Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity: Religious Dissent in the Russian and Romanian Borderlands

ISBN-13: 9781472432186 / Angielski / Twarda / 2019 / 278 str.

James A. Kapalo

Opis

This book explores the history and evolution of a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian borderlands of Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. It centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, known to his followers as the 'Prophet of Fire', who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as politically subversive by Soviet state authorities. This book charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on oral testimonies, folk narratives and previously unstudied secret police and church archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization has played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of 'liminality' in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes the first systematic study in the English language of an Eastern European 'home-grown' religious movement taking a 'grass-roots' ethnographic approach to the problem of minority religious identities in post-Socialist Eastern Europe.

Spis treści

Introduction  1 Between Hagiography and History: The Life of Inochentie of Balta  2 "The Mad Doctrine of the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit"  3 "All wells will run dry": Belief and Practice amongst the Balta Pilgrims  4 Inochentism in Interwar Romania  5 Visions of the Underground: Archangelism in Interwar Romania  6 "John’s Flock": Ioan Zlotea and the Monastic Tradition  7 Return to the Garden of Paradise: Inochentism under Stalin and Antonescu  8 Golgotha: The Inochentist Underground in Soviet Moldavia  9 Epilogue

O autorze

James A. Kapaló is Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions at University College Cork, Ireland and co-Director of the Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre. He is author of Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (2011).