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Orthodox Churches, like most religious bodies, are inherently political because they seek to defend their core values. To accomplish that, they need to engage in politics, among other ways by promoting certain legislation and seeking to block other legislation. For Orthodox Churches, the key fields in which their self-defense is staged are Nationalism (presenting themselves as protectors of the national being), Conservatism (defending traditional values such as the traditional family ), and Intolerance of institutions and movements (such as feminism and New Age) that they find threatening. Nationalism and Conservatism put the Churches at odds with the communist regimes that governed most of Eastern Europe from around 1945 until 1989/90 but these represent less of a complication in the post-communist era.
List of contents
Chapter 1: The Orthodox Churches of Southeastern Europe: An introduction -- Sabrina P. Ramet.- Chapter 2: Faith, Nation, and Structure: The diachronic durability of Orthodox Churches in the Balkans -- David B. Kanin.- Chapter 3: The Romanian Orthodox Church Anca Sincan.- Chapter 4: The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: Authoring new visions about the Orthodox Church s Role in contemporary Bulgarian society -- Daniela Kalkandjieva.- Chapter 5: The Church, the Nation, and the State: The Serbian Orthodox Church after communism -- Jelena Subotic.- Chapter 6: The Orthodox Church of Greece -- Altug Günal and Zeynep Selin Balci.- Chapter 7: The Macedonian Orthodox Church in the New Millennium -- Zachary T. Irwin.- Chapter 8: Navigating the Challenge of Liberalism: The resurrection of the Orthodox Church in post-communist Albania -- Isa Blumi.- Chapter 9: The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia: Survival of a minority faith in a secular society -- Frank Cibulka.- Chapter 10: The Russian Orthodox Church Jerry Pankhurst and Alar Kilp.- Chapter 11: Orthodox Churches in Ukraine Regina Elsner.- Afterword: Why are Orthodox Churches prone to political mobilization today? Lucian N. Leustean.
About the author
Sabrina P. Ramet
is a Professor Emerita of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in Trondheim, Norway. She is the the author of 16 scholarly books, co-author of three, and editor or co-editor of 41 previous books.
Summary
Orthodox Churches, like most religious bodies, are inherently political because they seek to defend their core values. To accomplish that, they need to engage in politics, among other ways by promoting certain legislation and seeking to block other legislation. For Orthodox Churches, the key fields in which their self-defense is staged are Nationalism (presenting themselves as protectors of the national being), Conservatism (defending traditional values such as the “traditional family”), and Intolerance of institutions and movements (such as feminism and New Age) that they find threatening. Nationalism and Conservatism put the Churches at odds with the communist regimes that governed most of Eastern Europe from around 1945 until 1989/90 but these represent less of a complication in the post-communist era.
