Religion During the Russian Ukrainian Conflict

Religion During the Russian Ukrainian Conflict PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000710831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
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.

Religion During the Russian Ukrainian Conflict

Religion During the Russian Ukrainian Conflict PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000710831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book Here

Book Description
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

Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine PDF Author: Catherine Wanner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501764969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
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.

Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis

Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis PDF Author: Andrii Krawchuk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319341448
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
This volume explores the churches of Ukraine and their involvement in the recent movement for social justice and dignity within the country. In November of 2013, citizens of Ukraine gathered on Kyiv's central square (Maidan) to protest against a government that had reneged on its promise to sign a trade agreement with Europe. The Euromaidan protest included members of various Christian churches in Ukraine, who stood together and demanded government accountability and closer ties with Europe. In response, state forces massacred over one hundred unarmed civilians. The atrocity precipitated a rapid sequence of events: the president fled the country, a provisional government was put in place, and Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. An examination of Ukrainian churches’ involvement in this protest and the fall-out that it inspired opens up other questions and discussions about the churches’ identity and role in the country’s culture and its social and political history. Volume contributors examine Ukrainian churches’ historical development and singularity; their quest for autonomy; their active involvement in identity formation; their interpretations of the war and its causes; and the paths they have charted toward peace and unity.

The Ecclesial Crisis in Ukraine

The Ecclesial Crisis in Ukraine PDF Author: Metropolitan of Kykkos and Tillyria Nikiforos, Cyprus
Publisher: Holy Trinity Publications
ISBN: 1942699441
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
"...a thoughtful and objective treatise for understanding the ecclesiastical crisis that has been created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate's granting autocephaly to schismatic groups in Ukraine." - +TIMOTHEOS, Metropolitan of Bostra (Patriarchate of Jerusalem) "We pray to the Almighty God and the Most-Holy Theotokos that this division ends quickly and Church order will reign again. We are pleased that writings such as this work by Metropolitan Nikiforos are working towards this correction." +LONGIN, Bishop of New Gracanica and Midwestern America (Church of Serbia) "This lively analysis presents the situation of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in an accessible way to both theologians, the faithful, and all people interested in the topic of the unity of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine." +ABEL, Archbishop of Lublin and Chelm (Church of Poland) "This is a serious study of a crisis in the life of our Orthodox Church worldwide that deserves to be widely read as we seek to understand the underlying issues more clearly and find a conciliar solution that brings both unity and peace." +JURAJ, Archbishop of Michalovce and Košice (Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia) This is essential reading for all Orthodox believers to better understand what the Ukrainian crisis means for the future of their Church. It will also assist others to see beyond the characterization of the crisis as a political event in the context of relations between Russia and the West. It makes clear that at its heart this is an ecclesiological dispute calling out for a conciliar solution. In the autumn of 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church broke communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople following the latter Synod's announcement of their intention to create an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). In December of that year a formal council was convened in Kiev and this new ecclesial body was created from two Ukrainian groups previously considered schismatic by all of the Orthodox churches worldwide. All of this transpired without any attempt by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to seek a consensus of all the Orthodox churches before embarking this course of action. More than two years later the newly created OCU remains unrecognised by the overwhelming majority of the world's Orthodox believers notwithstanding that it has in that time been been recognised as Orthodox by the Patriarchate of Alexandria and the Churches of Cyprus and Greece. But even this recognition has not been without significant dissenting voices. Among these is the Abbot of the renowned Kykkos monastery in Cyprus, Metropolitan Nikiforos. In this pithy text he eloquently explains why the actions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have created a schism in the Orthodox Church worldwide and how in turn they reflect the promotion of a new ecclesiology that distorts the traditional understanding of the Orthodox Church as headed only by Christ Himself. He is clear that the only road to healing and unending schism is a return to a form of inter-Orthodox relations which respects both conciliarity and hierarchy. In doing this he stresses his utmost respect for the historical place of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the hope that it will turn back from the path it is currently on to resume its rightful place in the plurality of the Orthodox Church.

Holy Rus'

Holy Rus' PDF Author: John P. Burgess
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300222246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A fascinating, vivid, and on-the-ground account of Russian Orthodoxy's resurgence A bold experiment is taking place in Russia. After a century of being scarred by militant, atheistic communism, the Orthodox Church has become Russia's largest and most significant nongovernmental organization. As it has returned to life, it has pursued a vision of reclaiming Holy Rus' that historical yet mythical homeland of the eastern Slavic peoples; a foretaste of the perfect justice, peace, harmony, and beauty for which religious believers long; and the glimpse of heaven on earth that persuaded Prince Vladimir to accept Orthodox baptism in Crimea in A.D. 988. Through groundbreaking initiatives in religious education, social ministry, historical commemoration, and parish life, the Orthodox Church is seeking to shape a new, post-communist national identity for Russia. In this eye-opening and evocative book, John Burgess examines Russian Orthodoxy's resurgence from a grassroots level, providing Western readers with an enlightening, inside look at the new Russia.

