Religious Orthodoxy And Popular Faith In European Society

By examining the ongoing tension between popular and official religion in Europe, this collection of essays contributes significantly to the continuing effort to understand the religious experience of ordinary people. Ranging from the Mediterranean to northern Europe and including both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the ethnographic contexts evoked in these essays enable us to see people actively and creatively shaping their religious domain, sometimes in collaboration with official ritual specialists, often in open rebellion against them. The use of folklore texts and extensive narrative quotations, combined with an approach highlighting key symbols such as pilgrimages and festas, provides a common theoretical orientation throughout the bookone that considers how religious discourses are formed by social disciplines and relationships of power and subordination. This volume includes "Spirits and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Jane Schneider, "The Priest and His People: The Contractual Basis for Religious Practice in Rural Portugal" by Caroline B. Brettell, "The Struggle for the Church: Popular Anticlericalism and Religiosity in Post-Franco Spain" by Ruth Behar, "Pilgrimage and Popular Religion at a Greek Holy Shrine" by Jill Dubisch, "Breton Folklore of Anticlericalism" by Ellen Badone, "Stories of Power, Powerful Stories: The Drunken Priest in Donegal" by Lawrence J. Taylor, and "Reflections on the Study of Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in Europe" by Stanley Brandes.

Since the end of state repression against religion, two major processes have taken place in the formerly socialist countries: historically dominant churches strive to reassert their position in society, while new religious groups and ideas from various parts of the world are proliferating. This generates pluralism of religious communities and individual religious attitudes. Religious Diversity in Post-Soviet Society presents the first collection of ethnographies of this new religious diversity for Lithuania, a country that has a long history of a dominant Catholic Church. The authors reveal how Catholicism has become increasingly diversified and other religions (Charismatic Protestantism, Baltic Paganism, Eastern religions and other alternative spiritualities) are claiming their space in the religious field.

This book dispels the widely-held view that paganism survived in Russia alongside Orthodox Christianity, demonstrating that 'double belief', dvoeverie, is in fact an academic myth. Scholars, citing the medieval origins of the term, have often portrayed Russian Christianity as uniquely muddied by paganism, with 'double-believing' Christians consciously or unconsciously preserving pagan traditions even into the twentieth century. This volume shows how the concept of dvoeverie arose with nineteenth-century scholars obsessed with the Russian 'folk' and was perpetuated as a propaganda tool in the Soviet period, colouring our perception of both popular faith in Russian and medieval Russian culture for over a century. It surveys the wide variety of uses of the term from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, and contrasts them to its use in modern historiography, concluding that our modern interpretation of dvoeverie would not have been recognized by medieval clerics, and that 'double-belief' is a modern academic construct. Furthermore, it offers a brief foray into medieval Orthodoxy via the mind of the believer, through the language and literature of the period.

Lying on the border between eastern and western Christendom, Orthodox Karelia preserved its unique religious culture into the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was described and recorded by Finnish and Karelian folklore collectors. This colorful array of ritulas and beliefs involving nature spirits, saints, the dead, and pilgrimage to monasteries represented a unigue fusion of official Church ritual and doctrine and pre-Christian ethnic folk belief. This book undertakes a fascinating exploration into many aspects of Orthodox Karelian ritual life: beliefs in supernatural forces, folk models of illness, body concepts, divination, holy icons, the role of the ritual specialist and healer, the divide between nature and culture, images of forest, the cult of the dead, and the popular image of monasteries and holy hermits. It will appeal to anyone interested in popular religion, the cognitive study of religion, ritual studies, medical anthropology, and the folk traditions and symbolism of the Balto-Finnic peoples.

Explores the practice of taking ritual vows in South Asia, a lay tradition prevalent in the region’s religions.

Sharot (sociology, Ben-Gurion U. of the Neger) focuses on the differences and interrelationships between religious elites and lay masses. He presents several relevant concepts and theories including a model of religious action based on the work of Max Weber, and a discussion of elites and masses as represented in Weber's comparison of world religions. Coverage encompasses religious action in world religions; Brahmans, Renouncers, and Hinduisim in India; Buddhism and Animism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia; traditional Catholicism in Europe; Islam and Judaism; Protestants, Catholics and the reform of popular religion; and a comparison of religious elites and popular religions. c. Book News Inc.

Religious procession is a significant dimension of religion in South Asia. Processions are central not only in Hinduism, but also Islam, Christianity, Jainism and Sikhism, which have large procession rituals. The last years have seen an increase in processions and ritualizations of space both in South Asia and in the South Asian Diaspora. Processions are religious display events and the increase in processions are functions of religious pluralism and competition about public space as well as economic prosperity and a revival of religious identities. Processions often bring together religion and politics since they are about public space, domination and contestation. Written by leading specialists on religious processions and ritualization of public space in South Asia and in the Diaspora, this volume presents current research on the interpretations of the role of processions, the recent increase in processions and changes in the procession traditions. South Asian Religions on Display will appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies, anthropology, religion and political science.