sobornost

English

Alternative forms

• sobornost'

Etymology

From Russian соборность.

Noun

sobornost (uncountable)

1. (philosophy, theology) A unity of people in loving fellowship.
   • 2004, James H Billington, Russia in Search of Itself, p. 146:

     Some post-Soviet writers see sobornost’ as a – if not the – defining element in giving distinctiveness to Russian civilization.

   • 2007, Paul Haffner, Mystery of the Church, p. 132:

     Sobornost signifies the essentially extrapersonal (supra-personal) and a-temporal nature of aesthetic consciousness.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 851:

     Key to his thought was a concept which has become central to modern Russian Orthodox thinking, Sobornost’, the proposition that freedom is inseparable from unity, communion or community.