Orthodox Church under the new Patriarch/Edited by S. Filatov and A. Malashenko, Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 2011, 416 p . Published at the end of 2011, the book could not fail to arouse the interest of religious scholars, political scientists, sociologists, and just curious readers. I must say that the very idea of such a book is long overdue. The three years of Patriarch Kirill's rule brought many innovations to the life of the Russian Orthodox Church. Unfortunately, they have not yet received a full understanding in the framework of academic, non-confessional religious studies. An attempt at such a comprehension, moreover, made by recognized and well-known experts.- page 318From this point of view, it can only be perceived positively by experts in the field of Church problems in the scientific community. We should not forget that the modern life of the Russian Orthodox Church is extremely poorly and sparsely covered in the Russian-language scientific literature. In any case, much less than we would like and would expect. In this regard, any work that purports to analyze the political, social, and cultural sphere of the Church's activity in recent years attracts close attention. The book contains a lot of interesting material, individual articles provide abundant information and food for thought. At the same time, the book as a whole, unfortunately, causes some confusion, as we will try to say below. The book is a collection of nine (in fact, ten, if you count the summing up Conclusion) articles, some of which were the result of reports and debates at seminars of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Apparently, this was the real unifying factor for the compilation of the collection, since the only thing that really connects the articles with each other is their topic. This is rather a general outline of the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the period between 1988 and 2011. Among the questions raised are the problems of religious education (Valery Ovchinnikov), ... Read more