Chris Hann and the "Civil Religion" Group: The Postsocialist Religious Question. Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe

Abstract

As the editor states in the first sentence of Chapter 1 "The title of this volume is of course a conceit. How could there possibly be a single unified ‘religious question’ in all the countries that, until recently, were socialist?" This reviewer agrees with the editor, for indeed there is only a single question, if it is a question, on the new presupposition of "post-socialism". In fact what we find is that the various regions of the old regime, which have in many cases became independent countries, are quite diverse in their religious culture, as indeed they were before the end of the Soviet Union.