Session Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

The Pilgrim’s Journey: Spiritual Peregrinations in and beyond Russia

Fri, November 21, 8:00 to 9:45am EST (8:00 to 9:45am EST), -

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many important religious trends emerged within Russia and more than a few circulated globally. The papers in this panel examine a few of those key developments through the lens of pilgrimage. Aleksandr Orlov analyzes the intertwined physical and metaphorical journeys Old Believers undertook as part of their religious lives. He shows how integral these voyages were to the church’s basic operations and believers’ daily lives. Luke Jeske turns the focus to Russian Orthodox Christian men, who flocked to Mount Athos in the thousands over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These pilgrimages, he shows, facilitated spiritual and personal growth in diverse and sometimes explosive ways. Finally, Choi Chatterjee investigates how the Russian Orthodox text The Way of the Pilgrim performed its own peregrinations around the world, sparking a number of intriguing spiritual conversations along the way. Collectively, these papers pose important questions about religiosity and religious travels over the past two centuries: How have Russian Christians leveraged pilgrimages to realize individual and collective ambitions? What can we learn from examining how and why different forms of religiosity have been embraced, tolerated, or denounced by church officials? How do the histories of Russia and Russian religious traditions change when viewed from global perspectives? By addressing these and related questions, the panelists shed new light on the relationships among mobility, faith, intellectual exchanges, and religious authority.

Sub Unit

Chair

Papers

Discussant