Explore the vast range of titles available.

Letters from Heavenfeatures an international group of scholars investigating the place and function of 'popular' religion in Eastern Slavic cultures. The contributors examine popular religious practices in Russia and Ukraine from the middle ages to the present, considering the cultural contexts of death rituals, miracles, sin and virtue, cults of the saints, and icons. The collection not only fills a void in religious scholarship, but also responds to current theoretical challenges. Reflecting critically on the heuristic value of popular religion and on the concept of popular culture in general,Letters from Heavenis characterized by a shift of focus from churches, institutions, and theological discourse to the religious practices themselves and their interconnections with the culture, mentality, and social structures of the societies in question. An important contribution to the fields of religion and Eastern Slavic studies, this volume challenges readers to rethink old pieties and to reconsider the function of religion.

This book focuses on a key zone within the eastern frontier of medieval Europe: Podillya in modern-day Ukraine. Vitaliy Mykhaylovskiy offers a definitive guide to the region, which experienced great cultural and religious diversity, together with a continuous influx of newcomers. This is where Christian farmers met Muslim nomads. This is where German town residents and Polish nobles met urban Armenians and Tatars serving in the military. The territory emerged in historical narrative when Lithuanian and Polish rulers divided the legacy of the Ruthenian Kingdom and pushed Tatars back to the steppe. For one hundred and fifty years, this territory passed through many dominions – a western part of the Golden Horde, a principality under the Koriatovych brothers, a turf partitioned among the Polish kingdom and the duchy of Lithuania. Podillya offers a unique opportunity to see interaction of so many peoples, principalities, and cultures – the eastern frontier of Europe at its most dynamic.

In Icons Axed, Freedoms Lost, Vyacheslav Karpov and Rachel L. Schroeder demonstrate how Russia went from persecuting believers to jailing critics of religion and why, in contrast, religious pluralism and tolerance have solidified in Ukraine. Offering a richly documented history of cultural and political struggles that surrounded desecularization—the resurgence of religion's societal role—from the end of the USSR to the Russo-Ukrainian war, they show Russian critics of desecularization adhered to artistic provocations, from axing icons to \"punk-prayers\" in cathedrals, and how Orthodox activists, in turn, responded by vandalizing controversial exhibits and calling on the state to crush \"the enemies of the Church.\" Putin's solidifying tyranny heard their calls and criminalized insults to religious feelings. Meanwhile, Ukraine adhered to its pluralistic legacies. Its churches refused to engage in Russian-style culture wars, sticking instead to forgiveness and forbearance. Icons Axed, Freedoms Lost offers original theoretical and methodological perspectives on desecularization applicable far beyond the cases of Russia and Ukraine.

Parallelization theory complements earlier concepts in cultural and political history by focusing on the coexistence of seemingly contradictory patterns in various localities, such as segregation/integration of migrants in Europe and the USA, polarization/hybridization in Korea and Ukraine, and secularization/the resurgence of religions in countries like Malaysia and Sweden. The current article examines the parallel presence of Ukrainian nationalism/Westernization and Russification/Russophobia before and in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The argument is bolstered by both Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media sources, showing how and why these seemingly conflicting tendencies coexist.

An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 years of the town's socioeconomic history with its cultural memory. The first comprehensive study of this city under Habsburg-Austrian rule, Börries Kuzmany advises against reading urban history solely through the national lens. Besides exploring Brody's extraordinary ethno-confessional structure—Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians—Kuzmany examines the interrelation between the city's geographical location at the imperial border, its standing as a key commercial hub in East-Central Europe, and its position as a major springboard for the dissemination of the Haskalah in Galicia and the Russian Empire. After delving into the contradictory perceptions of Brody in travelogues, fiction and memory books, Kuzmany uses contemporary and historical photographs to provide an illustrated walking tour of this now Ukrainian town.

