Religion and the State in Russia and China

Reviews / Votes

Lucidly and engagingly written, Christopher Marsh's book is a landmark contribution to the growing literature on secularization and desecularization in the modern world. Previous studies have typically focused on a single country or religious movement, while there has been precious little comparative, cross-national and cross-civilizational research. Yet, without comparative research, it is impossible to theorize desecularization and detect its broad, cross-national meaning, patterns, causes, and consequences. Dr. Marsh's book fills in this gap. It detects and theorizes the patterns of religions' suppression, resilience and resurgence by comparatively exploring the cases of Russia and China. These are, without an exaggeration, the two most important and massive cases of forced secularization and subsequent religious resurgence in the 20th - early 21st century. The book marshals impressive empirical evidence, ranging from documentary sources to representative national surveys. An outstanding expert on Russia as well as China, Christopher Marsh aptly utilizes his thorough knowledge of the two cases and his fluency in both languages to present to his readers a convincing, empirically grounded yet theoretically consequential account of the stunning resilience of faith under the ruthlessly oppressive atheist regimes, and of its ongoing spectacular revival. -Peter Berger, Professor Emeritus of Religion, Sociology and Theology. Director, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University. This is a masterful work, by a scholar with the rare ability to handle sources in both Russian and Chinese, that sheds much light on theoretical debates surrounding religion and modernity, secularization, and desecularization. But it is much more than that; It is also an inspiring story of human resilience in the face of oppression. -- Peter L. Berger, University Professor Emeritus, Boston University ... [the book] presents hagiographies of Orthodox, Evangelical, Buddhist and Taoist individuals who resisted Communist persecution and who were imprisoned or killed as a result. These stories illustrate the common experience of these different religious groups and set out a shared history that binds Russian and Chinese religious leaders together. Christopher Marsh's implied hope is that the narrative of a shared past will allow for greater interreligious collaboration on issues of religious freedom in the future. -- Times Literary Supplement [This book offers] valuable contributions to emerging areas of study, focusing on the abject failure of forced secularization and Orthodoxy's influence on federal politics, respectively. -- The Russian Review The most important part of this monograph provides and concise by useful historiography of the ideas and the policies implemented by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China...The book will open the eyes of readers who are convinced that the policy of the Communist Party is simply a matter of repression and teaching atheism. It offers a needed corrective to that view. the author should be commended for providing some important contextual facts...I would recommend this book in a comparative politics or contemporary history undergraduate class, because it stands out as rigorous in its research design while remaining accessible. -- Andre Laliberte, University of Ottawa * Journal of Chinese Religions * This book will be invaluable for those interested in secularization theory. It situates the cases of post-communist Russia and China firmly within 'Bergerian' debates in the sociology of religion. -- Zoe Knox, University of Leicester * Slavonica *