This book explores the impact of nationalism on Orthodox Christianity in nineteenth-century South-Eastern Europe. It analyses the challenges posed by nationalism to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ways in which Orthodox Churches engaged in the nationalist ideology in Greece, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

Nation-building processes in the Orthodox commonwealth brought together political institutions and religious communities in their shared aims of achieving national sovereignty. Chronicling how the churches of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia acquired independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s decline, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe examines the role of Orthodox churches in the construction of national identities. Drawing on archival material available after the fall of communism in southeastern Europe and Russia, as well as material published in Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Russian, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe analyzes the challenges posed by nationalism to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the ways in which Orthodox churches engaged in the nationalist ideology.

This collection brings together fifteen studies on the survival and adaptation of the Orthodox religious and cultural tradition in the societies of Southeastern Europe after the fall of Constantinople, a world so often misunderstood and misinterpreted. This problem of cultural history is examined in a diversity of contexts and on multiple levels of analysis in order to elucidate issues of broader concern to social theory such as the fluidity and dynamic character of identity, the intricate encounter of religion and politics and the challenge of secular world views such as the Enlightenment and nationalism to traditional religious outlooks. The author argues consistently against all forms of reductionism, converses at length with the sources in order to pose questions to conventional views and invites the historical imagination to recover and understand a world submerged by the nationalist interpretation of the past. This task involves the recovery of the geographical pluralism that made Orthodox culture a truly transnational phenomenon. The collection accordingly brings into focus both the epicentres of Orthodox culture and symbolism such as Mt Athos and Constantinople, but also its hinterlands in Asia Minor and the Balkans.

This book explores how the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the leading centre of spiritual authority in the Orthodox Church, based in Istanbul, coped with political developments from Ottoman times until the present. The book outlines how under the Ottomans, despite difficult circumstances, the Patriarchate managed to draw on its huge symbolic and moral power and organization to uphold the unity and catholicity of the Orthodox Church, how it struggled to do this during the subsequent age of nationalism when churches within new nation-states unilaterally claimed their autonomy reflecting local national demands, and how the church coped in the twentieth century with the rise of nationalist Turkey, the decline of Orthodoxy in Asia Minor and with the Cold War. The book concludes by assessing the current position and future prospects of the Patriarchate in the region and the world.

Orthodox Churches, like most religious bodies, are inherently political: they seek to defend their core values and must engage in politics to do so, whether by promoting certain legislation or seeking to block other legislation. This volume examines the politics of Orthodox Churches in Southeastern Europe, emphasizing three key modes of resistance to the influence of (Western) liberal values: Nationalism (presenting themselves as protectors of the national being), Conservatism (defending traditional values such as the “traditional family”), and Intolerance (of both non-Orthodox faiths and sexual minorities). The chapters in this volume present case studies of all the Orthodox Churches of the region.

Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia explores the interaction between religion, nationalism, and political modernity in the first half of the 20th century, taking the case of the Serbian Orthodox Church as an example. This book historicizes the widely held assumption that the bond between religion and nationalism in the Balkans is a natural one or that this bond has been historically inevitable. It tells a complex story of how East Orthodox Christianity came to be at the core of one version of Serbian nationalism by bringing together the themes of religion, nationalism, politics, state-building, secularization, and modernity. Maria Falina reconstructs how the ideological fusion between Serbian nationalism and East Orthodox Christianity was forged. The analysis emphasizes ideas and ideologies through a close reading of public discourses and historical narratives while paying attention to individual actors and their personal histories. The book argues that the particular political vision of the Serbian Orthodox Church emerged in reaction to and in interaction with the challenges posed by political modernity that were not unique to Yugoslavia. These included establishing the modern multinational and multi-religious state, the fear of secularization, and the rise of communism and fascism. Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia makes an important contribution to understanding the history of interwar Yugoslavia, 20th-century Europe, and the ties between religion and nationalism.