Christianity and Modernity in Eastern Europe

Drafting a Historical Geography of East European Christianity

drafting a historical Geography of east european Christianity bruCe r. bergLunD What distinguishes Christianity in eastern europe? in the meetings and conversations leading to these essays, contributors to this project have turned repeatedly to this question. Can we identify patterns of religiosity in the region that are distinct from those in Western europe? how has eastern europe’s differing pace of industrialization, urbanization , education, and consumption affected church institutions and religious life? and what of the churches’ and individual Christians’ relationships to nationalist movements, to authoritarian regimes, to groups engaged in ethnic violence and groups engaged in political resistance —have these important players in eastern europe’s modern history been decisive in the experience and understanding of Christianity ? Might we even ask, as did one participant in the project, whether the decades of communist rule—the key distinguishing factor between europe east and West—were as significant to the region’s religious history as is generally assumed? perhaps we should look instead at developments across the postwar continent: the growth of the welfare state, the movement of women into the workplace, the expansion of education , the housing of families in high-density apartment blocks, and the saturating advance of popular culture. one might argue that these broader european trends, rather than the social and political features we typically associate with eastern europe, have been more significant in shaping Christian belief and practice in the region. of course, in asking what distinguishes the expression of Christianity in eastern europe, we also stir the question of what distinguishes “eastern europe.” historians, political scientists, and geographers mark and label this region in various ways, defining it by lagging economic and demographic development, traditions of governance that i4 Berglund_book.indb 329 2010.03.29. 19:30 330 BruCe r. BerGLund emphasize state power over social autonomy, and the legacies of colliding empires, religions, and nations.1 others have countered that the term “eastern europe” is an orientalist projection, used by French travelers, american journalists, and British comics to diminish the region as the backward foil to the civilized West.2 this essay does not propose a defense of this regional descriptor, or attempt to connect the characteristic features of the region’s political, economic, and social history to some manifestation in the practice of Christianity. instead, this essay insists simply that eastern europe does exist as a place. it is a conceptual place, with no visible boundaries or objective features, yet it remains fixed in most people’s geographic imaginations.3 Generally identifiable and packed with meaning, eastern europe is a place that journalists cover, tour groups visit, and policy makers debate. and, as a place, it can influence religious belief and practice. Cultural geographers teach us that perceptions of place have bearing on daily practices and broad worldviews. We can ask then how people’s sense of location, their understandings of place—as citizens of Łódź, as West ukrainians, as slovaks, as east europeans—interconnect with their religious imagination and expressions. Brian porter-szűcs’s introductory essay challenges us to think of religions not as historical actors but as arenas of ideas and imaginings, daily habits and seasonal ritual. Geographers caution us to do the same when thinking about regions. this essay seeks to bring together these two flexible frames, proposing that we look at Christianity as communities, institutions, and cultural phenomena produced and reproduced by people who inhabit specific locales and are shaped by ideas of place. historians of eastern europe are no strangers to the importance of geography. We conduct our work with a folio of maps committed to memory, ever ready to reference the cat’s cradle of political boundaries , the changing fates of regions like Bessarabia, silesia, and subcarpathian rus, the distribution of ethno-linguistic groups, and the whereabouts of cities like Lemberg and L’viv, Kolozsvár and Cluj, adrianople and edirne. in recent years, some scholars of the region have waded deeper into the methods of geography, incorporating that discipline’s questions and insights into studies that approach space as a category of analysis or that look beyond the national territory as the standard spatial frame.4 Likewise, scholars of religion have been alert i4 Berglund_book.indb 330 2010.03.29. 19:30 331 Drafting a Historical Geography of East European Christianity to interconnections between expressions of belief and spatial relations, the construction of place, and the contingency of locale. although “geography of religion...