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Dear Spotakachers,<br>
<br>
I forwarding an articles to your consideration(published in TOL
(<a href="http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=108&NrSection=3&NrArticle=13815" eudora="autourl"><font size=3 color="#0000FF"><u>http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=108&NrSection=3&NrArticle=13815</a>)
<br>
<br>
</font></u>regards, Olga<br>
<br>
The Orthodox Are Coming<br>
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<br>
by Nicolai N. Petro<br>
25 March 2005<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
“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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.</html>