Overview

How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sonja Luehrmann ,  Tom Boylston ,  Jeffers Engelhardt ,  Jeanne Kormina
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
ISBN:  

9780253031662

ISBN 10:   0253031664
Pages:   278
Publication Date:   06 January 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Senses of Prayer in Eastern Orthodox Christianity / Sonja Luehrmann Part I: Senses 1. Becoming Orthodox: The Mystery and Mastery of a Christian Tradition / Vlad Naumescu A Missionary Primer / Ioann Veniaminov 2. Listening and the Sacramental Life: Degrees of Mediation in Greek Orthodox Christianity / Jeffers Engelhardt Creating an Image for Prayer / Sonja Luehrmann 3. Imagining Holy Personhood: Anthropological Thresholds of the Icon / Angie Heo Syriac as a lingua sacra: Speaking the Language of Christ in India / Vlad Naumescu 4. Authorizing: The Paradoxes of Praying by the Book / Sonja Luehrmann Part II: Worlds 5. Inhabiting Orthodox Russia: Religious Nomadism and the Puzzle of Belonging / Jeanne Kormina Baraka: Mixing Muslims, Christians, and Jews / Angie Heo 6. Sharing Space: On the Publicity of Prayer, between an Ethiopian Village and the Rest of the World / Tom Boylston Prayers for Cars, Weddings, and Well-Being: Orthodox Prayers en route in Syria / Andreas Bandak 7. Struggling Bodies at the Crossroads of Economy and Tradition: The Case of Contemporary Russian Convents / Daria Dubovka Competing Prayers for Ukraine / Sonja Luehrmann 8. Orthodox Revivals: Prayer, Charisma, and Liturgical Religion / Simion Pop Epilogue: Not-Orthodoxy/Orthodoxy's Others / William A. Christian Jr. Glossary Index

Reviews

A well-documented, interdisciplinary examination of devotional practices, rituals, and understandings of prayer in contemporary lived forms of Eastern Christianity across a wide variety of traditions, including Coptic, Ethiopian, Greek, Indian, Russian, Syrian, and Ukranian. These essays define the phenomenon of prayer broadly in both its private and collective liturgical dimensions. -Vera Shevzov, author of Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution Precisely by looking at so varied a group of locations home to Orthodox practice, this book conveys the fragility--and durability--of traditional religion in a postmodern, secular age. -Nadieszda Kizenko, author of A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People

Author Information

Sonja Luehrmann is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She is author of Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic (IUP) and Religion in Secular Archives: Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge.

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