Religious Toleration and the Civil Order in Imperial Russia, 1772-1914
"Arbiters of the Sacred" integrates the experience of Russia's non-Orthodox religions into larger narratives of Russian history. The project examines discourses of religious freedom and the role of confessional institutions and canonical rules in the creation of a civil order for the culturally diverse peoples of Russia over the long nineteenth century. It tells the story of how an autocratic regime with profound investments in religiously constituted forms of morality and authority sought to enlist confessional elites for the empire's governance and expansion. It also recounts the role of non-Orthodox elites and believers in both constructing this religious order and exposing the limits of imperial religious toleration.
[Grant products][Media coverage]