Why Are Orthodox Churches Prone to Political Mobilization Today?

AFTERWORD: WHY ARE ORTHODOX CHURCHES PRONE TO POLITIcaL MOBILIZATION TODAY? Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Sabrina P. Ramet was at the forefront of the study of religion and politics in the communist and post-communist world. Her many publications, pioneering in their high level of detail and policy insights, have continued to be extensively referenced since then. In her 1989 publication Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics,1 she summarized the communist engagement with religion as follows: Communist religious policy is determined by at least six factors: (1) The size of a religious organization in question; (2) the organization’s disposi- tion to subordinate itself to political authority and its amenability to infl- tration and control by the secret police; (3) the question of allegiance to a foreign authority; (4) the loyalty or disloyalty of the particular body during World War Two; (5) the ethnic confguration of the respective country; and (6) the dominant political culture of the country.2 Ramet’s typology remained valid during the early post-1989 political realities. Religious communities increased in size; predominantly, Orthodox churches in the region became more politicized; the process of lustration, namely removing clergy associated with the communist © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under 249 exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 S. P. Ramet (ed.), Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe, Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24139-1 250 AFTERWORD: WHY ARE ORTHODOX CHURCHES PRONE TO POLITICAL … authorities, was largely non-existent; most religious leaders looked back to the interwar period in attempting to reinstate legislation; religious and political leaders regularly scrutinized the role of religion in shaping the ethnic composition of their country; and religion/church-state relations continued to be defned by the political culture. One particular area remained controversial, namely ‘allegiance to a foreign authority.’ While, during the Cold War period, allegiance to a religious community based in the West was likely to be subject to persecution, after 1989, free- dom of religion and religious competition became the norm. The Greek Catholic Churches were re-established, Church leaders in exile returned to their country, and religious communities multiplied. Issues related to property disputes and the national status of predominant confessions shaped debates on implementing religious legislation. In many cases, contact with high clergy, particularly from the West, was perceived with the fear of proselytism and the inevitable loss of religious infuence in society. A number of Orthodox Churches (the Bulgarian, Georgian and Russian) even revoked (or suspended) their membership of international ecumenical bodies.3 At the same time, religious affliation increased across the region to the extent that the 2017 Pew Research Forum survey showed that, as a whole, predominantly Orthodox countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe constituted one of the most religious regions in Europe.4 The upsurge of religious and national identifcation across the Eastern Orthodox world has resulted not only in societal transformation but also in the politicization of religion. Why are Orthodox Churches prone to political engagement today? Is it due to the structure and nature of Orthodox Churches or to the ways in which societies emerged from the Cold War period? Ramet’s present volume, Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe, builds on the legacy of religious policy behind the Iron Curtain and adds new insights into these questions. The concepts of power, agency and authority, at the regional, national and geopolitical levels, have been present in both the religious and political spheres. After the fall of communism, the Orthodox world has witnessed an exacerbation of religious and political symbols in the public domain. Religion was present in the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and continues to be present in the corridors of power in national parliaments, in mobilizing the masses in the name of tradi- tional values and in electoral processes. As Ramet wrote in the Introduction to this volume, while religious and national identifcation exist in other religious confessions, three AFTERWORD: WHY ARE ORTHODOX CHURCHES PRONE TO POLITICAL … 251 key elements have characterized the political mobilization of Orthodox Churches in Southeastern Europe, namely nationalism, conservatism and intolerance. The association of these words is not intended to imply that every single member of the Orthodox community is inherently ‘intoler- ant,’ a ‘right-wing nationalist’ or ‘supporting conservatism.’ On the con- trary, each Orthodox Church has been defned by a multitude of voices from local clergy, bishops, top hierarchs and the lay movements. As an institution, the Church is not summed up by public statements from clergy but by the wider mobilization of the faithful sharing the same doctrinal and liturgical practices. Orthodox Churches are both institutional structures and communities of the faithful as an expression of local culture and communities of beliefs. The distinction between the institutional character of the Church and the everyday lived experience of the faithful is fundamental to understanding how political messages are conveyed and received. Political messages are expressed through the fol- lowing means of communication, all of which are deeply rooted in state building processes. First of all, political messages from ecclesiastical circles, either at the local or at the national level, emerge in light of the institutional structure of the particular Church. Reaching a position in a Church hierarchy entails engagement with social and political actors. As a general rule, it is impossible to become a dean, bishop or patriarch without the political realm exerting pressure on the most appropriate candidate alongside national and party politics at the local or central levels. Close relations between religious and political authorities are most symbolically sug- gested by the location of buildings. In Romania, during the communist period, the Patriarchal Cathedral was only a few meters away from the Grand National Assembly, the legislative body. In recent years, a Cathedral of National Salvation was built near the House of the People, the democratic legislator of the country, with both buildings among the largest administrative complexes in the world. In Bulgaria, the location of St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is comparably sited, only a few meters from the National Parliament. In Kyiv, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is facing St Sofa Cathedral, a symbol of national unity and the newly rebuilt St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, which also houses the Theological Academy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (previously known as the Kyiv Patriarchate). Second, from the nineteenth century, the nation-state building processes in Southeastern Europe brought Orthodox churches close to 252 AFTERWORD: WHY ARE ORTHODOX CHURCHES PRONE TO POLITICAL … government and political authorities. The ‘invention’ of states and nations in the region was achieved through taking into account the religious substratum, ethnic competition and political cultures. Contact between religious and political leaders has characterized various pat- terns of church-state relations, ranging from ‘entangled authorities’ to the concepts of the (in)compatibility between modernity and sympho- nia.5 Orthodox Churches stood out in the religious composition of each country by having a prime role in shaping their political cultures. The canon law of the Orthodox Church was applied at times together with that of the state authorities. Issues related to divorce, marriages and social mores were perceived through religious lenses before the secular state imposed its own norms. In the clash between the Church and state norms, the Church was not an easy opponent. The seculariza- tion of monasteries in Southeastern Europe in the nineteenth century, the expulsion of Greek-speaking clergy and favoring of nativist authorities are examples of this long legacy. It is therefore no surprise that the Orthodox Church of Greece and the Romanian Orthodox Church have constantly claimed over the last two decades that they would like to acquire the privileged position as landowners in order to be able to administer the faithful successfully. Third, Orthodox Churches have become politically stronger when states have failed to provide social support for a population in need. The concept of state failure is crucial to understanding the ways in which Orthodox Churches respond at times of crisis. When faced with external challenges, across Southeastern Europe, the Orthodox Churches took on state functions in supporting populations affected by violence and confict mainly because the state did not have the resources and capa- bilities. The social mobilization of Orthodox churches has taken differ- ent forms across the region. In Greece, at the peak of the 2015 crisis of refugees arriving from Syria and across the Aegean Sea, parishes worked with nongovernmental organizations; similarly, the Serbian Orthodox Church drew on its experience of reaching people affected by fooding and mobilized in support of the refugees crossing the Balkan route.6 However, in Bulgaria, the Church has remained passive and even con- demned the arrival of refugees as an ‘invasion’

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