VARIA

“How Can It Be: We Had it In the Seventh Century, and Now Not?” An Invented Tradition of Icon-Painting in Post-Secular Armenia

Orthodox Anti-Ecumenism 2.0: Mobilization Model, Securitization and Revanchism

Between Polemics and Tolerance: Constructing the Religious Other Through the Censorship of Nicholas I

This paper discusses the construction of the “religious other” and the notion of tolerance by the Russian censorship. By using the methods of Cambridge Methodological School, the paper explores the case at

Islamobuddhica: What If Buddhism Is a Scriptural Religion? “The Scriptures of Shakyamuni” in the Arabic Compendium of Chronicles of Rashīd al-Dīn

In memoriam. Nikolai Seleznyov (1971 – 2021)

The Gnostic Trope in Contemporary Media Culture

The article applies the Gnostic trope as the most suitable tool for analyzing religious components of contemporary mass culture. Christopher Partridge’s theory of occulture serves as a methodological framework. The Gnostic trope includes the following elements: the idea that our world is a prison created for the torment of man; that it is controlled by the evil Creator of this world — the demiurge; that some exceptional persons, the Gnostics, are able to unravel the deceptive nature of reality and offer gnosis — a kind of extra‑rational experience.

Towards a Conceptual History of “Priest”: From Sacred Position to Social Function

The article concerns the changes in the definition of the word “priest” in encyclopedias and lexicographical works in the course of shaping of the European culture of Modernity. The article argues that the notion of sacrum (as related to God), which directly correlated with the position of priest and defined its meaning until the 17th century, later, through the 18th century, was replaced by the notion of the community, in which the priest performs some cultic functions.

Post-Christian or Post-Atheistic Society? Some Characteristics of the Russian Regime of Secularity

The authors argue that the specificity of the Russian case of secularity is generally underestimated. This leads to two negative consequences. First, it leads researchers to considering the regimes of secularity in Eastern Europe as variations of the “Soviet model,” which is false.

Hasan ‘ Ata Gabashi versus the Missionary Evfimiy Malov: An Example of Muslim-Christian Polemics of the Late 19th Century

The article deals with the Muslim reaction to the Russian Orthodox missionaries’ challenge in the polemic work by Hasan ‘Ata Gabashi “Nur al-haqiqa” (1886). The author explores the internal mechanism of Islamic discourse, which works to protect the sphere of Muslim dogmatic (‘aqida) from the “alien” influence and is realized through the delineation of protective boundaries. As a defence tactic, Gabashi uses the strategy of refuting “false idea” or “false teaching” from ‘Ilm al-Kalam.

The Revolution of the Spirits for the Spiritual Brotherhood: Russian Spiritualist Movement and Its Social Ideals

The article offers a reconstruction of the social ideals of Russian spiritualists. Main sources include texts revealing spiritualists’ ideas about the structure of the spiritual world; structure and characteristics of spiritual circles; and literary works by spiritualists reflecting their social ideals. Although the social and political views of Russian spiritualists were mostly conservative, their ontological views contained elements of social radicalism.

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