Alexander Agadjanian

Diversity within and outside the Church creates pressure to uniformity of dogma, canonical rules and authority. Eastern Orthodoxy used to possess an elaborate tradition of negotiating diversity. However, in recent decades the Orthodox Church was challenged by a radically different type of diversity – western liberal pluralism – which draws upon principles and codes that are absent from the Church’s intellectual and historical memory. My project explores some of the Church’s responses to these challenges.

The project The Perils of Moralism: Russian Orthodoxy and Russian Politics is related to IWM’s research focus “Russia in Global Dialogue” and Kristina Stoeckl’s research project Religious Traditionalism and Politics.