[Spotykach] clash of cultures

[Olha]

Dear Spotakachers,

I forwarding an articles to your consideration(published in TOL
(http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue
=108&NrSection=3&NrArticle=13815) 

regards, Olga

The Orthodox Are Coming
Previous page  page 1 of 2  next page 

by Nicolai N. Petro
25 March 2005

The Orthodox are increasingly important players in the EU--which makes it all
the more important to stop regarding Orthodoxy as intrinsically anti-modern and
anti-Western. From New Europe Review.

“The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” was a 1966 Hollywood spoof
of Cold War attitudes. It portrays a Soviet submarine crew stranded on the
coast of Maine. The Soviet sailors end up winning over the local townspeople,
who even help the sub to escape before U.S. Air Force planes arrive to sink it.
The movie made light of the differences between Russians and Americans by
suggesting that they had much more in common than they realized.

As improbable as that story seemed back in 1966, an even more momentous
encounter is currently taking place in Europe. Thanks to the expansion of the
European Union, millions of Orthodox Christians now have a seat at the table of
European decision-making bodies. The admission of Romania and Bulgaria will
quadruple the number of Orthodox Christians in the EU, from 10 million to more
than 40 million, but this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Should the
EU continue to expand eastward, it could someday encompass as many as 200
million Orthodox believers, transforming Orthodox Christianity from a quaint
minority into the largest denomination in Europe, with the Russian Orthodox
Church as its pre-eminent political voice. This will be true regardless of
whether Russia itself joins the EU, since more than half of its parishes are
located outside Russia. For the first time since before the fall of
Constantinople, Orthodox polities are part of the decision-making structures of
Europe, yet little thought has been given to the impact this is likely to have
on the political complexion of Europe.

There are some potentially worrisome aspects to this encounter. For one thing,
the political weight of the Church within those countries is not declining, as
it is in Western Europe, but growing. Orthodox faithful expect to have their
voice heard within the European political institutions of which they are now a
part, and this poses a direct challenge to the secular framework of the EU.
Moreover, with the fall of communism, the various branches of Christianity are
once again in direct competition for members. Religious proselytism has already
emerged as a source of tensions in several Orthodox countries. Finally, while
most take it for granted that people in Eastern Europe will follow the Western
path of modernization, it is certainly worth pondering what impact the values
of Orthodox Eastern Europe will have on the West, and the potential danger of
an intra-European clash of cultures, if a common ground is not found.

There are many who believe that there is, in fact, no common ground to be
found. Following in the footsteps of historians Oswald Spengler and Arnold
Toynbee, Samuel Huntington has warned of the coming clash between
“Slavic-Orthodox” civilization and the Catholic-Protestant West. He claims that
basic Western cultural values (“individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism,
human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, the
separation of church and state”) have little currency within Orthodox cultures.
In his view there is a slim chance that Orthodox countries can join the West,
but only if they recast their self-identity in clearly secular terms.
Huntington portrays the Eastern and Western halves of Europe as profoundly
alien, and “the eastern boundary of Western Christianity [as] . . . the most
significant dividing line in Europe.”

Recently, however, a much more hopeful assessment has begun to gain ground in
both Western and Eastern Europe. It advocates a broader view of the process of
European integration, by suggesting that the Western and Eastern branches of
Christianity focus less on what has divided them, and more on re-acquiring the
common cultural heritage that once united them. Most people realize that the
common cultural legacy begins with Roman law and Greek philosophy, and that
both contributed to the stability of the Byzantine Empire. Few, however, stop
to consider its contribution to the theology of the Christian Church and its
doctrines on Church-State relations in particular. Of special importance is the
evolving Orthodox view of democracy and civil society, which can be most
clearly traced in the Russian Orthodox Church because of its size and its
impact on the whole Orthodox world.

According to senior spokesman for the Patriarch Alexey II, Fr. Vsevolod
(Chaplin), there is a renewed appreciation of democracy within the Russian
Orthodox Church. Democratic institutions allow the Church to carry out its
social mission more effectively, and to voice concern about the decay of moral
standards in post-Soviet Russia. Still, he says, Orthodoxy’s endorsement of
democracy can only be a qualified one. Democracy, particularly secular
democracy, can never be considered a proper ideal, because the Church can never
accept as ideal any form of government that consciously separates itself from
the divine. However, there are two notable elements in Church life that
directly contribute to the democratization of society: 1) the locus of its
authority; and 2) its stewardship of the community.
Unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy is highly decentralized and dispersed.
There is no supreme papal authority overseeing the 15 autocephalous Local
Orthodox Churches. Ultimate authority rests with Church Councils that bring
together the entire religious community—both laity and clergy. Within that
context, bishops are expected to administer their diocese in harmony with the
will of both these groups. Historically, such administration has taken a wide
variety of forms in Russia — from thoroughly hierarchical control to extensive
popular control, including consensual investiture of bishops. The form deemed
most suitable depends on the needs of the particular Church, and the
community's prevalent political culture. In the present context of expanding
democracy, the Russian Orthodox Church has responded by expanding dialogue on
ways in which Church life should democratize.

