Taboo or Gift? The Lord’s Day in Byzantium

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Jane Baun

Church history has tended to trace the development of doctrine, either orthodox or heretical, canonical or anti-canonical. This paper, however, examines ‘para-canonical’ ideas, those which develop alongside the canonical – not quite heretical, but not fully orthodox either. Canonical norms, while constant in principle, have always been subject in practice to multiple understandings. Most of these shifting understandings, among groups or individuals, are fleeting and can never be recovered; this is why the history of the reception of canonical norms is so elusive. But for the social historian of religion, reception is often more interesting than the norms themselves.What actually ‘trickles down’ from what the bishops teach? This paper will maintain that some record of how things ‘trickled down’ is preserved in para-canonical religious texts, commonly known as ‘apocryphal’ literature. It considers various ways in which the canonical norms of the Greek Orthodox Church concerning the Lord’s Day were understood in a specific time and place: medieval Byzantium, between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. This was a crucial formative period for Orthodox Church culture, both Greek and Slav, during which ritual and moral attitudes that still obtain today were being worked out.

2018 ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
Olesya Dzyra

In the article it is done historiographical and sources study analysis of the material concerning to the activity of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada (hereinafter referred to as UGOCC). The reasons influenced on its creation are shown. The main of them was the desire of the public activists to give possibility to the immigrants to attend their native church with Ukrainian divine service, deprived the influence of Rome and Moscow. The conditions in which Ukrainians consolidated on the basis of Orthodox religion were analyzed. Orthodox were mainly those who moved from Bukovina and Galicians, that past from Greek Catholic faith to Orthodox. The history of origin and further activity of UGOCC in the interwar period, according to valid norms of the Canadian legislation, is described in the research. The most important problems of the building of UGOCC, such as the lack of priests, searching for a bishop by Ukrainian origin, and the struggle for the recognition of the canonization by the Constantinople Patriarchate are defined. Specific peculiarities of functioning the UGOC on Canadian territory, its ties with the same church in Ukraine are characterized. So, UGOC of Canada gave great significance to the spiritual union with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (hereinafter referred to as UAOC), on it repeatedly stressed in its councils. UGOCC recognized itself as a part of the UAOC, headed by the Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky. Particular attention is paid to internal conflicts in the interior of the Orthodox church. During the interwar period the discussion question of the canonicity of UGOC of Canada is remained, which Ivan Teodorovych and most of the members of the church`s council aspired to, but a part of the public activists led by V. Svystun was against the connection with the Constantinople Patriarchate and resanctifying the Archbishop, because it would mean «treason» of UAOC in Ukraine and the Kyivan canons of 1921. Therefore, the article analyzes the main problems of the building of the Ukrainian Orthodox church in Canada in the interwar period as well as the ways to solve them.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Kalogeraki

Following a comparative approach it is argued that the modernizing trajectories of three European countries, i.e., the UK, Sweden and Greece were different, as the cultural heritages of the three countries under study, formed by specific historical, political and religious events have acted as a filter of their modernization processes and left an imprint on the prevailing values. England followed a type of modernization associated with “bourgeois revolutions”, Sweden was highly influenced by the popular belief system of solidarity of the political culture of Scandinavian nations and Greece, although increasingly modern, can be associated with a more traditional, top to bottom, version of modernization, highly influenced by the Greek Orthodox Church. Secondary data and empirical research show that the different modernizing paths in the three countries have formed their main cultural characteristics; the UK is portrayed as an individualistic culture,Sweden as an amalgamation of both individualism and collectivism, and Greece as a traditional and more collectivist one. As culture, in the Parsonian approach, acts as the binder of the social world it has functioned as a mediating mechanism, shaping the personality traits and social relationships among British, Swedish and Greek citizens in the direction of an individualistic and/or a collectivist ethos. Whilst the thesis of the article does not support the bipolarity of the “divergence” and “convergence” hypotheses it provides some evidence to the former suggesting that modernization does not always take a simple linear path providing no room for variations.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This sweeping history shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants. Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. The book digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church's dependency on the “mother church,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This chapter draws attention to Ligonier, a small town in western Pennsylvania with a population of about fifteen hundred that served as an unlikely site for where the future of Greek Orthodoxy in America would be decided. It describes Ligonier as a home to the Antiochian Village and Conference Center, which is administered by the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of America. The chapter discusses the Antiochian Church, which had begun its existence in America under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church and had suffered internal divisions similar to those that Greek Orthodoxy faced in the 1920s. It investigates how the Antiochian Church was unified under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch based in Damascus, Syria. It also highlights the Arab Orthodox immigrants that were members of the Antiochian Church and explains how they admitted a number of converts from evangelical Protestantism in the 1980s.


Latin Jazz ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 36-63
Author(s):  
Christopher Washburne

This chapter documents the strong ties of the Caribbean and Latin America to the formative period of jazz and how that influence reverberated throughout the twentieth century. It argues that the strong foundational influence of Caribbean and Latin American music on pre-jazz styles makes the birth of jazz synchronous with the birth of Latin jazz. By building on the work of a number of scholars who have recently begun to tackle this complexity through historical studies of immigration patterns and the social and political development of New Orleans throughout the 1700s and 1800s and by conducting a “sonic archeology” of jazz styles throughout the twentieth century, reverberations of jazz’s pre-history are uncovered and shown to resound loudly. Along with a discussion of the social history of New Orleans, the focus is on the function of certain rhythmic cells in the jazz repertoire that are most typically associated with Caribbean and Latin American styles.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This chapter examines the Greek Orthodox Church against the background of the 1950s. It highlights the rise in religiosity and the upward social mobility of the Greek American second generation. It also explains how the Greek Orthodox church, which was on the margins of conversations about religion in America, found ways to become more relevant and somewhat mainstream. The chapter analyzes the unexpected development and importance of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the Cold War policies of the United States. It also looks into the combination of powerful causes, such as the Cold War, social dislocation in suburbia, anxieties of the atomic age, and deliberate religious marketing that led to a remarkable spread of religious identification in postwar America.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document