Giuseppe Giordan

Siniša Zrinščak

This volume highlights three intertwined aspects of the global context of Orthodox Christianity: religion, politics, and human rights. The chapters in Part I address the challenges of modern human rights discourse to Orthodox Christianity and examine conditions for active presence of Orthodox churches in the public sphere of plural societies. It suggests theoretical and empirical considerations about the relationship between politics and Orthodoxy by exploring topics such as globalization, participatory democracy, and the linkage of religious and political discourses in Russia, Greece, Belarus, Romania, and Cyprus. Part II looks at the issues of diaspora and identity in global Orthodoxy, presenting cases from Switzerland, America, Italy, and Germany. In doing so, the book ties in with the growing interest resulting from the novelty of socio-political, economic, and cultural changes which have forced religious groups and organizations to revise and redesign their own institutional structures, practices, and agendas.

Politics, Religion, and Human Rights

Global Eastern Orthodoxy

Olga Breskaya

Religious freedom has become increasingly important across the global spectrum over the past decades but has remained a contested concept. This book fills the gap in the scholarship on religious freedom by focusing on sociological dimensions and research methods. Chapters in this book present data and case studies from Italy, Russia, Iran, Israel, South Korea, and the United States, encompassing a broad geographical scope, and highlight three main issues. The first is the deep and persistent gap between normative and actual practices. The detailed analyses bring insights into how religious freedom is understood and implemented in various contexts and its meaning in everyday life. The second one is the complex interplay of various religious and secular actors in each society. Chapters focus on how it is essential to study how states define religious freedom and the impact of other actors, such as nongovernmental organisations, religious institutions, communities, leaders, and members of various religious/non-religious groups. The third is the role of rival ideologies and the impact of extraordinary social events, such as the COVID pandemic, which can considerably change how religious freedom is conceptualised and implemented. The book will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Religion, Sociology, Comparative Studies, Research Methods and Social Sciences. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Religion, State and Society.

Siniša Zrinščak

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