<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Orthodox Christianity remains relatively understudied and its scholarly analysis still suffers from widespread misconceptions. This article’s opening section is devoted to de-bunking of past biases, as these emerge in conventional or traditional modernist images of Orthodoxy in scholarship. Next, the article lays out a global perspective and argues that such a perspective can contribute greatly toward a different understanding of the relationship between Orthodox Church and politics. It proposes a series of distinct church-state patterns as observed in Orthodox pre-modern and modern societies. The variety of these arrangements strongly suggests the need to overturn past interpretations and to accept the basic premise that Orthodox Christianity has a multifaceted relationship to society and culture – as well as to accept the notion that, from within the lenses of historical globalization, Orthodoxy has experienced historical change and that its current version is in fact not the relic of an unchanged tradition but rather the product of social change and of adjustment to globalization.</p></abstract>

Orthodox Christianity remains relatively understudied and its scholarly analysis still suffers from widespread misconceptions. This article’s opening section is devoted to de-bunking of past biases, as these emerge in conventional or traditional modernist images of Orthodoxy in scholarship. Next, the article lays out a global perspective and argues that such a perspective can contribute greatly toward a different understanding of the relationship between Orthodox Church and politics. It proposes a series of distinct church-state patterns as observed in Orthodox pre-modern and modern societies. The variety of these arrangements strongly suggests the need to overturn past interpretations and to accept the basic premise that Orthodox Christianity has a multifaceted relationship to society and culture – as well as to accept the notion that, from within the lenses of historical globalization, Orthodoxy has experienced historical change and that its current version is in fact not the relic of an unchanged tradition but rather the product of social change and of adjustment to globalization.

Orthodox Christianity and the State: the Relevance of Globalization

Department of Social and Political Sciences

Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

{"article-title":"Orthodox Christianity and the State: the Relevance of Globalization"}

Orthodox Christianity remains relatively understudied and its scholarly analysis still suffers from widespread misconceptions. This article’s opening section...

Orthodox Christianity and the State: the Relevance of Globalization

Published Online: Aug 30, 2018

Page range: 212 - 229

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ress-2018-0016

Keywords
globalization, Orthodox Christianity, state, nation, culture

© 2018 Victor Roudometof, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Orthodox Christianity and the State: the Relevance of Globalization

Published Online: Aug 30, 2018

Page range: 212 - 229

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ress-2018-0016

Keywordsglobalization, Orthodox Christianity, state, nation, culture

© 2018 Victor Roudometof, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
globalization, Orthodox Christianity, state, nation, culture