Russian Religious Thought

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The course highlights a series of topics, personalities, and ideas of Russian religious thought from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The overview is provided against the background of religious history of Muscovy and Russia, with its wide, and often neglected, variety of denominations and spiritual movements - Orthodox, Old-Believing, Sectarian, Catholic and Protestant. Special attention will be given to the role religious thinkers and theologians from Ukraine played in the intellectual history of the Russian Empire. The course is based on reading and discussion of primary texts in translation. The students will be introduced to the works of Feofan Prokopovich, Hryhory Skovoroda, Piotr Chaadaev, Aleksey Khomyakov, Vladimir Solovyov, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky, Georges Florovsky, and Alexander Schmemann. Thematically, the course material is focused on topics of political theology, theology of history, theology of culture, theology of ritual, and issues of Christian unity.