Political Theologies in Orthodox Christianity: Common Challenges and Divergent Positions

Orthodox Christianity is often considered to be out-of-sync with contemporary society, locked up in a world of its own where the church gets intertwined with the state in order to claim power over people and ignore the individual voices of modern societies.

This book gathers a wide range of theological perspectives from Orthodox European countries, Russia and the United States to demonstrate how divergent the positions are within Orthodoxy. As a collective, these essays present a different understanding of the relationship of Orthodoxy to politics that is also politically highly relevant for understanding today’s world. The contributors present their views by drawing lessons from the past and by elaborating visions for how Orthodox Christianity can find its place in the contemporary liberal democratic order, while also drawing on the experience of the Western churches.