Stella Rock

Stella Rock is Senior Research Fellow at Baylor University, Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society. Her research focuses on Russian Orthodoxy, in particular popular faith and the relationship between religious and national identity; the historiography of Russia; the relationship between religion, prejudice and conflict.

Russia’s new saints and the challenges of memory

The Soviet-era repression of Christian clerics has led to the posthumous recognition of many new Orthodox saints. But the faithful, it seems, are not interested. They still prefer the quick fix of traditional saints to these humble “new martyrs”, writes Stella Rock.

By Stella Rock

/ 9 Aug 2011

Racist Crime in Russia

For the last five years a small Moscow-based NGO, the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis, has produced an annual report on radical nationalist activity in Russia and the efforts

By Stella Rock

/ 24 Mar 2009

Remembering Aleksii II Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia 1990-2008

Between forty and ninety thousand believers paid their respects to the late Patriarch Aleksii II, who died on the morning of 5 December 2008, as he lay in state in

By Stella Rock

/ 10 Dec 2008

Following the cross: a journey with Russian pilgrims

Pilgrims at the St Seraphim Spring in Diveevo (phot.Sandra Reddin) ‘Faith means you don't notice the cold, the hunger, the fact your feet are sore,' an

By Stella Rock

/ 22 Oct 2008