With the liberalization of religious practices after the fall of the Soviet regime in Russia, almsgiving to beggars in Russian Orthodox churches has become one of the most widespread forms of Orthodox charity. However, the priests are faced with an ethical dilemma: should they be charitable with beggars or should they sanction those who do not live according to certain moral standards? This article examines how Orthodox priests interact with different groups of beggars and how they create ethical ways of acting. It proposes that contemporary Russian Orthodox ethics are multi-referential, anchored in historicity, relatedness, interaction, and creative reasoning.

The article addresses the revival of Russian Orthodoxy as a prominent domain in the lives of many Russians. The six authors are interested in the underlying question: What makes Russian Orthodoxy a relevent and modern source of morality and identity? The circumstances of this branch of Christianity significantly differ from what has been discussed in recent years as ‘the anthropology of Christianity’. The article proposes a thematic approach in order to connect the exploration of Russian Orthodoxy to the study of other denominations. A key‐area is the disctinctive articulation between continuity and change, which is crucial to the understanding of some branches of Protestantism as well.

No abstract

There is a large spectrum of social-scientific debates about women in patriarchal religions, with the two poles pointing to, on the one end, classical liberal feminism and, on the other end, views of alternative female agency performed through docility, obedience, and patience 1. Exploring the position of women teachers of religion in the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) we find a specific model of authority which cannot be fully accounted for within either of these analytical stances. A female didactic religious authority founded in professionalism has been widely acknowledged both among clergy and those learning Orthodoxy. The practice of didactic authority is contingent on women's relationship to priestly authority expressed in blessing, on their secular social status and local variations. The educational and organisational role of women in the post-Soviet ROC derives from the promotion of Orthodoxy in a period when women had already an established place within the secular, public school system. Transferability between the secular and the religious characterises the establishment of didactic authority. The Church understood as a collectivity of believers has undergone a deregulation, characterised by thriving localism, small-group loyalties, and individualised beliefs and practices (A. Agadjanian & K. Rousselet, 2010). The variety of religious knowledge, practice, and belief is enormous. Private and relatively independent from Church control ways of practicing Orthodoxy are prominent, such as participation in pilgrimages (J. Kormina, 2010; T. Köllner, 2010; I. Naletova, 2010). Faced with such diversity, the ROC is attempting to set the criteria for conversion, sometimes called "en-churchment" (or "churchliness", votserkovlennost'), and correct practice. 1. The authors are particularly grateful to Kathy Rousselet for her attentive reading and constructive suggestions and to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful criticism and helpful comments. We also thank Nathan Light and Julia Andreeva. The research was conducted within the project Religion and Morality in European Russia at the

Part of the transformations in rural Bulgaria after the fall of socialism in 1989 can be described as the implementation of neoliberal policies, shaped by general trends such as shrinking welfare state, the introduction of markets in public and private spheres and the view that self-enterprising individuals are best equipped to live successful lives in such environment. The latter characteristic can be summarized as the crafting of neoliberal personhood. However, studies from postsocialist settings show that such personhood is always rooted in history and social relationships. This article takes this analysis further by training a spotlight on a form of domestication of Bulgaria's neoliberalization, whereby the household, the home and the family's energy became, to certain extent, market assets. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2009 in the southern part of the central Rhodope region. It traces the trajectory of a family who tried to establish a family hotel by extending their house, offering in priority their homegrown food to tourists and harnessing the energies of the household members to this end. Their attempt to receive money support from a programme of the European Union failed. As a result, they found themselves heavily indebted and obliged to work as migrants in the United Kingdom. This case study illustrates how the idea of the marketable self and home have met certain local conditions, thus giving birth to a locally cherished ideal of the commercial home and how difficult is to make this ideal come true.