North-West Russia. It focuses on the folklore related to this particular sacred place, that is, narratives told by different groups of believers to confirm the sanctity of the shrine. These groups (pilgrims who come from urban centres, a local priest and church activists, local common people and migrants) choose different types of stories, or even genres, when they talk about the sacred. Thus, in contemporary Russian provinces one could find different styles of religiosity, or different religious cultures, which coexist and sometimes compete with each other.