The Tsar's foreign faiths : toleration and the fate of religious freedom in Imperial Russia
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The Tsar's foreign faiths : toleration and the fate of religious freedom in Imperial Russia
(Oxford studies in modern European history)
Oxford University Press, 2014
- : hbk
Available at 7 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
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  Gunma
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  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Russian Empire presented itself to its subjects and the world as an Orthodox state, a patron and defender of Eastern Christianity. Yet the tsarist regime also lauded itself for granting religious freedoms to its many heterodox subjects, making 'religious toleration' a core attribute of the state's identity. The Tsar's Foreign Faiths shows that the resulting tensions between the autocracy's commitments to Orthodoxy and its claims to toleration became a
defining feature of the empire's religious order.
In this panoramic account, Paul W. Werth explores the scope and character of religious freedom for Russia's diverse non-Orthodox religions, from Lutheranism and Catholicism to Islam and Buddhism. Considering both rhetoric and practice, he examines discourses of religious toleration and the role of confessional institutions in the empire's governance. He reveals the paradoxical status of Russia's heterodox faiths as both established and 'foreign', and explains the dynamics that shaped the fate
of newer conceptions of religious liberty after the mid-nineteenth century. If intellectual change and the shifting character of religious life in Russia gradually pushed the regime towards the acceptance of freedom of conscience, then statesmen's nationalist sentiments and their fears of
'politicized' religion impeded this development. Russia's religious order thus remained beset by contradiction on the eve of the Great War. Based on archival research in five countries and a vast scholarly literature, The Tsar's Foreign Faiths represents a major contribution to the history of empire and religion in Russia, and to the study of toleration and religious diversity in Europe.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Early-Modern Bequests
- 2. The Multi-Confessional Establishment
- 3. Matters of Integrity
- 4. The Rhetoric and Content of 'Religious Toleration'
- 5. Prospects of Reform
- 6. Depoliticizing Piety, Russifying Faith
- 7. Towards Expanded Religious Freedom
- 8. Freedom of Conscience as Legislative Project
- 9. The Foreign Confessions in the Empire's Twilight
- Conclusion: Between Toleration and Freedom of Conscience
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