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The humid, tropical environment, and sometime brutal typhoons have a habit of undoing the built environment quickly. Micronesian religious culture recognizes that reality about the world, and has found ways to bring the beauty of that world into worship.

Though the vast majority of Micronesians identify as Christian (just over half the population identifies as Catholic), Christianity came late to these islands, beginning in the 1850s. Today the Church relies on a large number of lay catechists and deacons.

Compared to western Europeans, Ukrainians stand out on several fronts as more socially conservative.

A visit to any of the major older churches of Lviv shows just how much Lviv was a crossroads of cultures. Extraordinary Baroque—quintessentially Roman style—churches, legacies of Polish and Austro-Hungarian rule, are decorated with the iconostasis screens and other elements that aim to mark them as Byzantine.

Migration has radically expanded the footprint of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the last 135 years, and brought the Church into very different cultural contexts. But as the community has moved out of ethno-religious enclaves in the United States and Canada, the numbers there have rapidly declined.

In a holy season beginning with a Great Lent fast lasting longer than 40 days, to "Willow Sunday," and a midnight Resurrection Matins on Easter, followed by "Bright Week," Ukrainian Greek Catholics have no more iconic tradition than their exquisitely decorated eggs, and no more beloved practice than the blessing of Easter baskets.

Food and fasting play a relatively significant role in the spirituality and religious culture of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Believers are encouraged to abstain from meals on many occasions throughout the year. As a matter of custom, at Christmas feasts and Easter Pasky the choice of particular foods plays a big role in how people mark the days.

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church celebrates the Divine Liturgy—the Eucharist—and other sacraments according to the Byzantine rite. The Byzantine liturgy aims to invoke splendor and glory, to envision heaven here on earth. Incense and chant play significant roles in arousing the experience of worship.

Ukrainians today have a strong sense of national identity, despite the fact that for most of the last millennium its territory has been other empires’ borderlands, ruled by neighboring great powers, and despite the fact that powerful challenges to the country’s boundaries endure.

Though India has had powerful women in politics, gender segregation in India is more formalized and obvious than in many parts of the world. However, interviewees say that the role of women in the church is at best a nascent concern, and one that is often trivialized.