Children of Rus'

Children of Rus' PDF Author: Faith Hillis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469252
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
In Children of Rus', Faith Hillis recovers an all but forgotten chapter in the history of the tsarist empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine—was one of the Russian empire’s last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the long nineteenth century, this newly acquired region nearly a thousand miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. Claiming to restore the ancient customs of the East Slavs, the southwest’s Russian nationalists sought to empower the ordinary Orthodox residents of the borderlands and to diminish the influence of their non-Orthodox minorities.Right-bank Ukraine would seem unlikely terrain to nourish a Russian nationalist imagination. It was among the empire’s most diverse corners, with few of its residents speaking Russian as their native language or identifying with the culture of the Great Russian interior. Nevertheless, as Hillis shows, by the late nineteenth century, Russian nationalists had established a strong foothold in the southwest’s culture and educated society; in the first decade of the twentieth, they secured a leading role in local mass politics. By 1910, with help from sympathetic officials in St. Petersburg, right-bank activists expanded their sights beyond the borderlands, hoping to spread their nationalizing agenda across the empire.Exploring why and how the empire’s southwestern borderlands produced its most organized and politically successful Russian nationalist movement, Hillis puts forth a bold new interpretation of state-society relations under tsarism as she reconstructs the role that a peripheral region played in attempting to define the essential characteristics of the Russian people and their state.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Russia

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Russia PDF Author: Tobias Köllner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429755589
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Based on extensive original research at the local level, this book explores the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and politics in contemporary Russia. It reveals close personal links between politicians at the local, regional and national levels and their counterparts at the equivalent level in the Russian Orthodox Church – priests and monks, bishops and archbishops – who are extensively consulted about political decisions. It outlines a convergence of conservative ideology between politicians and clerics and also highlights that, despite working closely together, there are nevertheless many tensions. The book examines in detail particular areas of cooperation and tension: reform to religious education and a growing emphasis on traditional moral values, the restitution of former church property and the introduction of new festive days. Overall, the book concludes that there is much uncertainty, ambiguity and great local variation.

Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War

Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War PDF Author: Taras Kuzio
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000534081
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia’s obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression. The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian ‘imagined community’ came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.

Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective

Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective PDF Author: Zuzanna Bogumił
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000543307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory. The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the language they are using in their studies of memory. By drawing on examples from different parts of the world, the contributors to this volume explain how the interactions between the religious and the secular produce new memory forms and content in the heterogenous societies of the present-day world. These analyzed cases demonstrate that religion has a significant impact on cultural memory, family memory and the contemporary politics of history in secularized societies. At the same time, politics, grassroots movements and different secular agents and processes have so much influence on the formation of memory by religious actors that even religious, ecclesiastic and confessional memories are affected by the secular. This volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, religious studies and history.

Community After Totalitarianism

Community After Totalitarianism PDF Author: Kristina Stoeckl
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631579367
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Starting with a definition of political modernity from the angle of its greatest trial, namely totalitarianism, this study pursues two questions: How to conceptualize community after the experience of totalitarianism? And, what can the Eastern Orthodox intellectual tradition contribute to this debate? In both parts of Europe, totalitarianism raised the same political philosophical challenge: How to conceptualize the relationship between the individual and community in the light of the absolute communization of society and the simultaneous absolute atomization of individuals which totalitarianism had brought about? In contemporary Western political philosophy, the reflection upon this experience has taken three principled directions: the unequivocal embrace and conceptual elaboration of liberalism for which the works of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas are exemplary, the communitarian critique of liberalism for which the works of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre are representative, and the postmodern critique which, most clearly expressed in the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, ties the question of community back to the singular human being. In the present study, I add to these three approaches a viewpoint which challenges the limits of all of them. Focusing on the works of Sergej Horužij and Christos Yannaras, I demonstrate how these authors, while accepting the lesson of totalitarianism, seek foundations for their conceptualization of community and human subjectivity in the spiritual and intellectual tradition of Eastern Christianity. My aim is to re-think the political problematic of modernity from the East and beyond liberal, communitarian and postmodern political philosophy in order to extend the interpretative space of political modernity, to sharpen the problematic of community and the human subject after the experience of totalitarianism, and to single out those elements which are especially pertinent for a post-totalitarian philosophy of community: the quality of freedom, the role of practices, and the meaning of tradition.