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Orthodox and White? STATE OF AFFAIRS © 2019 The Wheel. May be distributed for noncommercial use. Orthodox and White? www.wheeljournal.com Inga Leonova On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant, in the trial (though at Roof’s behest, a self-proclaimed white supremacist he ultimately did not testify).1 This is from Australia, shot up two mosques not to impute Roof’s extreme racist in Christchurch, New Zealand, kill- views to Father Parker—who publicly ing fifty men, women, and children denounced the shooting—but rather at prayer. The 76-page manifesto he to point out how attractive Orthodox published online prior to the attack Christianity often seems to national- contains some of the predictable code ists and white supremacists, including terms that litter white supremacist Parker’s own spiritual ward. 1 Tim Smith, and nationalist literature, websites, “Community Reacts and social media threads everywhere, This episode is but the latest in a se- to Roof Death such as “the complete racial and cul- ries of news stories, blogs, and social Sentence,” Greenville tural replacement of the European media trails that point to the grow- News, January 10, people” and “mass invasion.” Signif- ing white supremacist cancer within 2017, https://www. greenvilleonline. icant for Orthodox Christians, how- Orthodoxy. The “Orthodox story” of com/story/ ever, were the mention of Chetniks the leaders of the American white su- news/2017/01/10/ on his gun cartridges and a reference premacist group Traditionalist Work- community- to the American white supremacist er Party, Matt Parrott and Matthew reacts-roof-death- Dylann Roof in the manifesto. The Heimbach, has been told many times. sentence/96385008/. Chetniks was a Serbian guerrilla na- In spite of being excommunicated by 2 While the identity tionalist group that first resisted the their Antiochian Orthodox priest in and jurisdiction Ottomans and later the Axis powers, the wake of a media outcry, both men of these parishes and was reestablished during the Yu- continue to identify as Orthodox, and cannot be confirmed, goslav Wars of the 1990s. The Chet- appear to have found spiritual shel- Parrott, Heimbach, niks were especially famous for their ters in Orthodox parishes.2 But while and their allies insist that they ideology of “cleansing” the Serbian Heimbach has enjoyed considerable have been accepted land of non-Serbs, for the practice of media coverage, his association with as communicants genocidal violence, and for strong Orthodoxy is by no means exception- in the ROCOR. connections to the Serbian Orthodox al. On the contrary, on social media, See, for example, Church. Dylann Roof, who killed nine especially in the recent years of em- Ryan Hunter, “My Interview people in the 2015 shooting at Charles- boldened xenophobia and white na- with Matthew ton’s Emanuel African Methodist tionalism, one finds these sentiments Heimbach,” Orthodox Episcopal Church, had connections to widely shared in self-styled “tradi- in the District, June a local Orthodox priest. Father John tionalist” Orthodox circles. From the 26, 2015, https:// Parker—now the dean of St. Tikhon’s ambo and on social media, clergy ryanphunter. wordpress. Seminary—was identified by Roof’s make xenophobic remarks that go un- com/2015/06/26/ defense team as his “spiritual advi- challenged. And there is a fad among my-interview-with- sor” and named as a defense witness Orthodox clergy and laity of posting matthew-heimbach/. The Wheel 17/18 | Spring/Summer 2019 27 Members of Русское национальное единство (Russian National Unity), a neo-Nazi paramil- itary organization that continues the legacy of the Black Hundreds move- ment, pose in front of a monastery in Diveyevo, Russia, c. 2002. Confederate flags superimposed with “IC XC NIKA” as Facebook profile group of people, whether Jews, “cul- pictures. tural Marxists,” the LGBT commu- nity, Muslims, immigrants, or oth- Furthermore, among the examples er perceived enemies of the (white, that go beyond casual comments straight, male) body politic. Those is a lecture course by a notorious enemies are said to bring about deg- culture warrior, Father Josiah Tr- radation as part of a broader, gener- enham of anti-LGBTQ fame. Tren- ally clandestine assault on the dom- ham’s course, titled “Patriotism: The inant culture. Duty of a Christian to His Nation,” is meant “to ignite the waning fires In his well-researched article “East of patriotic love in the hearts of be- of Eden,” Jon Phillips examines the lievers,” according to the website attraction of white nationalists to 4 4 Patristic Nectar that distributes it. Especially nota- Orthodox Christianity. The article Publications, https:// ble is the title of the fourth lecture, presents an uncomfortable but hon- patristicnectar.org/ “American Degradation,” a phrase est picture of the Orthodox Church’s bookstore_181018_2. that clearly resonates with alt-right uneasy relationship with national- html. and white supremacist panic around ist ideologies, with antisemitism, “degeneracy.” The idea behind this and with traditionally conservative term is that America has become a views on