From Ecclesiology to Christian Populism: The Religious and Political Thought of the Russian Slavophiles (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Slavophile Religious Thought and the Dilemma of Russian Modernity" (2010)
Modern Intellectual History, 2010
Russian public opinion in the first half of the nineteenth century was buffeted by a complex of cultural, psychological, and historiosophical dilemmas that destabilized many conventions about Russia's place in universal history. This article examines one response to these dilemmas: the Slavophile reconfiguration of Eastern Christianity as a modern religion of theocentric freedom and moral progress. Drawing upon methods of contextual analysis, the article challenges the usual scholarly treatment of Slavophile religious thought as a vehicle to address extrahistorical concerns by placing the writings of A. S. Khomiakov and I. V. Kireevskii in the discursive and ideological framework in which they originated and operated. As such, the article considers the atheistic revolution in consciousness advocated by Russian Hegelians, the Schellingian proposition that human freedom and moral advancement were dependent upon the living God, P. Ia. Chaadaev's contention that a people's religious orientation determined its historical potential, and the Slavophile appropriation of Russia's dominant confession to resolve the problem of having attained historical consciousness in an age of historical stasis. *
Зборник Матице српске за славистику, 2020
In the article, the inner form and the most important elements of content of the supplement by religion, which has influenced both Marxist revolutionary messianism and anti-messianism of conservative consciousness and conservative social and political thought of the Modernist period. The adversarial relationship of these two philosophical and ideological positions was often interpreted through the lens of the opposition of the Old and the New Testament, of conservative essence of the former and messianistic essence of the latter. As an example of the revolutionary-messianistic logic, the theory of "propaganda" of Russian Marxists God-builders is considered in the article, represented along with an analysis of historical forms of religious consciousness, firstly in the work of A. V. Lunacharsky "Religion and Socialism" (1908), while for an example of historical self-reflection of conservative consciousness we took the criticism of the New Testament and Christianity by V. V. Rozanov.
The subject of my report remains largely understudied. The most important contributions on the political dimension of Russian religious thought belong to Rowan Williams, who in 1999 published an excellent anthology of Bulgakov's writings under the title Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology (T&T Clark) and Paul Valliere, who in 2007 co-edited a volume The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Theology on Law, Politics, and Human Nature (New York: Columbia University Press), with a strong emphasis on Russian émigré theologians.
Eight Essays on Russian Christianities
2020
The publication of this volume is supported by: the Kone Foundation (with reference to the project "The Role of Religion in Contemporary Ethical Self-Making/ Uskonnon rooli eettisen minuuden muodostumisessa"), the Academy of Finland (with reference to the project "Religious Movements in Contemporary Ethical Life")
Social and Political Thought in the Russian Religious Renaissance
Before the Russian revolution of 1917 and subsequently in exile, the leading figures of the Russian religious renaissance were deeply engaged in social and political questions. Vladimir Soloviev, Sergius Bulgakov and Nicolas Berdyaev in particular presented Christian philosophies and theologies as alternatives to secular philosophies which captivated the Russian intelligentsia in late imperial Russia. Their thinking was consistent with evangelical precepts and the social thinking and actions of the early Fathers of the Church, even if not always couched in explicitly Christian terms. Major Christian theological and spiritual principles inspiring their theologies include the equality of all human beings, the evangelical imperative of love of neighbour as a reflection of love of God, the uniqueness of the human person, and freedom. Social and political thinking during the Russian religious renaissance provided a solid, if inadequately recognized, basis for the development of later Orthodox social and political theology.
Orthodox Political Theologies: Clergy, Intelligentsia and Social Christianity in Revolutionary Russia, Dissertation, Central European University, 2020
The dissertation is the intellectual history of the Orthodox left during the revolutionary years of 1905-8 in Imperial Russia. The research reconstructs debates and dialogues between progressive clergy and radical religious intelligentsia following the massacre of Bloody Sunday on 9 January 1905. The dissertation interprets the visions that emerged in the network of the Orthodox left in the framework of ‘political theologies’. It focuses on three programs and their theo-political language: the Brotherhood of Zealots for Church Renovation; the Christian Brotherhood of Struggle; and the Union of Christian Politics. Members argued that the mutually dependent relationship between the tsar and the people, which served as a political bedrock for the Empire for centuries, was now beyond repair. The bloodshed was perceived as a fundamental break in Russian Orthodox political theory, and the horrible events inspired religious intelligentsia and progressive clergy to theorise about politics and social justice as Orthodox believers. The dissertation identifies the concept of Christian obshchestvennost’ (sociality) as the focal point of all programs that emerged among advocates of the Orthodox left in the period. The concept had palingenetic power, it was meant to reinvigorate the Church and to re-Christianise the whole of fin de siècle Russian society. My research argues that the theo-political imagination and language of the Orthodox left was inspired both by Russian Orthodox tradition, in particular by Modern Russian Theology; and by non-Orthodox traditions of social Christianity, but it developed in opposition to the Marxist left. The analysed projects were short-lived due to internal conflicts and repressions by Church and state, but they represent a vibrant chapter in the history of Russian Orthodox social and political thought, reflecting on theo-political concepts that remain central to the Russian Orthodox world up until today.
The Trinity in History and Society. The Russian Idea, Polish Messianism, and the Post-Secular Reason
In: Artur Mrówczyński-Van Allen, Teresa Obolevitch, Paweł Rojek (red.), Apology of Culture. Religion and Culture in Russian Thought, Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications 2015, s. 24–42, ISBN 978–1-4982–0398-2.
Contemporary philosophy and theology are ever more conscious of the fact that the model of relations between religion and culture developed in modernity is fundamentally flawed. e processes of the secularization of society, culture, and even religion are rooted in the dualistic vision of religion and culture introduced in the late Middle Ages. In seeking a way out, we need to explore domains of culture unaffected by Western European secular thinking.