Over the past several years, Fortress Press has published a series of books titled Understanding World Christianity. The goal of the series is to introduce readers to types of Christianity with which they are unfamiliar, such as the Christianities practiced in China, Mexico, Eastern Africa, India, and, in the book under review here, Russia. Drawing upon their collective expertise in Russian, Orthodox, and global studies, Scott Kenworthy and Alexander Agadjanian easily fulfill the main objective of the series, but they accomplish much more than that. Among other things, they help to dispel “very broad, and frequently erroneous, stereotypes” about “Russian Christianity” (xiv), such as the accusation that the Russian Orthodox Church is a “handmaiden of the state” and the assumption that Russian Orthodoxy is a top-down religion without variety or complexity. Kenworthy's and Agadjanian's contribution to the series will also likely help to bring Christianity more fully into academic discussions about Russian history, politics, culture, and society.
Following the structure established by the series editor, Kenworthy and Agadjanian examine the histories, denominations, sociopolitical contours, geographies, biographies, and theologies of Russian Christianity. The first chapter offers a general introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy and Russia's place in it. It outlines shared “characteristics” across the Orthodox communion, engages Orthodox notions of “religious authority” and church-state relations, and highlights “distinctive features” in Orthodox theology, spirituality, worship, practice, sacraments, and art, as well as in lived Orthodoxy. The second chapter explores the geographies of Russian Christianity, including the ways in which the spread of Christianity was linked to more than one thousand years of “territorial expansion” beyond Kyivan Rus’. This chapter reminds us just how linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse these regions were and still are. It also identifies some of the “sacred places and networks” in that geography, namely monasteries that house relics and icons and that have attracted generations of pilgrims (93–96). The third chapter builds upon the second one, offering readers a much needed “history of Christianity in Russia” (97–147), ranging from the Christianization of Rus’ in the late tenth century to the persecution and resiliency of Christianity during the Soviet period.
Chapters 4 and 5 work together to illuminate key figures in Russia's modern Church and various theological currents within it. The first of these two chapters focuses on the biographies of prelates, priests, and spiritual leaders, such as Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin), Archimandrite Kronid (Liubimov), Matrona Nikonova, Mother Maria (Skobtsova), and Alexander Ogorodnikov. The discussion of these and similar figures in the Russian Church is a welcome addition, as many of them have long been overshadowed by a handful of “Russian religious thinkers,” whose place in the institutions and canon of Russian Orthodoxy was often tenuous. The second of these chapters highlights theological developments and debates in the Russian Church, such as the Slavophile concepts of sobornost and integral knowledge (209–212) and the Name Glorifiers controversy (218–219). Yet, it misses an opportunity to engage theological currents that arose in and spread through the Church's educational system (four academies and dozens of seminaries), much of which was dedicated to creating what administrators and instructors imagined to be a distinctly Russian Orthodox theology.
Chapter 6 examines Russian Christianity in its post-Soviet milieu. Here, the authors explore the Russian Church's “revival” in terms of power, wealth, attendance, cultural influence, and social reach, as well as the ways in which Orthodox identity is sometimes framed by ethnic nationalism and xenophobia. The authors also illuminate the variety of devotional and spiritual practices among Russian Orthodox believers, as well as the variety of grassroots organizations that express the spectrum of Russian Orthodox attitudes. Kenworthy and Agadjanian remind us in this final chapter that Russian Orthodoxy is multifaceted and diverse, even when its leaders insist on singularity and non-specialists imagine homogeneity. On this basis alone, not to mention the book's lucidity and comprehensiveness, Kenworthy and Agadjanian have done a great service for those readers who are curious about Russian Orthodoxy, as well as for teachers looking to broaden their students’ knowledge about Russia and Christianity.
Considering the fact that the book's principal strength is its commitment to recovering Russian Orthodoxy's “complex tapestry” and making its “divergent currents” central to our understanding of Russian Orthodoxy (xv), it is somewhat surprising to see the authors adopt a normative reading in their “concluding remarks” (291–293). There, Kenworthy and Agadjanian lament the fact that Russia's post-Soviet Church has failed to keep “the promise” and realize “the spirit” of “a democratized Church,” terminating instead in a “rigidly hierarchical” institution, which “has once again allied itself closely with the state” and has allowed Christianity “to be weaponized” by supporters of Vladimir Putin (293). The authors find this development, in which a liberated Church becomes the pillar of an illiberal regime, paradoxical. Yet, how can this development be a paradox if Russian Orthodoxy contains such possibilities within itself and if significant numbers of clergy and laity find real meaning in that Church? Is today's Church not also fulfilling “the promise” and “the spirit” of a particular Orthodoxy? The types of Orthodoxy that developed in Russia after 1991 were not destined to become one thing or another. They were, to borrow the language of Nur Amali Ibrahim, “improvisational.” Although the Russian Church might claim to be a manifestation of Providence, it does not possess a teleology. The history of Russian Orthodoxy is a contingent history of different Orthodoxies—and different visions of the Church—gaining and losing prominence over time. By intervening in theological, doctrinal, and canonical debates about what is and what is not the best type of Church, Kenworthy and Agadjanian reveal the fact that the study of Russian Orthodoxy is still occasionally wedded to the methods, goals, and assumptions of its protagonists, who have long sought to demarcate and police the borders between “good” Orthodoxy and “bad” Orthodoxy. Such an approach entangles Russian Orthodox studies in a contest for the mantle of right belief, despite the fact that it is this very contest which constitutes the varieties and complexities of Russian Orthodoxy.
