Preliminary Programme

The significance of English Catholicism in the late seventeenth century has traditionally been ignored by Protestant historians and manipulated by Catholics for partisan religious reasons. Its importance as a political force and a religious community has rarely been appreciated. In accordance with recent work on the early 1600s, this paper will consider the agency of contemporary Catholics. Using a case study of William Blundell, from 1660 to his death in 1698, this paper will consider how seventeenth century Catholics altered their behaviour to survive in a hostile Protestant environment. It will be argued that by manipulating existing power structures and creating networks of both Protestants and Catholics who protected them, Catholics were able to avoid the extremes of the penal laws and assert their influence on local and national affaires in direct opposition to Protestant authorities. (Show less)

Both the phenomenon of the Warsaw Frankists and that of the St. Petersburg Chlysty community of Ekaterina Tatarinova give testimony to the possibility of breaking out of confining religious frameworks and creating new religious initiatives outside of the established order. In a broad sense, they can be seen as part of a process of personalization of faith that began in the 18th century and was manifest in various, often vehement forms in many parts of Europe.


The process of secularization, which was marked by both the distancing of social groups from the church and an increasing indifference towards issues of religious bestowal of sense, was accompanied by a simultaneous intensification of religious conservatism, which rejected the Enlightenment's criticism of religion and church.
The 18th and early 19th century was not only an age of enlightenment, but also of religious "enthusiasts" - of pietists and Herrnhuters, of methodists and "inspired congregations" of radical pietism, and of mystics.
All these movements and phenomena are symptoms of the beginning fragmentation of traditional religiousness.

Examining the everyday behavior and religious self-identifications of two non-conformist religious groups, I will focus on this process by emphasizing the relevance of social sutiations for the analysis of religiousness.
The situational approach to religiousness illuminates the fact that variability is the essence of religiousness in its significance for the structuring of social relations in diverse situational contexts.

Using the case of two non-conformist religious groups, I will exemplify the possibility of varying religious identity in different social situations as a strategy of everyday behavior.
The conversion to Catholicism and acknowledgement of Jacob Frank's messianic leadership led his Jewish adherents in Warsaw into a simultaneous affiliation with the religious commune of Frank on the one hand, with Poland's catholic community on other. This peculiar situation forced the Frankists to split their religious practice into a public profession of faith to Catholicism and a "privately" practiced Frankist creed.
The religious practice of Tatarinova's associates was characterized by a dual affiliation as well: adherents practiced "radenija," but since they had never broken with the church, could also attend Orthodox services.

I shall introduce the model of situational religiousness as a key concept for understanding the social praxis of these groups. It will be shown how the subjective sense of belonging varied in domestic life, in friendship, marriage, club and social activities, business, and religious practice.
These diverse identities were not constant and all-embracing. Rather, they were constituents of a plurality of identities and functions of situations. (Show less)

Paper examines contacts among Lutheran churches in the West and the Soviet Union.
Until present some research has been done on the history of so-called German (Lutheran) congregations in Russia, however, many of them fail in presenting the whole picture and the genesis of the work with Lutheran (including German) congregations in the Soviet Union.
Particular research touches upon the very beginnings of relationships among Lutherans on both sides of the Iron Curtain, examines their development and evaluates their goals. The paper discovers several levels of contacts: legal (like cooperation with the Lutheran World Federation and some other Lutheran churches and organisations) and illegal (above all some missionary organisations from the West), official (official delegations) and unofficial contacts.
The paper argues that all kinds of contacts throughout the first phase (up till the 1970s) built up a certain network, which allowed expanding relationships as well as also aiding in the 1970s and 1980s, as the political situation in the Soviet Union became favourable for that. (Show less)

This paper examines the special contribution of forced conversion to the formation of a new social identity through a comparison between the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Conversas, and the Mashhadi Jewesses of Iran. Both communities were forced to convert while struggling to maintain a former-covert religious identity. In spite of great differences, the distance in time and in religious culture common social traits dependant on the common fate of a crypto-faith community emerged. The evolution of the new social-cultural and even ethnic identity was a process whereby religious motifs generated cultural cohesion, and communal ties facilitated both.
The paper particularly concentrates on strengthened familistic values, and re-gendering social roles which were central in the formation of communal identity. Covert religious identity forced those communities to centre spiritual life in the family. Thus, women's gender roles gave them an opening for empowerment. Both facts engendered endogamy, which in turn forged the religious ties into a bond of blood and faith. Each of their practices designed to preserve their secret identity set them apart of both faith communities they belonged to: the old and the new, the open and the secret. Thus, even when danger was over a new community was born, more self-conscious, and stronger than before. (Show less)