Icons in Russian Politics – Old and New

The author of the article discusses the political aspect of the cult of the most worshipped images of Our Lady in the Russian Orthodox Church, namely: Our Lady of Vladimir, Our Lady of Tichvin and her replica Our Lady of Narva, Our Lady of Kazan, Our Lady of the Don River, Our Lady of Pskov, Our Lady of Smolensk and others. He raises the issue of taking advantage of the icons to ensure assistance to the country or its individual cities, in the situation of a military threat. The measure which was resorted to most often was the practice of processions going round an endangered area; in contemporary times, this measure is also supported by the use of airplanes or helicopters. One gets the impression that over centuries, this particular aspect of Russian religiousness has not changed; a good example of this sort of conduct is the decision to declare Virgin Mary – Empress of Russia, the use of icons during World War II, or during the riots in Moscow in the autumn of 1993. In several cases, the author draws attention to the considerable significance of Polish motifs and anti-Western attitudes.

Object of the study are contemporary manifestations of religious fundamentalism at the Balkans under conditions of concurrent eurointegration (the case of Bulgaria is considered in particular). Followed are the major synchronous and diachronous factors determining the specificity of fundamentalist phenomena in the context of the Balkans, Orthodoxy, and Europe. The conclusion is that both historical merits and current regulatory and legal realities suggest rather a peaceful picture of interconfessional communication. An attempt is made at getting behind the curtain of official political discourse where alarming trends toward religious intolerance are found both on the part of Islam and of the Orthodox Church.

Secularism which is always inherent in the European talking on religious phenomena is conceived as inadequate and futureless in the interpretation of realities stageably existing in the „presecularity” of premodern time – like the Orthodoxy and Islam at the Balkans.

The Citizens of the Polish Commonwealth in the Pantheon of Saints of the Russian Orthodox Church

In the article, the author presents the cults of nine saints, citizens of the Polish-Lithuanian state, who were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church: Dimitri of Rostov (Tuptalo), Innokentiy of Irkutsk (Kulchitsky), Job of Pochayiv, Theodosius of Chernigov (Polonitsky-Uglitsky), Philophey of Tobolsk (Leshchinsky), John of Tobolsk (Maximovich), Arseny of Rostov (Matssevich), Paul of Tobolsk (Koniushkevich), Anthony of Tobolsk (Stahovsky). Moreover, Russia recognizes the saints canonized by the Kiev Caves Lavra.

The religious significance of the above cults is constantly increasing; at the present moment, the saints who came from the Polish-Lithuanian territories are gaining the same rank and significance as the most important Russian (Great Russian) saints. The scope of their spiritual patronage is gradually widening; they are worshipped as the apostles the enlighteners of the nation, guardians and defenders of the state, the Church, faith and religious unity. The Orthodox Church takes advantage of the cult of these saints to symbolically underscore the canonical bonds that unite the Russian Church with even the most remote of the Ukrainian provinces.

The Communal Dimension of the Spirituality of the Contemporary Protestantism in Germany on the Example of the German Evangelical Church Day (GECD) – Western Pomerania Sources and Contexts

