Church Publicistic Essays by Korneli Kekelidze

Abstract

In 2019 the Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature published a collection of articles “Ten Articles for the Press” by a well-known Georgian literature scholar Korneli Kekelidze (1879–1962). The collection incorporates the articles published in the newspapers in 1916–1917, but not included in any later book by Kekelidze. The articles discuss such issues as holy days and the Orthodox Church structures, the religious state in Georgia and the Georgian-Russian Church relations, as well as Church reforms and other urgent issues of the Church life.

The review discusses the above-mentioned ten articles by Korneli Kekelidze, considering their religious and political context, and also studies not widely known facts from the researcher’s biography. These facts are related to his work, first of all, as of an Orthodox priest and rector of the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, and then, as of a professor of the Tbilisi State University, who, in terms of the communist dictatorship, was forced to get engaged in the ideological propaganda of the atheist state.