The United States national identity is changing as the non-religious population is growing and fewer Americans follow traditional Christian faiths. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States, he found that the national government gained legitimacy and support from the popular national religion. This faith was nominally Christian but lacked any meaningful theological content. The national creed was a simple monotheism that was supported through the public’s integration of a Cartesian methodology. This national religion was critical in providing the foundation for American economic growth and identity. Today, fewer Americans identify as Christians than at any point in its history, and more citizens have no religious preference or creed. The dominant religious culture is changing, and to understand the United States future, it is important to identify the political preferences of the non-religious population. This paper looks at the most recent Cooperative Election Survey and assesses the non-religious population’s political participation and its aggregate support for U.S. military aid to Ukraine. The data show that the non-religious population is less politically active and more opposed to miliary aid to Kyiv. United States is becoming more secular. The division between the traditional religious and the growing secular populations is generating a cultural conflict—one that has a fundamental consequence for the American national identity.

The bitter separation of Ukraine's Orthodox churches is a microcosm of its societal strife. From 1917 onward, church leaders failed to agree on the church's mission in the twentieth century. The core issues of dispute were establishing independence from the Russian church and adopting Ukrainian as the language of worship. Decades of polemical exchanges and public statements by leaders of the separated churches contributed to the formation of their distinct identities and sharpened the friction amongst their respective supporters. In The Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Nicholas Denysenko provides a balanced and comprehensive analysis of this history from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research, Denysenko's study examines the dynamics of church and state that complicate attempts to restore an authentic Ukrainian religious identity in the contemporary Orthodox churches. An enhanced understanding of these separate identities and how they were forged could prove to be an important tool for resolving contemporary religious differences and revising ecclesial policies. This important study will be of interest to historians of the church, specialists of former Soviet countries, and general readers interested in the history of the Orthodox Church.

For several years now, Russia has been trying to justify her neo-imperialist policies towards Ukraine, promoting the vision of a common \"Orthodox civilization,\" in reference to the religious and cultural spheres. The Russian Orthodox Church is an important element of \"soft power,\" whose help the Kremlin authorities are seeking in conducting their policies towards the so-called \"near-abroad.\" Ukraine comprises an exceptionally important place in this sphere. This book analyzes the role of religion and Eastern Christian communities in Ukrainian social and political life, and the political, social, cultural and civilizational conditions for the development of religious life in Ukraine. Particular attention is focused on the problem of institutionalizing Eastern Christian communities after the collapse of the USSR. This monograph presents the conditions under which this process in post-Soviet Ukraine is carried out and the way in which it is linked to the functioning of the Ukrainian political system. This allows one to gain a new perspective on this system and capture its essence more fully. Primarily, this concerns the question of its democratic or non-democratic character. The book is an interdisciplinary research monograph, and, as such, will be useful to researchers interested in the post-Soviet space from the perspective of various disciplines, including political sciences, history, sociology and religious studies. The research and editing of the book were supported by National Science Centre Poland - grant number 2011/01/B/HS5/00911.

Marlene Epp demonstrates that the meaning of Mennonite food lies within the multiple identities of the eater. Spanning the globe, from the nineteenth century to present day, Eating Like a Mennonite concludes that Mennonite food identities develop from adoptions, adaptations, and attitudes in diverse times and places.

Background: Religious faith and practice are important aspects of human life and give meaning to human existence. The development of modernity and consumerism has significantly undermined the religious foundations of a present-day global society. The aim of this study is to determine the relationships of the religious faith and practice of student youth and adults in Poland (Podkarpacie and Lesser Poland regions) and in western Ukraine (Lviv region) with their self-rated health status and attitudes toward physical culture. Methods: The study was conducted online in Poland and Ukraine from January to April 2022. A convenience sample of 1458 people was recruited. The questionnaire included 16 questions about religiosity, attitudes towards physical culture, and self-rated health status. Questions regarding self-esteem and attitudes towards physical culture were assessed on a Likert scale of 1 to 5 points. Other questions contained single-choice answers. Data were analyzed using Statistica v. 13.3. Results: The component of health that was rated highest was physical health among believers and mental health among non-believers. The results of the analysis of variance showed significant differences between the individual variables depending on the declaration of faith in God. Conclusion: While the faith of the inhabitants of southeastern Poland and western Ukraine is largely related to their regular religious practice, irregularity dominates this practice. Respondents combined ratings of their faith and/or practice with self-rated health status; more religious people had statistically lower levels of self-rated health.