It would be difficult to imagine contemporary German-language Protestantism without cyclical meetings organized bi-annually within the so called German Evangelical Church Day (Evangelischer Kirchentag). Sometimes these meetings attract well over a million people and they offer to the participants a unique opportunity to get acquainted with and experience the inner variety and wealth of the Churches, associations and initiatives belonging to the evangelical denomination. Since the  year 1949, the above meetings took on an organized form and they belong to one of the most important ways of articulating the presence of Protestantism in the European culture. The inventor and spiritual father of these meetings was Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff (1891–1976), an heir of a Pomeranian estate Trieglaff (Trzygłów). After World War II the family estate of the von Thadden family lay within the territory of the Polish state and it currently belongs to the joint German and Polish cultural legacy of the West-Pomeranian Province. Reinold von Thadden belonged to the leading representatives of German Protestantism in the 20th century. From the very beginning of his public activity, he became involved and assisted in various Church initiatives whose aim was to revive and strengthen the activity of the Evangelical laity, on both the central and local (Pomeranian) plane. The goal of von Thadden’s activity was, among others, a return to the sources of the Reformation and a new up-to-date interpretation of the principle of the universal ministry of all faithful, which has not been applied in practice. The historically-shaped model of the Pastors’ church which strengthened the position of the alliance between the lay and church authorities (the ruler as the summus episcopus), was sealed by the Old Prussian Church Union (1817) which introduced uniformity into the functioning of the parishes which were subordinated to the clergy and where parish councils enjoyed but minimal competence. It was only the territories subject to the intense expansion of the Pietist (XVIII c.) and community movements (XIX c.) that were able to retain their independence and sovereignty. Among these territories, there was among others Pomerania, whose eastern part (east of the Oder river – the so called Rear Pomerania) was inhabited by many noble families (among others von Kleist, von Zitzewitz, von Thadden), who were opposed to the religious policy of the Prussian kings and its theological consequences. A part of the Pomeranian church province, situated between Szczecin and Słupsk, extending to the Gdansk Pomerania in the north, was characterized by a high degree of church integrity and by traditional evangelical religiosity. In his initial attempts to stimulate the activity of the laity, von Thadden drew on the traditions of his family home as well as on the historical experiences of the entire region; it was a meeting held in Szczecin in the year 1932 that was to be the precursor of the later days of the Church. Its goal was to overcome the domination of the pastors, focus the devoted evangelicals on the idea of the renewal of individual and parish life. The main emphasis of this renewal was to be the message contained in the gospel. Yet, the above goals were attained only partially and the rapidly developing propaganda and the activity of the Nazis directed against the church circles, put a halt on further development of this initiative. However Reinold von Thadden’s public work did bring about his decisive protest against the policy of Hitler and the Nazis, whose aim was total subjugation and subsequently, complete elimination of Christianity from public life. One of the main creators of the Professing Church (Bekennende Kirche) which stood in opposition to the Nazi activities, was precisely Reinold von Thadden. His experiences dating back to the years 1933–1939 allowed him to participate actively in the post-war renewal of Germany, whose expression is the institution of the Church Day and its specific kind of spirituality – based on the Bible and the broadlyunderstood human needs.

Religion Online. Comments on the Process of Virtualization of Religion

The article constitutes an attempt to describe the functioning of religion in the Internet, and particularly of the religious practices which are conducted online. The authoresses of the article trace the transformations which have taken place in the use of the Internet as an instrument employed to conduct types of practices, beginning with the simplest communicators, through the use of videoconfer ences, up to the use of three-dimensional techniques. Special attention was devoted to virtual temples, that is those Internet sites where one can make a virtual sacrifice to a deity. In the article, the authoresses also draw attention to the ways of conducting these types of rituals and they present the views thanks to which the participants of these events may have an impression that they are actually taking part in religious practices, rather than just participating in a game. The article closes with an analysis of the ways of functioning of religion in the virtual worlds, with particular attention being drawn to the Second Life, which has become immensely popular in recent times. Apart from traditional religions which open up their sites of worship in Second Life, there also arise new cults in this world which are characteristic exclusively of ritualistic reality. The fundamental problem which has to be faced here by scholars is an attempt to answer the question, to what extent these are really new religious movements and to what extent they constitute an element of internet games and instruments which these games make use of.

Folk Deaconate. Reflection on the Liturgical Emancipation of Women in the Catholic Church

The article constitutes a reflection on the issue of the ordination of women, in the context of a different interpretation of the role of a priest in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, with a simultaneous reference of this issue to the practice of the Old Catholic Churches. A gradual widening of the scope of the liturgical competence of the laity (first of men, and subsequently women) and the reinterpretation of the concept of ordination of the presbyterate made it possible to entrust women with certain liturgical functions which up until recently were performed by the deacons. In this way, besides the hierarchical deaconate (traditionally reserved for men, due to ordination), there emerges a de facto non-hierarchical (folk) deaconate which is accessible also to women.

Jackob Burckhardt and the Religion of Art

More or less since the middle of the 18th century, there appeared a conviction that the experience of a work of art, if suitably prepared and separated off from other types of experience, may, thanks to its intensity and exclusivity as well as its totality, match or even supplant a religious experience. This process of sky-high adoration of art and the apotheosis of art as the highest form of cognition, reaches out with its roots to Shaftesbury’s aesthetics; whereas thanks to Winckelmann and his successors, it became deeply rooted in the 18–19 century culture, contributing to the rise of aesthetically-tinged anthropology, if only within the concept of the so called „beautiful man” in Germany at the turn of the century (Schiller, Goethe). The myth of the religion of art, which was so readily nurtured by the Romantics, was also incorporated by them into various historiosophic conceptions as well as dreams about a perfect language of art which is able to express directly the personality of the artist and his characteristic way of cognizing the world. In the second half of the 19th century, Jacob Burckhardt, one of the most original historians of culture and art, wished to base his conception of historical cognition and a historian’s freedom, among others, on the idea of communing with works of art. And although Burckhardt seemed at times to allude to the Romantic ideas of the religion of art, in point of fact, he never accepted its fundamental assumptions. The present article indicates the ambiguity of the very idea of the „religion of art” as well as to Burckhardt’s ambivalent reactions to its consequences.

