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A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy
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$ 53.36
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| Item Number |
3087007 |
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Item Description...
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. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 392
Dimensions: Length: 9.02" Width: 6.1" Height: 0.98"
Weight: 1.35 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Publisher Westview Press
ISBN 0813340675
EAN 9780813340678
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Availability 100 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 06:23.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Detailed and fascinating Oct 31, 2004 |
If you're interested in what's going on in the church in Russia today, Davis provides both the background and the contemporary perspective. Thoroughly annotated with 100 pages of end notes, this book combines statistical analysis of the church's fluctuating fortunes with reports from Communist and other annals and Davis' own observations from visits to hundreds of churches.
Its academic approach, while thorough, makes it less accessible to the casual reader interested in the subject, which is why I gave it only 3 stars. I'd like to see Davis return to this subject with a book aimed at the general reader. Based on my visits to 4 Moscow churches within walking distance of each other and to a couple of Old Believers churches, I think there's a story waiting to be told of the variety of approaches to Orthodox belief and practice that are active in Russia today. | | |  | Wonderful! Jan 20, 2004 |
| This book will open your eyes to what the real issues were, when and where for the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th century. Davis is relatively sympathetic to the ROC, but he doesn't hold any punches when there IS a criticism to be made. Davis spends quite a bit of time crunching numbers, but he also takes the time for anecdotal descriptions, too. This is very readable and insightful! Side note: He seems a little naive and starry-eyed about Gorbachev's support for the Church, but that might just be my reading too much into it. | | | Write your own review about A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy
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