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
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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
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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 Georgian post-Soviet governments of Zviad Gamsakhurdia Orthodox Church and the consequent invisibility and Eduard Shevardnadze (the 2001 protests of non-Orthodox. took place during the nadir of Shevardnadze’s The government’s uneven application rule). Among other things, organizers reframed of reforms points to its inability or unwillingness the protests as “a colorful mélange of political to create a truly innovative political cosmology. images and references from frankly contradictory In terms of religion, the state’s failure to political programs” (Manning 2007: 179). successfully governmentalize the expectations of Manning highlights the juxtaposition of secular non-Orthodox citizens highlights a persistent and sacred images at one point in these protests national discourse in Georgian affairs that when popular television cartoon caricatures refuses to link state success outside a narrowly lampooning the discredited government were defined ethno-religious membership. This kind displayed side by side with icons of the Virgin of ambiguity underlies the public spaces of the Mary (the Theotokos) and St. George (both city that religious minorities are negotiating in patron saints of the nation-state). These images these religious processions. along with the speeches that accompanied them I approach the idea of the “city” as helped to distance the reformers from the urban space embedded in and emerging from dysfunctional and democratically incapable relations of (often hegemonic) power that, regime while embracing the “surety” of following Zukin (1995), “shap[e] public space Georgia’s sacralized nationhood. Moreover, this for social interaction and [construct] a visual re-emergence of national forms to promote state representation of the city” (24). In this view, the success legitimized Saakashvili’s meteoric rise to city is more often a stage or a framing device for power, even though such national gestures have ostensibly more important matters and relations. acted merely “as a local veneer for a political Yet the very fact that a city can stage or frame product that is effectively neoliberal” (Manning suggests that its unquestioned and unnoticed 2007: 176). Coincidentally, despite international presence does indeed play a part in the discursive attention and investment, self-congratulatory formations underlying the politics of the fanfare, and pomp, very little has changed everyday. This is not to assign undue agency to (Manning 2007: 202, Dunn 2008: 254). the city, but rather to infer how urban areas This political ambiguity can be found in contribute to the naturalness of hegemony in other public sectors. Elizabeth Dunn points out everyday life. the uneven nature of Georgian neoliberal While I am not trying to overdetermine governance by focusing on the astounding rate of the power of the Orthodox Church in the cases of botulism in Georgia, the world’s everyday lives of people living in Georgia, I do highest. She explains that unlike the vogue contend that the advantages enjoyed by the sectors of prisoner health, education or law Georgian Orthodox Church in the politics of the enforcement which have received the most Georgian nation-state has real consequences, international attention, the agricultural sector is a whether in government or in a public venue, say, “nonstate space” that is “free from regulation or simply walking down the street. One of these standardization” and “a zone uncontrolled by the consequences is an Orthodox monopoly of urban state” (Dunn 2008: 255). These nonstate spaces areas, analogous to what Page and Thomas represent the failure of the reform-minded state (1994) have called “white public space” in the to consolidate governmental power through United States. They define white public space as policy and oversight. If agriculture is one blind any area that “may entail particular or spot in local governance because it exists outside generalized locations, sites, patterns, the immediate concern of lawmakers, the configurations, tactics, or devices that routinely, religious sector represents not a nonstate space, discursively, and sometimes coercively privilege but rather a “non-nonstate space”—where state Euro-Americans over nonwhites” (Page and power has adopted a clear protocol for securing Thomas 1994: 111). Appropriating public space the interests of one religious institution, the becomes a tactic of those in power to endorse Georgian Orthodox Church, but not others. that power in areas where all members of society Religious minorities are left unrepresented, frequently come together (Page and Thomas uninsured, and invisible as religious institutions, 1994: 113). In Georgia, what emerges at the so that the religious sector is legislated and not intersection of physical structures, legal legislated at the same time. This state-sponsored
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Anthropology of East Europe Review discourse, and national ideology is what we behavior that work to incorporate Georgia’s could call “Georgian public space,” keeping in public areas into the dominant discursive mind that the word Georgian denotes the imaginary that I call Georgian public space. ideological limits of ethnicity, which includes Taking as axiomatic Michel de Certeau’s notion affiliation with the Georgian Orthodox Church. that space emerges out of the practice of place Public areas of the city, in this sense, are not just (1985: 101), these political behaviors work Georgian public space, but “Orthodox Georgian together to constitute “the street” as de facto public space.” In the dominant national Orthodox Georgian space and perpetuate the discourse, there is no admission of any other kind of ideological dominance that marginalizes kind of Georgian space. religious minorities. These include legal Bradford Martin (2004) found in his discourse, the spatialization of Orthodox own study of public performance in the United cathedrals, and the public rituals that Orthodox States in the 1960s that artists of the believers frequently perform. The Palm Sunday counterculture attempted to bridge a gap between and Red Friday processions, in response, culture and politics, meshing their activism in the represent a refutation of the ideological claims of unexpected spaces of the everyday. By removing the dominant discourse—that legitimate national their contestation outside the museum, the hall, belonging rests only on a confession of Orthodox and the auditorium, activists sought to transform faith. The processions attempt to contradict the mundane spaces into impromptu stages with discursive meanings assigned to public space by their various performances. “The street,” as it attempting to carve out new spaces of public were, was transformed into a public site for recognition through their public spectacle. contesting the status quo. Of course, the street had always been public, but addressing the In the Eyes of Government institutional chasm between the Arts and the The political ambiguity promulgated by world outside politicized Art and charged the the Georgian government is found in other post- ordinary with unprecedented import by socialist countries. A significant obstacle to incorporating ordinary public venues and making equitable laws is the longevity of