Golem. An Analysis of the Roots of the Modern Jewish Legend

The aim of the article is to present the semantic wealth concealed in the Jewish legend about “golem”, which became popularized in the 19th and 20th centuries. The author presents a semantic analysis of the Hebrew stem g-l-m as well as of its derivatives. He discusses the most important sources which treat about golem – beginning with the Bible, the Talmud, Midrashic literature and ending with the selected writings belonging to the Ashkenazi Chassidism and the ecstatic cabala. In the article the author lays emphasis on revealing the mystical background of the described rituals relating to the creation and destruction of the figure of golem and the multi-layered structure of meanings associated with this process, in the context of halachic and cabalistic assessments of this type of religiousmagical activity.

Shattered Pots Following Deconstruction: Contemporary Anthropological Theories of Religion

The aim of the article is an attempt to answer the question whether under the influence of changes in the very subject-matter of anthropological research (a shift from traditional religions to great traditions perceived in different scales), there occurred any changes in the approach to religion and what consequences this could have had on the general religious reflection. The main effect of this convergence of the subject-matter of research is the superposition of anthropology of religion on religious studies, which is visible particularly in the methodological reflection: the bulk of the discourse concerning the methodology of religious studies is taking place within and on the circumference of anthropology. In view of the division within religious studies, into essential trends which treat religion as a phenomenon sui generis and particular trends which explore each religion as a separate phenomenon, the first problem that seems to confront scholars is the very definition of religion; the second one is to do with establishing a suitable comparative methodology. Anthropologists tend to define religion in terms of the Wittgenstein concept of „family resemblance”, and consequently, they look for instruments that would make it possible for them to carry our comparative studies; in doing so, they create holistic theories of religion. Reductionist theories, such as Stewart Guthrie’s neoanimism and memetics, are on the one hand burdened with ideological anti-religious assumptions, and on the other, they treat religion too narrowly, without taking advantage of the principle of „family resemblance”; that is why, their conclusions do not have a universal character, in spite of the fact that they assume to have it. The more extended cognitive theories (Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran) operate on a wider spectrum of religiogenous factors, beginning with semiotic and ending with neurological ones; what is problematic in them is the transition from the level of individual to social experience which is worked out within biogenetic structuralism or ritual studies. The evolution which has taken place within the ecology of religion, from the determinist conceptions of Steward or Harris, through cultural ecology of the early Rappaport and Vayda, to the uniform conception of working out comparative religious studies on the basis the ecology of Hultkranz, turned it into a promising, though limited research tool. An important attempt aimed at recognizing the relation between the ecosystem and man’s cultural activity, is Rappaport’s most recent proposition which leads to attributing a religious function to ecosystems. Rappaport’s theory of religion has a synthetic character combining within it the achievements of cultural ecology, ritualistic studies and semiological research.

The fruit of the discourse on Eliade’s legacy in religious studies, within the „hermeneutics of suspiciousness” proposed by Jonathan Smith, was turning attention to the empirical verification of such universal assumptions as sacrum, uranic hierophany, deus otiosus, or center. On the basis of the criti cism of the morphology of sacrum, Smith suggests mapping as a fundamental research technique. On the other hand, American neo-comparatists (Smith, Lawrence Sullivan, Sam Gill, Bruce Lincoln) suggest focusing on the meaning of religious ideas, associated with human orientation in time and space, which creates religious symbols. As an exemplification of the hermeneutics of suspiciousness, Sam Gill suggests a method of tracing successive interpretations, that is storytracking. In turn Lawrence Sullivan proposes a return to the assumptions of the typological-cognitive school. Yet another attempt to create a theory of religion based on essentialist principles, is the conception of the sacred self which is present in the research on the ego, soul, magic and the conception of the person among the Papuans (Gilbert Herdt, Michele Stephen, Fitz Poole, Jane C. Goodale) or on T. Csordas’ charismatic movements. The above conception found its fullest expression in the theory of Jacob Pandian. The essentialist attitude assuming an unchangeable nucleus of religion, is recognized to be closely associated with the phenomenology of religion and consequently with the comparative method, perceived here as its synonym. Yet in point of fact, comparative methods are „quite neutral from the point of view of the world-view”. Within the anthropology of religion, scholars rely most frequently on comparative methodology, worked out by biological sciences, which does not seem to be the best solution, due to the „family” and not „species”-based character of religion. Consequently, textbooks which describe this method of research usually contain more reservations than positive conclusions. The post-modernist critique of the classics, based on negative interpretation, usually contributes to sharpening the methodological sensitivity, yet it also leads to the phenomenon of too hasty and premature condemnation of everything that has arisen up till now. Reverting to the big questions which troubled scholars of religion from the very birth of this discipline of knowledge, the anthropologists of religion, relying on the cultural relativism, are critical of the achievements of their own discipline and in a sense, oppose the hypotheses concerning the impossibility to construct big narrations, in the sense of holistic theories of religion.

