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No Church is monolithic-this is the preliminary premise of this volume on the public place of religion in a representative number of post-communist countries. The studies confirm that within any religious organization we can expect to find fissures, factions, theological or ideological quarrels, and perhaps even competing interest groups, such as missionary workers, regular clergy versus secular clergy, and sometimes even competing ecclesiastical hierarchies. The main focus of the book rests on the divisions arising within select Christian Churches, as they confront the processes of secularization and atheization. The coverage area includes Russia and the Ukraine, East-Central Europe and South-Eastern Europe. Some chapters focus on individual clergy who challenge the mainstream of their given Church either from a more liberal or from a more conservative perspective, while others deal with the divisive forces impacting the religious organizations.
This festschrift to honor Sabrina Ramet's seminal contribution to the study of religion in the politics of the communist and post-communist world, brings together several generations of scholars from a variety of countries, both those well established in their fields of study as well as young promising academics.
List of contents
Introduction, Patriarch Kirill, Patriarch Filaret and the Orthodox Church in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukraine, Radio Maryja and Fr. Rydzyk as a Creator of the National-Catholic Ideology, Religious Issues and Church-State Relations in Eastern Germany, The Priest and the Bishops, One God, One Episcopate, One Nation, A Church on the Margins, Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, the Forgotten Anticommunist Dissident, Global and Local in the Response of Orthodox Churches to the First Wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic, In Defense of Darwin, Catholic Church in Croatia, The Slovene Roman Catholic Church Yesterday and Today, The Curious Case of the Macedonian Church, The Derailed Christian Mission, Reflections on the Role and Functions of Religion in Eastern Europe and Elsewhere, How Does She Know All of This?, Conclusion, Sabrina P. Ramet's Publications, Contributors, Index
About the author
Frank Cibulka is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi.
Zachary T. Irwin is Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Behrend College, Pennsylvania State University.