social justice and human degenerate nation because of the rights issues. Phillips writes: growth of LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, the ending of interracial mar- The resurgence of fascist groups riage prohibitions, and so forth. By in largely Orthodox countries invoking “American degradation,” across Eastern Europe, from po- Trenham is situating himself with- litical parties like Greece’s Golden in a very long rhetorical tradition of Dawn and Ukraine’s Svoboda to the far right, which presents itself in Orthodox ultranationalist groups opposition to an existential threat to like Russia’s Narodny Sobor and the nation, culture, race, or Volk. The Romania’s Noua Dreapta, have threat is never the degradation or reinforced the perception among degeneration itself, but a particular white nationalists that the Church 28 might be an ally in their war The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is only © 2019 The Wheel. against Judaism, homosexuality, one of the many texts that the Ortho- May be distributed for noncommercial use. multiculturalism, feminism and dox Church is unable or unwilling to www.wheeljournal.com the other forces of “cultural Marx- reckon with, thereby providing fodder ism.” Even non-Christians in these for extremist nationalist ideologies. communities seem to think that Adversus Judaeos, the infamous corpus Orthodox Christianity is special, of sermons by John Chrysostom—one leaving comments like this state- of the greatest saints and liturgists of ment from a self-professed athe- the Church—is widely quoted in Or- ist on VNN [the Vanguard News thodox antisemitic writings and in Network]: “At the end of the day, sermons, the latter especially during the countries who have Orthodox Holy Week, to complement the an- populations have remained more ti-Jewish texts of liturgical services racially and culturally sound than in which the Jews are emphatically the nations with no religion or identified as the killers of Christ, who worse, Protestantism. The Ortho- are ultimately to be destroyed by the dox base is a major reason why power of the cross.7 The hymnody of Greeks, Russians and Serbs un- the Sunday of the Cross in Great Lent derstand the Jewish question far mentions how, by the power of the better than any member of your cross, “our faithful kings laid low . college Atheists club.”5 . the people of Ishmael,” that is, the 5 Jon Phillips, “East Arab Muslims. And these are only the of Eden,” Southern The most notorious antisemitic text best-known examples. While every Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, of modern history, The Protocols of one of these more ancient texts has Winter 2014, https:// the Elders of Zion, originated in 1902 to be viewed in its own historical and www.splcenter. in Russia, and was published in 1905 cultural context, the fact remains that org/fighting-hate/ and widely disseminated by the collectively they constitute an element intelligence- Orthodox missionary writer Sergei of Orthodox tradition that is uncrit- report/2014/east- eden. Nilus. While the Protocols are today ically accepted and even embraced, recognized as a libelous forgery and despite a centuries-long history of 6 Ivan Kontsevich. have been banned in various coun- Christians’ persecution of religious Пламенная любовью tries—including Russia, where they minorities and despite the atrocities of Памяти С. А. are now counted as extremist litera- the two world wars. Нилуса (New York, ture—they have never been official- NY, 1937), 6. See Bernice Glatzer ly declared a forgery by the Russian Furthermore, unlike most Western Rosenthal, The Occult Church or any of the other Orthodox churches, which continue to process in Russian and Soviet churches. Worse, the original pub- the troubling legacy of Christian xe- Culture (Ithaca, NY: lication of the Protocols was blessed nophobia, the Orthodox Church re- Cornell University by Saint John of Kronstadt, himself sists acknowledging it as an internal Press, 1997), 396. well known for his support of the problem. If one studies official church 7 “For by your lifting ultra-nationalistic and antisemitic documents, it becomes apparent that up today the Hebrew Russian militia the Black Hundreds.6 denunciations of racism, xenopho- race perished.” The status of the Protocols has been bia, and similar issues almost always Stikhera on the “sanctified” by other famous figures point outward. When pressed on the Praises, Matins of of the Russian Church, such as the matter, Orthodox hierarchs staunchly Holy Friday. new martyr Metropolitan Vladimir refuse to accept the systemic nature of of Moscow (subsequently Kiev), the the problem, at best distancing them- elders of Optina Varsonuphiy and selves from particularly egregious ex- Nektariy, and Metropolitan Antho- amples of xenophobic behavior, such ny Khrapovitsky. as in the cases of the late Metropoli- The Wheel 17/18 | Spring/Summer 2019 29 Frontispiece of a tan John (Snychev) of Ladoga (an in- 1912 edition of The famous ultraconservative monarchist Protocols of the Elders and public antisemite, associated with of Zion in a book by Sergei Nilus.
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