The Economy of the Transylvanian Roman Catholic Status Between the World Wars

The purpose of the study. To examine how the 20th century’s political changes affected the Roman Catholic Church structurally, and it’s specific institution, the Roman Catholic Status by the agrarian reforms which were part of the modernization process and nation-building in Greater Romania; and more importantly in Transylvania, the area of the four Roman Catholic dioceses of Nagyárad, Gyulafehérvár, Temesvár and Szatmár, and what alternatives were created for economical surviving. Applied methods. Literature review including the history of World War I and the consequences of the upcoming treaties of Versailles. We involved sources from church literature, agrarian estates records and data from researches of the Status archives from Transylvania. The research framework is the history of the Roman Catholic Status. We introduced four ecclesiastical counties whose economically changes influenced the administration of several institutions and funds belonging to the Status. We made a structural analysis examining the new economic system of the Roman Catholic Status situated in the middle of the modernization development of Greater Romania. Outcomes. Due to the annexation of Transylvania to Romania, the Roman Catholic Church went from a privileged position to a marginal position, since the majority of the Romanian population was Orthodox Christian. Many problems of the process of modernization and nationbuilding in Greater Romania were felt by all sections of the population, but it was the ethnic minorities and their institutions - especially the churches - which were to be integrated into the new nation-state that were most affected. The four Roman Catholic dioceses Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), Nagyvárad (Oradea), Temesvár (Timișoara) and Szatmár (Satu Mare)) expropriated 277,513 acres of a total of 290,570 acres of land, which represented 98% of the land holdings. The agrarian reform of 1919-1920 brought major changes in the management of the Status funds and the estates belonging to them.

What Is 'Victory' in the Orthodox Christian Ethics of War?

The text reconstructs the protocol of 'victory' as part of the interruption of enmity and establishment of temporary peace. Different understandings of the enemy and enmity imply that victory in war and cessation of conflict can essentially determine the way war is conducted, and that they follow rules of war. Victory is supposed to be a crucial moment that characterizes the ethics of war. Particular testimonies and thematizations of victory in the Orthodox Christian tradition can provide an intro-duction into a potential ethics of war that could ensure a new relationship towards the enemy and killing the enemy.

Historical Memory and Orthodox Faith: Byzance Aprиs Byzance in Sofia Under Ottoman Rule

In our article we propose a case study on the character of the veneration of neomartyrs of Sofia in the 16th century and a review of the related literature. We try to argue that the aims of their veneration were religious and political, and that these aims were attained through the exaltation of the Christian faith and the creation and maintaining of a historical memory. The direction of the intended results, however, is not anti-Ottoman, but anti-Islamic; the veneration urged to consolidate the Orthodox Christian congregation. It is to the people of the Orthodox confession, not to the national (in this period mostly “ethnical”) community, that the veneration of the neomartyrs was addressed. The strengthening of the congregation could be achieved excellently through the martyr’s bearing witness (having in mind that “martyros” means “witness” in Greek); the martyr adds holiness to the place and sacralizes the space of the city, and finally of the whole political milieu. The witness is not only the creator of sacredness, he is also a keeper of the memory of the past. The martyr is a champion because he / she vanquishes the foes of God through his / her martyrdom. As a champion, he is a reminder of the glorious past; as a victor, he is a Defensor fidei in the present. This is a clear confirmation of God’s power under different historical circumstances. These ideas directed at the restoration, but only spiritual, of the Christian Empire through the Body of the Church. This explains the absence of any overt opposition against Ottoman power. Therefore, we find here, in Sofia, a conception of Byzance après Byzance of the same type as we find in Constantinople after the fall of the Empire, when the Ecumenical Church adopted part of the Empire’s heritage.

Southeast Europe

This chapter charts the religious landscape of Southeast Europe and considers its religious specificities in their historical and geographical context. To this purpose, it discusses the significance of the Orthodox Christian heritage of Byzantium; the cleavage between Eastern and Western Christianity (both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) and inter-confessional dynamics; the presence of Islam and the long period of Ottoman rule; the existence of other religions in the region; the role of Russia in Southeast European affairs; ethno-religious identities and the rise of nationalism; the communist and the post-communist periods; and finally, the negative discourse about the Balkans in the context of Southeast European distinctiveness, the modernization process, and the potential for religion in this.

Dead-Ends and New Directions

The aim of this article is to investigate how Abraham Kuyper and some late neo-Calvinists have addressed the doctrine of creation in light of the challenges posed by evolutionary scientific theory. I argue that most neo-Calvinists today, particularly scholars from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), continue Kuyper’s legacy by holding the core principles of a creationist worldview. Yet, they have taken a new direction by explaining the natural history of the earth in evolutionary terms. In my analysis, Kuyper’s heirs at the VU today offer judicious parameters to guide Christians in conversation with evolutionary science, precisely because of their high appreciation of good science and awareness of the nonnegotiable elements that make up the orthodox Christian narrative.

Cases of contemporary re-Islamization among Roma in Bulgaria

Since the beginning of the 1990s, various religious processes can be observed among the Roma community and other ethnic minorities in Bulgaria. In parallel with the conversion of Orthodox Christian and Sunni Muslim Roma to evangelical Christianity, processes of re-Islamization have also been taking place. Based on a series of legislative and judicial decisions taken by local and state institutions, cases of re-Islamization have been presented to the public as examples of the spread of radical Islam, a trend that could lead to ethnic conflicts and to the perception that the Roma are a threat to national security. Contrary to this already popular notion, the results of my ethnological study (2018-2020) among various local Roma Islamic groups in Southern Bulgaria led to a different conclusion. This paper draws attention to small groups of newly converted Turkish-speaking Roma and focuses on the emic perspective of the members of the studied groups regarding the interpretation of the new religious ideas they more or less adhere to.

