Economtsev, Igoumen Ioann

Currently is Rector of the Russian Orthodox University and Head of the Department for Religious Education and Catechism of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Memoirs of a Provincial Priest: A Novel

1999 0-7734-3232-9
The genre of this wonderful book goes far beyond the novel: it is metaphysical, philosophical, and mystical, but primarily it is the life of Russian Orthodox Church shown from the inside, through the eyes of a man ordained into its concealed depths. Perhaps it is for the first time in Russian literature that the chief positive hero of the novel is an orthodox priest whose heroic life is crowned by martyrdom. The book reveals the historical roots of bolshevism, its antihuman essence and historical utopianism. To exemplify inalienable, God-given human rights (chief among them freedom of conscience) the author has chosen the deeply personal genre of the diary-novel. Following the tradition of Dostoevsky, Igoumen Ioann succeeded in combining acute plot with almost polyphonic writing. It is not simply an ideological novel, but a novel-mystery, in which is visible the unlimited spiritual.

Role of the Orthodox Church in Russian History From Byzantine Era to the Present

1999 0-7734-3247-7
Today when Russia is suffering from economic and political insecurities, this book gives hope through its spiritual insight into the origins and thousand-year-long history of Holy Russ. The work offers new and original insights into the founding of the Byzantine faith as a world religion and a cultural phenomena arising out of the spiritual influences of the Near East and Egypt. In Russian.