Religion Leadership Research Articles

МЕЖДУ УКРАИНСКИМ И ПОЛЬСКИМ НАЦИОНАЛИЗМОМ: ПРАВОСЛАВНАЯ ЦЕРКОВЬ НА ВОЛЫНИ В МЕЖВОЕННЫЙ ПЕРИОД

The article reveals the evolution of Poland’s policy towards the Orthodox Church in the 1920s and 1930s on the example of Orthodoxy in Volynia. This region of Poland had the largest number of Orthodox Christians, and Ukrainians prevailed among them. The Ukrainian national movement that was growing during those years stood for Ukrainization of the Orthodox Church in Volynia. The advocates of Ukrainization put pressure on the religion leadership and declared the need for “derussification” of the church life. They also proclaimed Russian priests as a threat not only to Ukrainians, but also to the Polish state, and called them supporters of the restoration of “one and undivided Russia”. In the early 1920s, the Polish authorities were afraid of the Ukrainian national movement and put up with the continuing influence of the ethnic Russian priests in the Orthodox Church. Polish officials did not want to allow the church to become an additional resource for the political influence of Ukrainian nationalists. After the coup of May 1926, when the supporters of Marshal J. Pilsudski came to power in Poland, state policy began to change in favor of the Ukrainization of the Orthodox Church in Volynia. The Volyn governor Henryk Józewski made an important contribution to the approval of this policy. However, later, under the influence of the international political situation in Europe during the 1930s, the approach of the Polish authorities towards the Orthodox Church in Volynia changed again. The authorities set a course towards the Polonization of the Ukrainians in Volynia together with the strengthening of the position of the Roman Catholic Church in the region. All this led to an increase of inter-ethnic tensions and anti-Polish sentiments there.

Female religious leadership in Switzerland: norms, power, and money

ABSTRACTWomen’s access to positions of leadership in religions is a highly contested issue in Western societies, both inside religions themselves and in societal discussions of religion. Reliable data on actual female leadership are, however, scarce, especially in European countries and regarding minority religions. This article describes and explains statistically the normative openness of congregations to female leadership as well as the actual existence, position, and financial remuneration of female leaders across the whole range of religious traditions in Switzerland. The study is based on data from the representative National Congregations Study of 2008/2009. Our results show that, despite considerable normative openness, female spiritual and administrative leadership remains scarce in most religious traditions. The highest percentage of female spiritual leaders can be found in the milieu of alternative spirituality, followed by the Reformed congregations. A generally high percentage of female leadership can be found on administrative boards. It is only leadership positions in certain Christian traditions (Reformed, Catholic, Evangelical-classical) that are normally remunerated for women; many other traditions do not have female leadership or, as in the case of the milieu of alternative spirituality, such leadership positions are not remunerated.

Making “Unofficial” Sacred Space: Spirit Mediums and House Temples in Singapore

Although there has been significant work done on the creation of sacred space in residential housing, not enough attention has been paid to a particular segment of Chinese religion leadership in Singapore – spirit mediums – and the processes in which they practice within the political ideology of the modernist Singaporean state. In this paper, I will show how spirit mediums operate within “unofficially sacred” spaces, specifically house temples that subvert and resist functionalist policies of the Singapore state. Using two visually focussed, participant‐observation case studies, I will argue that this subversion is sustained in two inter‐related ways—one, through the visual comportment of the spirit medium's body through behavior and aesthetic markers and two, through the social prominence of the spirit medium when he or she is in a trance. These two factors come together to temporally displace the importance of the physical location, allowing a spirit medium to operate in any location, “official” or “unofficial.”