Pavlo Smytsnyuk of the Elliott School of International Affairs comments on Pope Leo XIV’s initiatives to bring peace to Ukraine.
This series aims to explore the roles of colonialism and decolonization in the interaction of law and religion.
Religion and religious institutions can be employed by the state to support its imperial expansion and facilitate the loyalty and cultural homogenization of colonized territories and populations. Historically, these processes are often combined with proselytizing the imperial religion. They can, however, also preserve some religious freedom or autonomy for the domestic population, as Stanislav Panin discusses regarding Russia’s colonization of Siberia and the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in that colonization.
Stanislav Panin holds a PhD in Philosophy from Moscow State University and is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Rice University.
When viewed through the lens of modern sensibilities concerning religious tolerance, some acts of fourteenth-century Russian Orthodox Saint Stephen of Perm seem questionable.
Stephen, a missionary of the Russian Orthodox Church, was particularly renown for spreading Christianity among the polytheistic peoples of western Siberia. According to his hagiography, Stephen and his followers regularly destroyed figures of local traditional deities, which Stephen “hated with intense hatred” and intentionally sought out, in order to cut them down with an axe and set them on fire.