The author of this study, John P. Burgess, wants to show the significance of religion, and of the religious revival of the last two decades, for an appropriate understanding of Russia. His argument is that “Holy Rus΄” is a goal that Russian society is striving towards (“I describe a nation that longs for Holy Rus΄,” 2), after a persecution of church and religion that lasted for most of the twentieth century. Interestingly, although the Holy Rus΄ idea is indeed mentioned from time to time throughout the seven chapters of his book, it is never fully conceptualized nor does it seem to occupy a prominent position. Sometimes, it is identified with theological ideas from the Orthodox tradition (above all theosis), but that also not consequently. So it remains a little bit unclear what hides behind it, other than the fascination Russian religiosity exerts on Burgess, and not only on him.

To prove his claim, Burgess structures his book into seven chapters, which deal with various aspects of church life. The first gives an outline of the religious dimension of Russia's present and past, including the ambiguous position of Russian Orthodoxy towards the west. The next chapter retells the “Rebirth of Orthodoxy,” meaning the developments after the end of communism, and the reaction of the Church, with an accent on its missionary activities. The following chapters are dedicated to religious education (both on parish and academic levels) to the social services provided by the Church, to the veneration of the New Martyrs (the saints who were canonized in the last few decades as victims of communist persecution), and to parish life.

Burgess has collected a lot of impressions and information about the current life of Russian Orthodoxy in two longer field stays, both in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in many shorter trips. He has travelled the country widely and has experienced the metropoles as well as the provinces, the parishes as well as the monasteries, and talked to bishops as well as to normal parishioners and to non-believers. This makes up the strengths, but also the weaknesses of the book: it contains interesting information, some fascinating images and depictions of how believers live in today's Russia, and brings new intelligence into the activities of the Orthodox church, but it lacks sufficient conceptualization of the comeback of religion after the end of communism. The idea of Holy Rus΄ is not convincingly explicated and seems to me not to be an overall explanation of what Burgess describes. He makes a point in seeing Holy Rus΄ and the contemporary Russian inclination towards Orthodoxy as a kind of civil religion—however, one must ask whether this concept, which was created for the US context, can be applied to Russian society. Even if so, then it clearly misses the idea the Church has about its own mission (which the author is aware of, describing it as “to bring people into communion with the divine through active participation in Church life,” 42).

To be fair, Burgess mentions many of the issues noticed above. He notices the limitations of the Holy Rus΄ concept, and several times in the book his doubts as a Protestant theologian gleam through his admiration for Russia and her Orthodoxy. He concedes that his book was written for a wider audience, which makes it easily readable, on the one hand, but leaves it with some shortcomings, on the other. One is the fact that the book is missing a bibliography, and the presentation of the material could have been sometimes more coherent. Instead, the book has a very personal character and describes many encounters and experiences the author had in Russia. As mentioned above, this can also be an advantage; the reader learns details which may have been hitherto unknown even to the specialist, and which make the reading lively for the interested layperson. Though it does not convincingly conceptualize the revival of the Orthodox faith in Russia, it nevertheless offers an engaging description of contemporary Russian belief in many of its dimensions.