Two Notable Books on the Russian Orthodox Church today!

A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy - Second Edition by Nathaniel Davis (2003)

Making use of the formerly secret archives of the Soviet government, interviews, and first-hand personal experiences, Nathaniel Davis describes how the Russian Orthodox Church hung on the brink of institutional extinction twice in the past sixty-five years. In 1939, only a few score widely scattered priests were still functioning openly. Ironically, Hitler's invasion and Stalin's reaction to it rescued the church -- and parishes reopened, new clergy and bishops were consecrated, a patriarch was elected, and seminaries and convents were reinstituted. However, after Stalin's death, Khrushchev resumed the onslaught against religion. Davis reveals that the erosion of church strength between 1948 and 1988 was greater than previously known and it was none too soon when the Soviet government changed policy in anticipation of the millennium of Russia's conversion to Christianity. More recently, the collapse of communism has created a mixture of dizzying opportunity and daunting trouble for Russian Orthodoxy. The newly revised and updated edition addresses the tumultuous events of recent years, including schisms in Ukraine, Estonia, and Moldova, and confrontations between church traditionalists, conservatives and reformers. The author also covers battles against Greek-Catholics, Roman Catholics, Protestant evangelists, and pagans in the south and east, the canonization of the last Czar, the church's financial crisis, and hard data on the slowing Russian orthodox recovery and growth. Institutional rebuilding and moral leadership now beckon between promise and possibility.

See: http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/westview/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0813340675

The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia by Wallace L. Daniel (2006)

Daniel tells the stories of a teacher and controversial parish priest, the leader of Russia's most famous women's monastery, a newspaper editor, and a parish priest at Moscow University to explore thoroughly and with a human voice the transformation from Communist country to a new social order. Daniel explores specific religious communities and the way they operate, their efforts to rebuild parish life, and the individuals who have devoted themselves to such goals. This is the level, Daniel shows, at which the reconstruction of Russia and the revitalization of Russian society is taking place. See: http://www.tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2006/daniel.htm

Russian schools to teach Orthodox culture basics from 2009

(Kazan, December 24, Tatar-inform). On 1 September 2009, all schools in Russia are to introduce the Basics of the Orthodox Culture in their curricula, claimed the head of the Russian Orthodocx Church Alexy II.

According to the patriarch, the subject is to be taught within the “spiritual and moral education” educational component, says RIA Novosti. The decision to introduce religious education in shools was made at a conference in the city if Kaluga held at the initiative of the Ministry of Education. Alexy II emphasised that those practicing other religions should be taught respective subjects while atheists should study the Basics of Moral Ethis course. The Russian Ministry of Education has so far made no comments on the Russian Orthodox Church leader’s statement.
Statements made by some scientists remind that Russia is a secular state that provides freedom of faith. According to them, a course on the history of the world’s religions would be enough to introduce shool students to religion.

See: http://www.eng.tatar-inform.ru/news/2007/12/24/10662/

New Book on the Rublev Trinity Icon!

The Rublev Trinity

The author, Father Gabriel Bunge, possesses a thorough knowledge of patristic literature and is known worldwide for his writings on contemplative prayer.

"Many art historians and scholars have described the sublime icon of the Holy Trinity by St Andrei Rublev, but nothing equals this detailed and comprehensive theological explanation by Benedectine monk Gabriel Bunge. In this inspired and utterly sober work, Fr Gabriel aims to make the icon's timeless message accessible to the contemporary praying believer.
The author understands precisely that Russian iconographic art, much more than the Romanesque and Gothic sacred art of the West, represents a theological confession of faith. Icon painters were conscious of this responsibility, and the monk-painters who learned their Orthodox faith through the prayer of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy, through the familiar texts of the hymns and the Gospel readings, reflected the revelation of God in their art. Fr Gabriel, completely attuned to this method of inspiration, upholds the palladium - the sign and meaning of Holy Russia - in this work, and reverently expounds upon the awesome utterance by Pavel Florensky: "There exists the icon of the Trinity by St Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists."
Hardcover

St. Vladimir's Orthodox Press
ISBN 978-0-881-41310-67 3/4 x 11148 ppPrice: US $27.00

New Online Byzantine Hagiography Database

Visit the new Dumbarton Oaks online Byzantine Hagiography Database at:

http://www.doaks.org/Hagio.html

"Hagiography was one of the most important genres of Byzantine literature, both in terms of
quantity of written material and the wide audience that read or listened to these texts. The Dumbarton
Oaks Hagiography Database Project is designed to provide Byzantinists and other medievalists with
new opportunities of access to this important and underutilized corpus of Greek texts. Included in the
database is information from the Greek vitae and martyria of one hundred and nineteen saints of the
8th-10th c., accounts of the translations of their relics, and collections of miracles, as well as notices
from the Synaxarion of Constantinople (a 10th-century liturgical collection of brief hagiographical notices). The project provides a subject index (the database proper) on many aspects of Byzantine civilization, from everyday life to liturgical vessels to toponyms." © 1998 Dumbarton Oaks