Introduction.- Part1: Orthodoxy and Religion.- Chapter1. Orthodoxy Going Global: the Quest for Identity (Maria Hämmerli).- Chapter 2. Singing an Old Song in a New Land: How Orthodox Churches Contribute to America’s Diverse Religious Landscape(Alexei Krindatch).- Chapter 3. Greek-Orthodox Cultural Heritage and its Strategic Importance to the ‘Representation of the Church of Cyprus to the European Union’ (Georgios E. Trantas).- Chapter 4. Where Religion Meets Politics: Orthodoxy in the Former Yugoslav States(Marko Veković).- Chapter 5.Orthodox Christian Diasporas in Italy: Patterns of Negotiations in a Catholic Country(Marco Guglielmi).- Chapter 6. A “Community of Young Old Believers:” Patterns of Tradition, Acculturation, and Hybridization among First-Wave Old Believers in the United States (Roy R. Robson).- Chapter 7. Old Orthodox (Old Believers) in Modern Latvia: Challenges and Perspectives (Maija Grizāne).- Chapter 8. The Struggles and Joys of Orthodox Diaspora in New Zealand: Cases of Russian, Serbian and Greek Churches (Anastasiya Cherkasova).- Chapter 9. The Centrality of Orthodoxy to Migrant Cultural Retention: The Case of Greeks in Germany (Eleni Tseligka).- Part2: Orthodoxy and Human Rights.-Chapter 10. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Mapping of the World (Kathy Rousselet).- Chapter 11. Orthodox Holiness against Globalization: an Essay on Drawing Borders (Alexander Agadjanian).- Chapter 12. Religion in a Participatory Democracy (Emmanuel Clapsis).- Chapter 13. Patriarch Kirill’s Ideology of Russkii Mir and the Geopolitics of the Council of Crete (Paul Gavrilyuk).- Chapter 14. Intertwinement of Religious and Political Discourses in Russia: from Orthodox anti-Westernism to Political Mistrust to Europe (Ekaterina Grishaeva).- Part 3: Orthodoxy and Human Rights.- Chapter 15. Transnational Aspects of the Russian Orthodox Debate on Human Rights (Kristina Stöckl).- Chapter 16. Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights: Local Problems, Global Challenges, Glocal Developments (Vasilios N. Makrides).- Chapter 17. Discovering Unity in Diversity as the Reality of a Global Church at the Pan-Orthodox Council of Crete, 2016: Identifying Possibilities for Orthodox Christian Contributions to Contemporary Human Rights Challenges (Elizabeth H. Prodromou).- Chapter 18. Is the Notion of Human Rights Compatible with the Orthodox Concept of Personhood? The Assessment of Human Rights by the Russian Orthodox Church (Sergey Trostyanskiy).- Chapter 19. Humility, Dignity and Economy: Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church Practices and the Logic of Human Rights (Ivan Zabaev).- Chapter 20. Religious Freedom in Context: A Comparison between Belarus and Romania, Olga Breskaya (Silviu Rogobete).
Giuseppe Giordan teaches Sociology of Religion and Religions and Human Rights at the University of Padova, Italy. From 2009 to 2013 he served as General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and is co-editor of the Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. He is the Coordinator of the international joint PhD programme on “Human Rights, Society, and Multi-level Governance”.
Siniša Zrinščak teaches Sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. He served as President of ISORECEA (International Study of Religion in Eastern and Central Europe Association) in the period 2006-2014, and as General Secretary of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion 2013-2017. He is associate editor in the European Journal of Social Work and is member of Editorial Boards of several peer-review journals: Social Compass, Journal of Religion in Europe, Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe, etc.
This volume highlights three intertwined aspects of the global context of Orthodox Christianity: religion, politics, and human rights. The chapters in Part I address the challenges of modern human rights discourse to Orthodox Christianity and examine conditions for active presence of Orthodox churches in the public sphere of plural societies. It suggests theoretical and empirical considerations about the relationship between politics and Orthodoxy by exploring topics such as globalization, participatory democracy, and the linkage of religious and political discourses in Russia, Greece, Belarus, Romania, and Cyprus. Part II looks at the issues of diaspora and identity in global Orthodoxy, presenting cases from Switzerland, America, Italy, and Germany. In doing so, the book ties in with the growing interest resulting from the novelty of socio-political, economic, and cultural changes which have forced religious groups and organizations to revise and redesign their own institutional structures, practices, and agendas.