Offers a collection of essays that examine the distinguishing features of the Eastern traditions - iconography, hymnology, ritual, and pilgrimage - through an ethnographic analysis. This title focuses on the revitalization of Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches that were repressed under Marxist-Leninist regimes.

Contents List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Chris Hann Introduction: The Other Christianity? Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz PART ONE. IMAGE AND VOICE: THE SENSUOUS EXPRESSION OF THE SUBLIME 1. Eastern Christians and Religious Objects: Personal and Material Biographies Entangled Gabriel Hanganu 2. A Dual Quarrel of Images on the Middle Volga: Icon Veneration in the Face of Protestant and Pagan Critique Sonja Luehrmann 3. Icons and/or Statues? The Greek Catholic Divine Liturgy in Hungary and Romania, between Renewal and Purification Stephanie Mahieu 4. The Acoustics and Geopolitics of Orthodox Practices in the Estonian-Russian Border Region Jeffers Engelhardt PART TWO. KNOWLEDGE AND RITUAL: MONASTERIES AND THE RENEWAL OF TRADITION 5. The Spirit and the Letter: Monastic Education in a Romanian Orthodox Convent Alice Forbess 6. Exorcising Demons in Post-Soviet Ukraine: A Monastic Community and Its Imagistic Practice Vlad Naumescu 7. Monasteries, Politics, and Social Memory: The Revival of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch in Syria during the Twentieth Century Anna Poujeau PART THREE. SYNCRETISM AND AUTHENTICITY: (SHARED) SHRINES AND PILGRIMAGE 8. Orthodox-Muslim Interactions at "Mixed Shrines" in Macedonia Glenn Bowman 9. Empire Dust: The Web of Relations in Saint George's Festival on Princes Island in Istanbul Maria Couroucli 10. Pilgrimages as Kenotic Communities beyond the Walls of the Church Inna Naletova 11. Avtobusniki: Russian Orthodox Pilgrims' Longing for Authenticity Jeanne Kormina PART FOUR. PERSON AND NATION: CHURCH, CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, AND SPECTRES OF THE SECULAR 12. Indigenous Persons and Imported Individuals: Changing Paradigms of Personal Identity in Contemporary Greece Renee Hirschon 13. Individual and Collective Identities in Russian Orthodoxy Alexander Agadjanian and Kathy Rousselet 14. The Russian Orthodox Church, the Provision of Social Welfare, and Changing Ethics of Benevolence Melissa L. Caldwell Epilogue: Ex Oriente Lux, Once Again Douglas Rogers Contributors Index

"This collection of essays is a welcome and refreshing gift in a virtual desert. There has been very little comparative anthropological research on the Eastern churches, and this volume will fill that gap."—Michael Herzfeld, author of Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome"At long last there is a book on the anthropology of Christianity that devotes direct and sustained attention to the diverse Eastern Christian Churches—both Orthodox and Catholic. This book should be read by anyone who thinks anthropologically about Christianity. Scales will fall from their eyes and they will behold an entire wing of Christianity that has, until now, gone mostly unnoticed and practically untheorized."—Douglas Rogers, author of The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals