This interdisciplinary volume explores religious conversion and nonreligion in 20th-century Central and Eastern Europe, examining how emerging nations, empire inheritors, and socialist projects mobilized religious politics to manufacture consent while destabilizing the very communities they sought to control.
Drawing on original archival research and fieldwork, the book analyzes the interdependence of collective and individual identities, integrating state-driven atheization into the study of conversion. It traces conviction-driven, coercive, strategic, and nonreligious shifts, situating them within broader processes of state formation, social engineering, and political power. Rich in empirical material, the volume offers conceptual tools and comparative frameworks to understand the entanglement of religion, nonreligion, and power during political upheaval.
Intended for scholars and practitioners in history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and related fields, this book provides valuable insights for those studying the dynamics of religion and nonreligion in politically complex contexts.
The Introduction, Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license (Introduction and Chapter 10), and a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International license (Chapter 11).
Arvustused
Taking conversion as its analytical lens, this volume offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of religious change in Central and Eastern Europe. With studies spanning the entire region and balancing the overtly political with the intimate and subjective, the editors and contributors have crafted an indispensable contribution to both area studies and religious studies.
Professor James A. Kapaló, University College Cork
This volume brings much-needed attention to the religious-political history of regions often treated as imperial peripheries. Yet, modern European historys most extreme dynamics unfolded in this shatterzone of empires. These chapters reveal conversion as a key process amid Ottoman collapse, Soviet atheism, and resurgent Christian nationalism.
Professor Todd H. Weir, University of Groningen
Introduction. Crossing Boundaries: Conversions in Central and Eastern
Europe in the Long 20th Century Section 1: Conversion, Conviction, and Faith
1. Lev Gillets Great Object of Intercession: Ecumenism and Conversion
Between France, Russia, and Ukraine
2. Conversions from, to, and Within the
Evangelical Faith in the Late USSR (19501980s)
3. The Politics of
Conversion: Institutional Strategies of the Serbian Orthodox Church Toward
Religious Alternatives in the 20th Century
4. Conversion Without Crisis?:
Inquiry into Religious Narratives of the Baháí Community in Bosnia and
Herzegovina Section 2: Conversion, Coercion, and Protection
5. Muslim
Conversions to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the Modern Balkans
6.
Religious Need or Survival Strategy?: Conversions Among Jews in Occupied
Kraków and Other Localities in the Kraków District in 19391945
7. The
Reaction of the Holy See to the Issue of the Forced Conversion of Orthodox
Serbs to Catholicism in the Independent State of Croatia
8. Fashioning the
Orthodox: Converting Greek Catholics to the Romanian Orthodox Church After
the State-Enforced Union Section 3: Conversion, Power, and Unrest
9. Religion
as Social Protest: The Orthodox Movement in Podkarpatská Rus (19191938)
10.
Converts and the Rise of Nationalism Among German Evangelicals and Orthodox
Slovenians in Interwar Slovenia
11. Sacralizing Ethnos: Conversions to
Ethnoreligiosity in Eastern Europe Section 4: Conversion, Communism, and
Atheization
12. Converting to Atheism and Tackling Religious Indifference
in the Early Soviet Union
13. Yugoslav Partisans in Need of Catholic Clergy:
The Vatican and the Issue of the Yugoslav Partisans on the Italian Peninsula
in 1944
14. Speeding up Atheization in the GDR: Research Serving Worldview
Change
15. Between Political Exigency and Humanitarian Service: Catholic
(Non-)Converts in the Shaping of Socialist Funeral Culture in Hungary,
19701989
Gaper Mithans is a senior research fellow at the Science and Research Centre Koper. He led a project on religious conversions and atheization in Yugoslavia. A Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley in 2020, he has held research grants at Temple University and University College Cork. His research focuses on the history of religions, religion-state relations, and interwar Yugoslavia.
Heléna Tóth is a senior instructor in European history at the University of Bamberg. After being awarded her PhD at Harvard University, she taught European and German history at Boston University and held visiting professorships in East European history at LMU Munich and Göttingen University. Her research focuses on political cultures in Central and Eastern Europe, transatlantic history, and the cultural and social history of socialism.
Matteo Benussi is a sociocultural anthropologist based at Ca Foscari University of Venice, specializing in religion, ethics, and politics in Eurasia. Benussi has conducted research on Islamic piety movements in Tatarstan, the legacies of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, post-Soviet heritage politics, as well as halal infrastructures. He is currently exploring the topics of war, poetry, and political ontology in theaters of conflict.
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