{"id":1255,"date":"2009-11-20T16:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T16:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1255"},"modified":"2009-11-20T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T16:34:00","slug":"pagans-among-suspects-in-priests-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1255","title":{"rendered":"Pagans among Suspects in Priest’s Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Welcome, vistors from The Wild Hunt.<\/a> Stick around, click a few links.) <\/i><\/p>\n

A Russian Orthodox priest is murdered in his Moscow church<\/a>, and suspicion falls both on Muslims and on Russian Pagans.<\/p>\n

But note the titles of his books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We know too much about people who shout “Allah Akbar” and then pull the trigger, but why the Pagans? Why bring them into the discussion?<\/p>\n

Paganism in Russia is somewhat like what my Anglosphere readers are used to, but there are significant differences. Russian Pagans are more likely to have their own line of “blood and soil” rhetoric and to claim that they represent the true spirituality of their people, which puts them in direct conflict with the Orthodox Church, which itself has made that same claim since the 10th century.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Russian anthropologist Victor Shnirelman is one scholar who has written a lot of on the topic. Being Jewish (as I understand), he is particularly sensitive to whiffs of antisemitism, as in this article, “Russian Neopagan Myths and Antisemitism<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

The Pomegranate has published several articles on Russian and other Eastern European Paganisms. Abstracts are available online.<\/p>\n

Kaarina Aitamurto, “Russian Paganism and the Issue of Nationalism: A Case Study of the Circle of Pagan Tradition<\/a>,” 8:2 (2006) 184-210.<\/p>\n

Adrian Ivakhiv, “Nature and Ethnicity in East European Paganism: An Environmental Ethic of the Religious Right?<\/a>” 17:2 (2005) 194-225.<\/p>\n

Victor Shnirelman, “Ancestral Wisdom and Ethnic Nationalism: A View from Eastern Europe<\/a>,” 9:1 (2007) 41-61.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Welcome, vistors from The Wild Hunt. Stick around, click a few links.) A Russian Orthodox priest is murdered in his Moscow church, and suspicion falls both on Muslims and on Russian Pagans. But note the titles of his books. We know too much about people who shout “Allah Akbar” and then pull the trigger, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[5,53],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism","tag-russia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1529,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1529","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":0},"title":"No, It Wasn’t the Provocative Women","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It was Icelandic Pagans who caused the volcano to erupt, say Russian Orthodox clerics, countering the Shiite Islamic cleric who blamed women for inciting the lust of hapless men and thus, somehow, earthquakes. They noted that Iceland \"has recently become a center of European neo-paganism of Aryan occult kind, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5001","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":1},"title":"Critiquing “Double Belief” in Russian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider this a follow-up to yesterday's post on Russian dream rituals, which linked to an article whose author totally accepted the idea of spiritual practices with\u00a0 \"very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\" I had not realized this, but Routledge published a book critiquing the idea of \"double belief\"\u00a0 (dvoeverie) three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7344,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7344","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":2},"title":"Paganism and\/or Patriotism: Russia’s New Slavic Pride","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"An article in Russia Beyond the Headline talks about the rising interest in Pagan Slavic roots in that county, exemplified by the increasing number of celebrations of Perun's Day, which was last Monday. As more and more Russians seek solace in patriotism, many are turning to their ancient past and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nl.media.rbth.ru\/web\/en-rbth\/images\/2015-07\/big\/RIAN_00412882.HR_468.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":814,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=814","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":3},"title":"Animal Sacrifice and Authenticity","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month Classics scholar Mary Beard suggested that contemporary Hellenic Pagans were not quite authentic because they omitted the centerpiece of ancient Paganism: animal sacrifice. (I discussed her critique here, and she responded.)Orthodox Christian blogger Rod Dreher's recent post--and especially the comments--pretty well illustrate just how squeamish today's population--even omnivores--are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Greece\"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=greece"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5289,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5289","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":4},"title":"Is Paganism Doomed?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"No, this is not the judgment of one of the usual (Pagan) suspects. It is a tangent spun off a column by Rod Dreher, who comments frequently on ecclesiastical matters. He was raised a southern Protestant, converted to Roman Catholicism, left that church over the sex-abuse scandals, and is now\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1267,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1267","url_meta":{"origin":1255,"position":5},"title":"Contemporary Pagans: Indigenous or Not?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A kerfuffle over who said what about which flavors of Paganism at the just-concluded Parliament of the World's Religions is summarized over at The Wild Hunt.This year's parliament in Melbourne listed \"Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples\" as one of its key topics.Some contemporary Pagans have been playing the \"indigenous card\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"nature religion\"","block_context":{"text":"nature religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=nature-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}