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Download Download Anthropology of East Europe Review PROCESSIONS IN THE STREET: GEORGIAN ORTHODOX PRIVILEGE AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES’ RESPONSE TO INVISIBILITY William Eastwood Indiana University Taking to the Streets That same week, on April 6, “Red On Palm Sunday, 2007, in Tbilisi, Friday” (the Orthodox equivalent of Catholic- Georgia, I walked to church in an annual Protestant Good Friday), the EBC organized, for procession sponsored by the Evangelical-Baptist the fifth consecutive year, another procession Church of Georgia [EBC]. Around forty through the streets of Tbilisi. The Baptists members took part in the morning trek through invited representatives and parishioners of the the city, including the EBC archbishop, the EBC other Christian communities to join them in a president, the general secretary of the march commemorating Christ’s crucifixion. Association of American Baptist Churches in Armenians, Roman-Catholics, and Lutherans all Georgia on a visit, Tbilisi-based Baptist pastors, had a presence during the procession. The lay leaders, as well as ministers from other Georgian Orthodox Church had been invited as regions. Also making the procession were a few well, but evidently had declined to participate. children and teenagers, and a handful of long- Although the distances of both term foreign visitors including my wife and me. processions and the number participating were On a journey that would take us almost about the same, this second journey felt much six miles, we walked on the outskirts of town in longer. This was explicitly an ecumenical the district of Didi Dighomi at the church’s main procession. It began at the Armenian cathedral in office and senior citizen care facility, Bethel Tbilisi’s Old Town and proceeded across the Center (beteli tsentri). We left in the morning downtown through the city center and eventually around 10:00, led not by church leaders but by a across the river, visiting Roman Catholic and donkey and a specially commissioned icon of Lutheran cathedrals, and finally reaching the Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Many of the Baptist Peace Cathedral. We entered each ministers were dressed in their usual clerical cathedral and read a small litany composed of a vestments, the archbishop most noticeably so in bible reading of one of the gospel accounts of the his purple robe, hat, cross necklace, and crucifixion, a homily prepared by a shepherd’s crook. Many of us carried palm representative minister, and a collective fronds. recitation of the Lord’s Prayer (“mamao chveno”). The weather was clear and relatively warm which made for a good mood shared by In the streets, the procession was lead all. The procession was far from austere, instead by a six-foot wooden cross. After exiting each punctuated with our chatting and curious stares cathedral that church’s leader would carry the of frequent onlookers along sidewalks and from cross with the Baptist archbishop as a sign of motor vehicles. We clogged the streets, often Christian unity. Much like the Palm Sunday negotiating a place for ourselves among the procession, the event was friendly, non- passing traffic. While not deliberately disruptive, confrontational, and not given to strong emotion with a donkey and a gaggle of church folk, even as we brought traffic to a standstill when sidewalks could not always contain us, so we we cut across busy intersections or blocked a took our liberty in the street. We snaked our way lane. And like before, looks and stares followed through the bustling auto-bazaar, then across the us from place to place even as we walked and river at the main marshrutka (minibus taxi) talked among ourselves. When we walked station into the Didube district. A while further downtown, we bisected the famous Freedom we reached the main Baptist cathedral, renamed Square (along with the automobiles circling the Peace Cathedral several months later, where the roundabout) and continued down Rustaveli Palm Sunday icon was publicly blessed and the Avenue, the main thoroughfare. At the two-hour church service began in earnest with Parliament building, without fanfare, we paused, bell ringing, liturgical dancing, and the huddled together and prayerfully recited the Eucharist. It was a procession without protests or Lord’s Prayer. Then we walked on. Although emotional performances, yet neither was it officially an ecumenical march, the majority of terribly formal or solemn. participants were Baptist. Other than the short Volume 27, No. 1 Page 20 Anthropology of East Europe Review distances church leaders walked when they In this atmosphere of mistrust, over the carried the cross, only a few from churches other past ten years, the Evangelical-Baptist Church of than Baptist managed the entire trek. The Baptist Georgia has initiated a series of internal reforms. archbishop said later that it was the most Based on my ethnographic fieldwork among successful Red Friday march they had ever had. Georgian Baptists, including extensive This article highlights the Georgian interviews with the Baptist archbishop and the Baptists’ public struggle for equitable association president, these reforms were a recognition. In particular I concentrate on the conscious effort to root out the EBC’s self- political ambiguity created by the current ascribed sectarian legacy and to bridge gaps Georgian government that, when working in between Georgian Baptists and the Orthodox tandem with other factors, acts as a formidable majority by transforming the EBC into what they obstacle to keep Baptists (as well as other non- deem to be more “culturally relevant.” These Orthodox religious groups) out of “Georgian reforms aim to transform the church both in its public space.” But Baptists in both processions relationship to itself and with society at large. and together with other religious minorities in The most provocative of these reforms has been the second procession appear to challenge their the adaptation of Orthodox symbols and marginalization through their own self- traditions for ordinary Baptist worship. In the disclosure. Although for years non-Orthodox processions, we see these visible changes, now Christians have been disenfranchised through a standard issue, in the use of icons and the lack of legal recourse and marginalization Orthodox-like clerical appearances of the Baptist through intimidation and at times outright archbishop and his retinue. These processions, violence, Baptists along with other Christian however, offer an important glimpse into the minorities are now declaring their presence in the public face of EBC reforms and their center of the city, their city. However, it is contestation of Orthodox power in Georgian difficult to say who in power is listening. society. The motivations for these processions stem from broader, “outwardly facing” reform In Georgia today, Georgian Orthodox goals that include giving attention to issues of Christianity enjoys a privileged position in the social justice, building citywide ecumenical politics of national identity. It belongs to the dialogue, and exercising a “prophetic role” of dominant discourse of the nation-state linking speaking truth to state power. authentic membership in the national community with allegiance to the Georgian Orthodox Church. Whereas the Georgian Orthodox Church Ambiguity and Invisibility has enjoyed a centuries-long presence in These processions are part of Georgian Georgian history, the past several decades of Baptists’ efforts (and in the Red Friday political foment in the country have transformed procession a collective effort of many religious adherence to Georgian Orthodox Christianity minorities) to address their own “invisibility” in into a litmus test for national devotion. In the public discourse. I use the analogy of invisibility later years of the Soviet Union, Georgian to convey the kind of marginality that Baptists dissidents began to mobilize against the Soviet and their peers have experienced in recent years, government, often using the Orthodox Church stemming from the ambiguity of politicians’ and its symbolic and historic resources to define endeavors to reorganize the government ethnonational boundaries. They promoted the according to Western neoliberal norms. My Georgian Orthodox Church as a symbol of the study joins other anthropology investigating authentic Georgian community, marginalizing these public instances of ambiguity, which Paul those outside of the Church’s domain. Even Manning identifies as the result of a major thrust today, we see the Georgian Orthodox Church since the 2003 Rose Revolution “to create a new receiving overwhelming support in the media cosmology, a self-conscious ‘new reality’” and government even while ethnic minorities and (Manning 2007: 173). native Georgians who participate in non- Turning his attention to the original, Orthodox religious traditions (including stage-setting student protests of 2001, their effect Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants) are on the Rose Revolution, and the incorporation of swept under the carpet of public debate out of their reformist values into post-Rose Revolution suspicion that they may be threats to the nation’s government policy, Manning identifies highly well-being. effective rhetorical strategies that managed to assuage widespread popular mistrust in Volume 27, No. 1 Page 21 Anthropology of East Europe Review government. A key objective of these strategies ambiguity of religious freedom results in the was to distance the protests from the discredited prevailing discursive “visibility” of the
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