"From Stalin to Saints"

Here's a link to an article from the New Statesman about a journey that Tom Blass recently took in Albania. He makes some interesting observations about the place religion now plays in Albanian culture.

Albanians are now almost boastful about their tolerance. Mixed marriages are frequent. "I can marry whoever I want," a Muslim girl told me in Voskopoja. She spends her weekends helping to restore a demolished Orthodox church, and learned English from American evangelists, "but I'm still a Muslim". And within any one fis, or clan, any combination of religious affiliations is possible (although clan membership itself lends labyrinthine complexity to the task of self-definition and marriage).