From sermons and clerical reports to personal stories of faith, this book of translated primary documents reveals the lived experience of Orthodox Christianity in 19th- and early 20th-century Russia. These documents allow us to hear the voices of educated and uneducated writers, of clergy and laity, nobles and merchants, workers and peasants, men and women, Russians and Ukrainians. Orthodoxy emerges here as a multidimensional and dynamic faith. Beyond enhancing our understanding of Orthodox Christianity as practiced in Imperial Russia, this thoughtfully edited volume offers broad insights into the relationship between religious narrative and social experience and reveals religion's central place in the formation of world views and narrative traditions.

Heather J. Coleman's profile page

Heather J. Coleman is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Imperial Russian History in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. She is author of Russian Baptists and Spiritual Revolution, 1905-1929 (IUP, 2005) and editor (with Mark Steinberg) of Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia (IUP, 2005).

"It is extremely rare for a book to be accessible and of use to undergraduates, graduate students, outsiders to the field and specialists in the field, but I believe this book pulls it off. It belongs on the shelf of anyone with any degree of interest in everyday life or religion in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia."?Slavonic and East European Review

"Coleman's collection . . . emerges as strikingly important as Orthodoxy moves into the twenty-first century. It serves as a caveat to those who want to see progress in modem terms when faith is timeless. Orthodoxy, as Coleman's collection makes plain, is a living response that transcends change and development."?Canadian Slavonic Papers

"It would be difficult to overpraise this contribution to the literature on Russian history and Orthodox Christianity. . . . Abreast of the best scholarship, this volume is valuable for studies of Russian history and religion. . . . Highly recommended."?Choice

"One moves quickly and with accessible ease through [these] essays by well-respected scholars toward understanding what tserkovnost ("churchness") was to the Russian Orthodox believer in the time of the tsars. Tapping Russian language sources hitherto available only to those speaking Russian, this book brings one closer to that soil whence grew and flourished a people hardened by a history of suffering."?Review of Metaphysics

"Each of these sources tells its own touching story of real individuals behaving religiously. The result is a beautiful cluster of short stories, each with its own plot, character development, pathos, and crisis."?wordsbecamebooks.com

"Representing the best recent scholarship, this volume provides a panoramic and highly enjoyable introduction to modern Russian Orthodoxy. Included are voices from a wide range of social stations in late imperial Russia."?Paul Valliere, author of Modern Russian Theology

"This important collection of primary sources introduces to students a dynamic world of faith and practice, thereby broadening their historical, cultural, and perhaps confessional horizions. And it speaks to specialists across disciplinary boundaries who study religion as lived experience."?Patrick Lally Michelson, coeditor (with Judith Deutsch Kornblatt) of Thinking Orthodox in Modern Russia: Culture, History, Co