Patriarch Tikhon's 1918 letter to Vladimir Lenin and Metropolitan Sergii's 1927 Declaration of Loyalty cite Romans 13, but for apparently different reasons that have been vigorously debated ever since. One thing is for sure, though: the invocation of this particular biblical passage—seemingly understood by both men as a sincere exhortation to submit to an earthly authority or accept God's wrath for doubting its legitimacy—established what was to become an extraordinarily complex relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet state. The subject of Paul's letter—the position of the church vis-à-vis the state—provides an apt framework for this collection by a well-chosen group of essayists, almost half of whom are scholars with ties to the Keston Institute, now the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society at Baylor University.

The Dangerous God: Christianity and the Soviet Experiment approaches the survival of Christianity and its faithful in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia as a form of political resistance. As Dominic Erdozain writes in his introduction, however, the resistance of the Church lacked the clearly- delineated boundaries that one might expect in a church-versus-state binary or even in a more democratic separation of church and state. Instead, the essays describe the peculiar “symphonic” relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state that resulted in what Erdozain describes as the “interpenetration of religious ideas within a hostile Soviet culture—and, it must be said, the permeation of Soviet ideology within the Russian Orthodox Church” (4). Any church defiance, the volume shows, was made up of “a series of subtle subversions” and a “theology of resistance” (4) that, while “diffuse” and “eclectic,” was strategically worldly in offering a humanistic counter narrative that persistently cast doubt on the Soviet project. Placing value on human dignity, truth telling, artistic creativity, and the power of the laity, this doctrine of opposition took various forms over the decades. Viewing the many acts of faith expressed through the celebration of the liturgy and in samizdat publications, the human rights movement, the arts, the refusal to collaborate with the state, and (the often related) terms in Soviet labor camps through a wide array of disciplinary lenses and sources, this volume paints a full and nuanced picture of “the dangerous God” of resistance, allowing readers to more fully appreciate James Warhola's concluding chapter, which provides an insightful and thorough consideration of the meaning and usefulness of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The volume is organized chronologically; each essay stands on its own and can be appreciated separately. Within this chronology, however, certain thematic pairings take shape and, as a whole, the essays tell the fascinating and culturally-essential story of the life of the Russian Orthodox Church under communism, its effects, and the circumstances and implications of its liberation. Scott Lingenfelter's chapter shows how the disparate early Soviet policies regarding religion had the unintended consequences of empowering the laity, who sometimes used these same policies to defend and even revive their churches and church communities. Julie deGraffenried explores Soviet childhood through the anti-religious campaign against the “pious grandmothers,” whose place in the family and culture often complicated and undermined the propaganda. Michael Bourdeaux provides a thoughtful history and, in many instances, a valuable first-hand account of the church's mid- to late-twentieth century history of persecution, collusion, and liberation, while Wallace Daniel focuses on the life of Father Gleb Iakunin, who is also discussed in Lauren Tapley's essay on Orthodox Christian dissidents and the human rights movement in the Soviet era. John Burgess's consideration of the liturgy as an “alternative worldview” and a source of strength for its celebrants underscores the power of words and—as Roy Robson notes in his elegant afterword—the difficulty of muting their effect.

Several essays demonstrate the power of prose and poetry not only to convey the human values and core beliefs that sought to undermine Soviet ideology, but also allowed writers and poets to survive the kind of cultural martyrdom described in Gulag memoirs and works of fiction. Dominic Erdozain gives a broad but interesting reading of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago as a transcendental sidestepping of the regime, while Josephine von Zitzewitz brings readers up to the 1970s and 80s with a discussion of the unofficial (samizdat) work of the Leningrad poets and the “religious impulse” that informed their work. Xenia Dennen writes a compelling chapter on poet Irina Ratushinskaia, who endured and even transcended her ordeal in the Gulag through the transformative power of her own poetry and her faith.

Although the collection is full of stories of courage and self-sacrifice, not everyone is a hero in the history of the Soviet-era church. Read together, Michael Bourdeax and Geraldine Fagan's essays on collaboration and collusion within the church provide a welcome check on what might be perceived as the sometimes exuberant tone of support for the Russian Orthodox Church that runs through the collection. A wider historical perspective may have helped to better contextualize and further tease out the complicated relationship between the Orthodox Church—not always the victim—and Russia's rulers, as well as acknowledge some of the Church's own serious shortcomings, such as the accruement of vast wealth, its treatment of dissidents faiths, and the place of women within the faith. The volume may also have benefited from a bit more editing (the running head for Dennen's essay, for example, refers to the previous chapter). These minor criticisms aside, The Dangerous God is a well-crafted and timely volume that explores the story of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet state in intelligent ways, allowing educated readers and scholars in a variety of fields to understand not only its history, but also its significance in today's world.