A new generation of Western scholars on religion (Zoe Knox, Christopher Marsh,
Elizabeth Prodromou, Nikolas Gvosdev) have even applied Western literature on
civil society to contemporary Orthodoxy. By looking at the Church’s highly
delegative, almost “confederative” system of administration, and focusing on
its community-centered initiatives, they argue that the Russian Orthodox Church
(ROC) is playing an important role as the country’s largest civic organization.
In this capacity the ROC has also had to come to terms with de facto religious
pluralism of modern Russia. Following the collapse of the atheistic communist
regime, Orthodox laity was exposed to a wide variety of new political and
economic doctrines, including some from Orthodox communities outside Russia. In
the absence of a clear consensus, the leadership of the ROC decided to give up
the role of the institutional Church as a political competitor, and to
establish it as a neutral arbiter. As a result, the Church itself has become a
place of dialogue, a space existing outside the state, the government, or the
family, devoted to the preservation of an autonomous sphere for the individual,
and a protector of “the inherent foundations of human freedom from the
arbitrary rule of outside forces.” Nikolas Gvosdev quite correctly sees this as
a theological endorsement of civil society.

Indeed, Orthodox communities seem much more comfortable with the ideals of
civil society than they do with those of liberal democracy. One reason is that
they see the latter as rooted in competition and confrontation, while the
Church strives for community and harmony, a tradition that Fr. Vsevolod calls
“gathering the scattered” (literally, in Church Slavonic, sobrati
rastochennaya)—bringing people of differing ethnic, political and social
persuasion together for the common welfare. Avoiding confrontation with state
authority is deeply ingrained in the theology of Orthodoxy, stemming from the
Byzantine view that, pace St. Augustine, the gap between the “City of God” and
the “City of Man” can and should be overcome. Societies on earth should strive
to be a "reflection" of the heavenly realm, and to accomplish this Church and
State must work together for the good of the whole community.

The Orthodox Church does not shun the world, or abstain from politics. Its
politics, however, are non-partisan, a call to “calming of political passions,
and concern for peace and harmony” and to civic dialogue. A typical example is
the Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts to mediate the political crisis between
Boris Yeltsin and the State Duma in 1993. Orthodox church leaders have played
similar role in the political crises in Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia and, most
recently, Ukraine.

The issue of the Orthodox Church's stewardship of the community also poses the
question of whether Orthodoxy is compatible with capitalist economic
development and a global market economy, which many consider as vital to
democratic development. While Max Weber stressed the otherworldly aspects of
Orthodox cultures (as he did with Islam, Hinduism and Catholicism), economic
developments in Russia suggest that the notion of Orthodox Christian
stewardship affords ample room for business and economic development. In fact,
the rebirth of Russian Orthodoxy (from 7,000 parishes in the early 1990s to
more than 26,000 today) has coincided with a no less impressive economic
upsurge, particularly since 1999. Record-breaking productivity growth, rapid
increases in domestic investment, and a tripling of wages nationwide since 2000
have been matched by a seven-fold increase in corporate philanthropy, which
Patriarch Alexey II has highlighted as vital to the nation. Clearly, Orthodoxy
has been good for business.

We, in the Catholic-Protestant West, should prepare for the coming of the
“Orthodox Century" by appreciating all that unites us. If the dividing line
between East and West continues to exist in our hearts and minds, removing it
from the political map of Europe will accomplish very little. In the long run
Europeans must become much better educated about their common Byzantine and
Eastern Christian heritage. Even in the short run, however, the essential
elements of this common inheritance can be used to shore up pan-European
democratic institutions. Recent scholarship by Silvia Ronchey, Helene
Ahrweiler, and Antonio Carile, provide a conceptual link between Byzantine
political thought and the modern age, and highlight how much current European
aspirations to pluri-culturalism and subsidiarity (the idea that matters should
be handled by the lowest competent authority), have in common with the
Byzantine political model.

The worst possible solution would be to cling to a “clash of cultures” view
that regards Orthodoxy as anti-modern and anti-Western. This can only result in
Orthodox believers feeling like strangers in the “common European home” they
have just joined. If that occurs, we will have succeeded only in pushing the
dividing line through the heart of Europe a little further east of where it was
before.

        

Nicolai N. Petro is professor of political science at the University of Rhode
Island (USA). His most recent book is Crafting Democracy (Cornell University
Press, 2004), available in both English and Russian. This article originally
appeared in New Europe Review.
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