Stockholm School of Theology

This article analyses public confession of sins according to Tertullian (160-225 CE) as an emotionally and socially costly signal of commitment to a religious group, early 3rd century Christianity in Carthage. Here "public" means "before the community of believers" rather than "before society in general". What group dynamic functions did the ritual have and why did people accept undergoing the shame of public confession of sins?

No abstract available.

Cyril Hovorun explains the origin and nature of the conflict in Ukraine in connection with the notion of the “Russian world.” In support of this idea of Russian hegemonic power, the Russian Orthodox Church has been co-opted to promote a sense of external threats to Christian morality, its own superiority as a Russian Orthodox civilization, and an ethos of confrontation. Yet, contrary to Samuel Huntington’s prediction that post-Cold War conflicts would center on differences of civilization rather than of ideology, the conflicts in Georgia (2007) and Ukraine (2014) have pitted people of the same Russian (Orthodox) civilization against one another. Examining parallels with nineteenth-century German nationalism, the author finds that the conflict in Ukraine is not really between Russia and the West, but between the desire to return to “Soviet” statism and the contrary desire to establish the common good as a responsibility of the state.