At the turn of the twentieth century, Greek jurists insisted that the Ottoman Empire was legally pluralistic. While one jurist acknowledged the Sultan's ‘political purpose' in respecting the Greeks' privileges, another denied Muslims any agency free from Sharia. The alleged incommensurability between the Christian and Islamic law was their common agenda. Greek historians, on the other hand, saw the privileges as the Turks’ sign of goodwill, and emphasized the civilizational gap between the Catholic West and Ottoman East. Being a normative expression rather than a neutral description, legal pluralism functioned as a method of neglecting the Muslim quest for legal unity.

This text discusses several aspects of the interwar history of the Orthodox Church in Romanian Transylvania through the lens of the early life and political achievements of Father Liviu Stan (1910–1973). By using a microhistorical approach, his life stands as proof of the ability of ideological reconversion to describe the various totalitarian challenges that defined the destiny of an entire generation of Orthodox theologians in the twentieth century. Rather than painting the biographical tapestry of Father Stan's life, the main focus of this text falls precisely on his interactions with various ideologies (Fascism and Communism), his ideological and professional reconversions, and Transylvanian Orthodox theologians’ ability to survive when confronted with various totalitarian challenges.

This article follows the course of the prolonged land dispute within the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem between the Greek religious establishment and the local Arab laity from the late Ottoman period to the end of the British Mandate (1875–1948). The article examines state policies in relation to Church-owned property and assesses how the administration of this property affected the inter-communal relationship. It is argued that both the Ottoman and the British authorities effectively adopted a pro-Greek stance, and that government refusal of the local Arab lay demands was predominantly predicated on regional and global political priorities.

Since the Rose Revolution (2003), Georgia has encountered an unprecedented scale of institutional reforms concomitant with the rise of American and European involvement in the “democratization” process. Various scholars have suggested that Georgian nationalism developed from an ethno-cultural basis to a more civic/liberal orientation after the Rose Revolution. This paper analyzes Georgian nationalism under President Mikheil Saakashvili to demonstrate the significant divergence between political rhetoric on national identity, the selection of symbols, and state policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church versus state policy toward ethnic minorities. The aim of this article is to examine the at times conflicting conceptions of national identity as reflected in the public policies of Saakashvili's government since the Rose Revolution. It attempts to problematize the typologies of nationalism when applied to the Georgian context and suggests conceptualizing the state-driven nationalism of the post-Rose Revolution government as “hybrid nationalism” as opposed to civic or ethno-cultural.

In the twentieth century, the Orthodox Christian diaspora played a critical role in the development of modern Orthodox theology. Forced to take up residence in the West, major figures like Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944), Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), and Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983) successfully reinvigorated Orthodox theology for succeeding generations. Their works have become the standard readings in theological faculties and seminaries the world over. But despite the durable and multifaceted heritage of modern Orthodox theology, contemporary Orthodox Christians have been, for the most part, rather timid in thoroughly engaging themselves with matters political. Notable exceptions include Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948), who provides a far-reaching critique of both state sovereignty and the Orthodox Church's historic role in supporting worldly realms of authority. For his part, Bulgakov offers some penetrating insights in favor of the separation of church and state in the very brief chapter devoted to this topic, “Orthodoxy and the State,” in his classic treatise, The Orthodox Church. Somewhat later in the twentieth century, the few noteworthy authors who have much more specifically engaged with broader political questions include the current archbishop of Albania, Anastasios Yannoulatos, and arguably the most important Orthodox political philosopher today, Christos Yannaras.