Ordo temporis. „Secularization” as a Historiographic Category

The issue of secularization became a „Bermuda triangle” of debates concerning the origin and development of modernity. In some theories, the concept which originated within the sphere of canon law, has grown to the rank of the main historiosophic category which establishes the order of the times. In its semantic, though not phonic translatio, it has undergone a transformation from its Roman original, through the narrow semantic scope in the 16th c., denoting „transition” from the clerical to the lay state, through the 17th c. broadening of the meaning to denote the transfer of church property to the state, up to the 19th c. „description” of the historical transition between the Middle Ages and the Modern era. The present article tries to introduce order and present the various meanings of the concept and at the same time, answer the question: whether the category of „secularization” is a descriptive concept which reveals the process of modern „disenchantment of the world” or quite the opposite: whether it constitutes the process of „enchanting” modernity?

Thanks to G.W.F. Hegel, who used among others the metaphor of „enworlding” (Verweltlichung), the topic of secularization became one of the main „defining” categories of modernity. Within a system recounting the advance of the „spirit” throughout history, the author juxtaposes the mediaeval world to the modern one by means of the category of secularization, understood as a historical necessity. In the post-Hegelian philosophy, the theme of secularization became very popular in the materialistic, or else spiritualistic visions of history; it was treated either as an expression of historical progress, or else as a description of „crisis”, or „dissent”.

Another author who exerted an influence on the rank and importance of this category was M. Weber. His conception of historical evolution assumed a transition within European culture from Judaism to the modern social forms best expressed in capitalism. One of the main descriptive categories in this process is the category of secularization, which is used interchangeably with the metaphor of the „disenchantment of the world” (Entzauberung der Welt). At times, Weber used the metaphor in the narrow sense to denote disenchanting, or else in the broad sense, to denote the main concept of shaping modernity. Following Hegel and Weber, in the 20th century, the above category became a sort of theoretical rut, which is used in a variety of senses and theories which often contradict or oppose each other.

The first philosopher who not so much noticed the problems associated with this term, but who undermined the very foundations of the concept of secularization, was H. Blumenberg. In his book entitled: The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Die Legitimität der Neuzeit) of 1966, he pointed out to a few fundamental difficulties associated with using this category. First of all, the acceptance of the assumption that: modernity is a derivative of the Middle Ages in the sense of secularizing its main categories, and endowing this concept with substantive content is theological and not historical in character. Secondly, he drew attention to the fact that the created ordo temporis lead to recognizing the modern age as an era that is not truly valid. Yet, the most important consequence of using this term, according to Blumenberg, is refusing the modern man the right to self-assertion. Taking into consideration both good and bad, the above theory assumes that the modern man has committed a historical hybris by undertaking the effort of „self-assertion” (Selbestbehauptung).

The article consists of three parts: the first one presents the history of the concept, the second looks at the ways of constructing historical orders and at the historical debate concerning their establishment, the third is devoted to the duel of the dwarfs (two metaphors of the dwarf in the history of philosophy of W. Benjamin and in the medieval philosophy of Bernard of Chartres); the article tries to capture the „unsinkable” character of the concept of „secularization”. On the one hand, the author juxtaposes the climbing of the dwarfs on the shoulders of the giants, so as „to see further” within the critically justified knowledge, and on the other, he presents the concealed game of theology which manipulates the major theoretical categories. The „duel of the dwarfs” was triggered by an attempt to define the sense of history in the context of a confrontation with the limitations of our cognition.

Religion as a Desire of Salvation – the New Millenium

The author of the essay attempts to answer the question concerning the future of religion. Will religion survive in any form in the next millennium? The above question leads him to yet another query, this time concerning the very foundations of religion within man. Searching for the sources of human religiosity the author analyzes two literary figures which describe man’s condition – namely the metaphor of a cave, and the story of Job. On the basis of these two figures, he formulates a hypothesis concerning the connection between man’s religiosity and some negative experiences – such as the experience of a lack, the experience of evil etc. The non-removable character of these experiences is conducive to a hypothesis concerning the nonremovability of religion from man’s life. In the light of these analyses, the author formulates a hypothesis that in religion one is able to realize one’s striving after good which is the opposite of the experienced evil. Such an interpretation of religion, leads the author to the final conclusion that as long as man remains a being who is constantly under threat, and a being that experiences evil in a variety of its different forms, religion is not in danger of a sudden disappearance.