Eastern Orthodox Philosophical Thought

The Orthodox Christian Church is one of the largest religious groups within Christendom, second only to Roman Catholicism. Historically, it traces its origins to Christ and claims an unbroken line of fidelity to the teaching of the apostles and their successors. It consists of over a dozen autocephalous Churches, each of which is led by a Patriarch or Metropolitan Archbishop who together lead the Orthodox Church around the world in a conciliar ecclesial government, with the Patriarch of Constantinople recognized as the “first among equals.” The oldest among these Churches are in the Middle East (e.g., Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem) and the Mediterranean (e.g., Greece, Cyprus, Constantinople), as well as many in Central and Eastern Europe (e.g., Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Albania, Romania, Poland, as well as the Czech Lands and Slovakia). It also contains a number of autonomous, or self-governing, churches in Asia (e.g., China and Japan). Thus, the Eastern Orthodox Church is rich in ethnic and cultural diversity, while being united in doctrine and worship. To many in the West, however, and especially to those in the English-speaking world, it remains an enigma that is often confused either with Roman Catholicism or with a syncretic mixture of Christianity and Eastern religion. This article provides a brief sample of works from the Orthodox intellectual tradition that are likely to foster greater collaborative engagement with contemporary academic philosophy. As a whole, the collection attempts to help readers answer three questions. First, what are the views of the Orthodox Christian Church, especially those that are more distinctive of Orthodox Christianity? Second, how have these views been explained and defended in historical philosophical and theological discourse? Third, how have these views been explained and defended in contemporary philosophical and theological discourse? The presentation is divided into seven sections: General Overviews and Historical Context; Metaphysics and Philosophy of Language; Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion; Moral Psychology and Character Formation; Normative and Applied Ethics; Social, Cultural, and Political Philosophy; and Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russian Religious Philosophy. The selections within each section are principally designed to be of use for contemporary English-speaking academic philosophers by providing a representative presentation not only of topics but also of eras (e.g., ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary), areas of jurisdiction (e.g., Middle Eastern, Byzantine, Slavic, etc.), and schools of thought (e.g., analytic philosophy, Continental philosophy, etc.).

Russian Propaganda During the First World War: Technologies and Forms

The purpose of the article is to analyse the use of political propaganda methods employed by the Russian Empire before and during the First World War, in particular, on the Ukrainian lands, which became a direct theatre of military operations and a field of confrontation between intelligence and counterintelligence services of belligerent powers, which exercised manipulative influence upon great masses of population and implemented special technologies for the formation of public opinion. The research methodology is based on the principles of objectivity, systematicity, dialectics, historicism and interdisciplinarity. The study is grounded on problemchronological, institutional and historical methods, as well as social psychology methods, used in propaganda practices. Scientific novelty: on the basis of printed materials: brochures, First World War periodicals, published posters and woodcuts (lubki prints), as well as memoirs of people, involved in the organization of propaganda campaigns, certain objects, technologies and forms of propaganda, in particular, the involvement of intelligence officers of the Russian Imperial Army in manipulative technologies, were defined. The widespread use of propaganda and counter-propaganda by the states that were the main players of the First World War, became a kind of hallmark of that war. In Russia, unlike other states, there were no special bodies and no such bodies were created later to influence public opinion in their own, hostile or neutral states. The peculiarity of the propaganda of the Russian Empire was the use of mainly constructive (positive) propaganda aimed at neutralizing social conflicts within the state, uniting the population and the authorities and their joint struggle against the enemy. The ideas of Pan-Slavism and Neo-Slavism were actively applied in the international realm. They were aimed at the unity of the Slavic world under the auspices of Russia as the defender of the Slavic peoples and the Orthodox Christian faith. The use of destructive propaganda technologies was aimed at creating the image of the “enemy” and uniting patriotic forces against it. At the same time, Russia failed to offer Slavic peoples of the empire, in particular Ukrainians, to realize their political aspirations in resolving the national issue; it did not feel a change of mood and did not restructure the content of propaganda rhetoric, which eventually led to its defeat in the information and psychological space.

A Racial-Religious Imagination: Syriac Christians, Iconic Bodies, and the Sensory Politics of Ethical Difference in the Netherlands

Since 9/11, political debate over immigration in Europe is often posed as a question of Islam’s distance from Europe’s putatively Judeo-Christian ethical tradition—and therefore a matter of neither explicitly racial nor religious animus. This article interrogates this claim from the perspective of Syriac Orthodox Christians living in the Netherlands, who, despite their conspicuous Christianity, are frequently told by both the state and their neighbors that their ethnoreligious difference is not meaningfully different from Muslim difference. Drawing on fieldwork in the Dutch subprovince of Twente, I analyze both everyday and bureaucratic moments of misrecognition as sites of racialization that illuminate a Dutch racial-religious imagination rooted in post-Calvinist theological anxieties over social reproduction. By showing how minoritized bodies are read as icons of invisible reproductive relations, I deploy the Orthodox Christian doctrine of the holy icon to theorize secular modern racialization as a process of ethical differentiation, classification, and control over reproductive power.

Devotional Practices and the Development of the Church Building

Orthodox Christian worship and devotions determined the planning, organization, and form of religious architecture in Byzantium. However, a church does not merely house religious events; it also has an impact on the way they are accommodated within a defined space. This chapter presents Byzantine church building as it was understood by its users and developed in relation to various segments of liturgical ritual and forms of devotion. An effort is made to address all periods, include developments in regions outside the capital, and examine some manifestations beyond the church building. At the end, there is an overview of issues and problems in the study of the subject, and of potential research directions in the field.