Paper short abstract:

The revitalization of the parochial life, seen in changes in religious body and spaces, paradoxically has a potential for laicization of the Church life, by empowering priests against the Episcopate. But could the advance of the religion in the civil activism undermine the foundations of the faith?

Paper long abstract:

The article investigates the relatively new process of the revitalization of the classical Christian-orthodox parishes in Bulgaria, which powerfully questions the dominant discourse inherited by the time of the atheist regime that reduced the role of the Church to the ideological clichés for the historical heritage and national traditions.

The renaissance of the parochial life in the Bulgarian Church, marked by the rising number of actively practicing their religion citizens, opens the ground for an on-going process of rediscovery and/or invention of a new community identity, based more on the universalism of the Christianity, rather than on the narrow borders of the nationalism. Being a predominantly urban phenomenon, that process reflects in small but distinctive changes in the public spaces: temples are renewed; parish centers are established; holiday Church services are broadcasted outside by loudspeakers. The process also acts as a prerequisite for emancipation of parish priests, who backed up by influential laymen tends to question the authority of Episcopate and state authorities, bringing the parishes in the field of civil activism.

The research is based on a field data from Bulgaria and Romania. It also explores the historical and philosophical path of the parishes, from a mystical nucleus in the pre-modern Balkan Ecumene, through their instrumentalisation for the needs of nationalism in the 19th c., and the ideological crisis that followed the Bolshevik occupation of the Christian notion for catholicity (sabornost) under the term "collectivity", to its present day revitalization under the influences of the neo-hesychastic movement.