Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice
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“These essays advance the understanding of Eastern Orthodox spiritual practices from a religious studies perspective.”—Reading Religion
How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? In this book, Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in the age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
“Precisely by looking at so varied a group of locations home to Orthodox practice, this book conveys the fragility―and durability―of traditional religion in a postmodern, secular age.”—Nadieszda Kizenko, author of A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People
How do people experience spirituality through what they see, hear, touch, and smell? In this book, Sonja Luehrmann and an international group of scholars assess how sensory experience shapes prayer and ritual practice among Eastern Orthodox Christians.
Prayer, even when performed privately, is considered as a shared experience and act that links individuals and personal beliefs with a broader, institutional, or imagined faith community. It engages with material, visual, and aural culture including icons, relics, candles, pilgrimage, bells, and architectural spaces. Whether touching upon the use of icons in the age of digital and electronic media, the impact of Facebook on prayer in Ethiopia, or the implications of praying using recordings, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, these timely essays present a sophisticated overview of the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianities. Taken as a whole they reveal prayer as a dynamic phenomenon in the devotional and ritual lives of Eastern Orthodox believers across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.
“Precisely by looking at so varied a group of locations home to Orthodox practice, this book conveys the fragility―and durability―of traditional religion in a postmodern, secular age.”—Nadieszda Kizenko, author of A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People
- Title: Praying with the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice
- Authors: Sonja Luehrmann, Vlad Naumescu, Ioann Veniaminov, Jeffers Engelhardt, Angie Heo, Jeanne Kormina, Tom Boylston, Andreas Bandak, Daria Dubovka, Simion Pop, William A. Christian
- Publisher: Indiana University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780253031679, 9780253031662, 0253031664, 0253031672
- Resource ID: LLS:9780253031679
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-04-05T20:27:52Z
Sonja Luehrmann is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. She is author of Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic (IUP) and Religion in Secular Archives: Soviet Atheism and Historical Knowledge.