scholarly journals Making Saints: Canonization and Community in Late Imperial Russia

2006 ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Robert H. Greene
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
Imperial Family ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Official Recognition

The story of canonization in late imperial Russia has been told, traditionally, as a political and institutional narrative of church-state relations, of strategic decisions made at the highest levels by high-ranking clerics and members of the imperial family. This essay examines the cults of Anna Kashinskaia and Sofronii Irkutskii as case studies of canonization “from below,” demonstrating that in both instances local believers and clerics played prominent roles in initiating and ultimately securing official recognition for their locally-revered miracle-workers as a gesture of thanks for miracles rendered to the community. The efforts of the local faithful on behalf of their saints speaks both to the deep feelings of reciprocal obligation that characterized believers’ relationships with the holy dead, and to the powerful localized dimension of sanctity. The miracle stories attributed by local believers to Saints Anna and Sofronii reveal how the faithful saw and talked about their saints not as distant fi gures in another world but as hometown heroes forever present in the community where they had lived, served, died, and (most importantly) were buried.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eren Tasar
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This introduction describes the main arguments and historiographical interventions undertaken in the present work. The majority of previous scholarship on Islam in Soviet Central Asia has treated the Communist anti-religious campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s as representative of the entire Soviet period. By contrast, this book argues that Stalin’s normalization of church-state relations in 1943–1944 allowed a permanent space for Islam to exist in Soviet society. This space rapidly became the site of an accommodation between Islam and Communism for many Central Asians. The introduction concludes with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of the sources employed throughout the book.

The Nazaretha, Zionists, and Other Rebels in Segregated South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren V. Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Divine Healing ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations

Zionist churches proliferated in South Africa’s segregation era amid a global revival of the doctrine of divine healing. Among the nearly eight hundred new denominations that emerged were some of the largest Zionist churches, including Ignatius Lekganyane’s Zion Christian Church (ZCC) and Isaiah Shembe’s Nazaretha Church. All of these new denominations took root in the absence of government recognition and during a period when church-state relations were in flux. Many Zionists found ways to work around and in spite of segregation-era laws, but these efforts occasionally ended in disaster—as at Bulhoek in 1921. For scholars, Zionist churches have long posed problems of categorization. Scholars once imagined Zionists as embodying a distinctively African expression of faith, but important new scholarship has challenged this understanding. The time is ripe, however, to reassess what made Zionists different. This entry looks to Zionists’ doctrine and methods of evangelism to understand them as segregation-era rebels.

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