Rony Ojajärvi Finland, due to its long history and shared border with Russia, has been influenced by the religious traditions that developed in the soil of our eastern neighbour. The Tolstoian tradition is historically interesting in this sense. Leo Tolstoy, after fighting in the Russian army, made an about-turn and became a strong advocate of […]
Sini Mikkola The cult of the temporary In 2015, The Guardian published an article discussing the pop-up phenomenon, referring to it as a ‘cult of the temporary’. This phenomenon, increasingly adapted in our culture during the past decade or so, can be seen as one method for arranging various short-term activities and creating temporary spaces […]
Lauri Thurén Contrary to common belief, the founder of Christianity was not much of a preacher man. He is most commonly referred to in the synoptic gospels as a teacher, and he seldom proclaims any divine truths. Instead, Jesus typically asks his audience questions and tells them stories about daily life, beggars and kings, bad […]
Talvikki Ahonen For centuries if not millennia, Orthodox Christianity has maintained a complex cultural/political relationship with the “West.” The Great Schism of 1054 divided Christendom and formed the religious and cultural self-understanding of the Orthodox faithful as inherently opposed to the West. The vagueness of the term West has enabled a wide range of (often […]
Matti Kotiranta & Antti Raunio A commonly held view is that the Western world perceives human beings as being individualistic. ‘Individualism’ may be understood in many ways, but the main question is whether the Western view of human beings is as strongly individualistic as it is often thought (or claimed) to be. This is an […]