Soviet unsuspecting onlookers into the artistic frameworks that institutionalized identification production. Martin argues that this impact on the with a particular ethnonational community as the boundaries separating the public from the determining factor in state membership. As political [sic] stemmed from a desire to “‘re- Katherine Verdery has said, “ethnonational enchant’ and re-animate politics” by identities were perhaps the principal form of “democratize[in] culture by trying to ‘collective consciousness’ that socialism communicate with broader audiences where the produced” (Verdery 1998: 293). Jiri Priban performer-activists encountered them, most argues that mutually exclusive political strategies often, in the streets” (Martin 2004: 14, 10). appealing to the universal rights of individuals It is Martin’s notion of public and to rights bestowed on ethnonational performance for the purposes of re-enchanting communities were equally reasonable solutions and re-animating politics that concerns me here in forming new state ideologies, because they in making sense of Georgian-Baptists’ were not perceived as contradictory formations. processions in the streets of Tbilisi. The Ideas like civil society and civic membership had processions shake up the hegemony of public to be introduced to post-socialist societies as one spaces because the participants defy their own of many viable traditions on which the discursive invisibility. In a sense, religious government could base itself: “Rebuilding minorities stage themselves. They do this national identity, in the sense of ethnic and precisely by putting themselves literally in the cultural identity, was an important part of center of things, showing themselves as religious rebuilding political identity” (Priban 2004: 416, persons in the public space of the street in full emphasis in original). view of, well, anyone who happens to be there. Political actors could not afford to The “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” blinders that distance themselves or their agendas from the discourse can cloak over social complexity fail ethnonational interests of state constituents. as religious minorities reveal themselves National identity expressed in popular symbols, irrefutably as being there. rhetoric, and legislation, was a powerful In what follows, I want to draw currency in winning popular support, so that attention to three modes of interrelated political “nationalism in the region’s politics became a
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Anthropology of East Europe Review matter of degree rather than a distinct political Orthodox Church may veto construction or option” (Verdery 1998: 294). Thus, the emerging planned construction of new buildings for any “democracies” of the 1990s in post-Soviet religious group (Rayeva 2002). Whereas the countries bore a decidedly ethnonational thumb Concordat inscribes these privileges into law, the print. In what Robert Hayden famously called Patriarchate had been exercising this kind of “constitutional nationalism” (Hayden 1992: authority since at least a year before the 655), self-proclaimed democratic states wrote agreement was adopted (Keston News Service their constitutions guaranteeing full rights and 2001). freedoms for members of the ethnic majority On April 6, 2005, President Saakashvili while disenfranchising members of other ethnic signed an amendment allowing non-Orthodox communities, even those individuals who had religious groups to register as non-commercial lived in those countries all their lives (see also entities. This means that religious groups are Verdery 1998: 294-295). unable to own property as religious In Georgia, the scant legislation on organizations. They can neither be represented in religion illustrates this kind of two-headed court as a viable community, nor open bank constitutional strategy, which grants token accounts in the religious organization’s name assurances of freedom for all while at the same (Forum 18 2005). The only church that has legal time sanctioning the interests of the status as a religious organization is the Georgian ethnonational majority. To date there are three Orthodox Church, which officially secured this items of legislation on religion: Article 9 of the status in the Concordat. Non-Orthodox religious Constitution, the 2002 constitutional Concordat groups have no legal presence. between the state and the Georgian Orthodox Perhaps the lack of real political will to Church, and an amendment on registration of protect the rights of all religions can be non-Orthodox religious groups passed in April understood by Elizabeth Dunn’s prescient 2005. The first of these, Article 9 of the observation that a lack of regulation indicates Georgian constitution, simply states: that “spaces and populations … are seen as not The state recognizes the special interesting enough, or not useful enough, to importance of the Georgian Orthodox merit governance” (Dunn 2008:255). Dunn was Church in Georgian history but linking failures in agriculture with the state’s simultaneously declares complete freedom uneven realization of neoliberal governance, but of religious belief and confessions, as well the observation could easily apply to religious as independence of the church from the legislation. The Georgian government has sought state. to reform only those sectors that are most often While the article does make explicit the official used to measure international success (and thus recognition of the Orthodox Church, it does not to receive further international attention, aid, and declare it the “state church.” In fact it declares investments). The religious legislation of the the separation of church and state along with the Saakashvili administration underscores this right to religious freedom for all. position. The present administration has relegated religious minorities into non-nonstate On October 14, 2002, the tables turned spaces. While the Georgian Orthodox Church is dramatically when then-President Shevardnadze free to exercise its authority carte blanche, non- and Patriarch Ilia II signed the controversial Orthodox groups must claim to be something church-state Concordat. Like Article 9, it does entirely un-religious in order to be “seen” in the not recognize the Georgian Orthodox Church as eyes of the state at all. the state church, but it does legally cede some authority of the religious sphere to the Georgian Patriarchate. Among other things, the Concordat Sacred Space and the Material World awards the Patriarchate full ownership of all its Certainly, Georgian Orthodox church buildings, monasteries, and the land they cathedrals are not the only buildings crowding are built on, as well as church treasures the Tbilisi skyline. A glut of international hotels, permanently held in museums. The agreement Western food shops, over-priced luxury also gives the Orthodox Church the final word European clothing stores, and Japanese on which religious groups can legally call electronics retailers compete for space and the themselves churches, what items may be used in attention of potential customers. But as the legal services, and what religious literature may be “landscape” described above indicates, the published. Finally, it stipulates that the Georgian Georgian Orthodox Church enjoys guarantees for
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Anthropology of East Europe Review maintaining a symbolic and material monopoly Christianity requires material certainty, so that of Georgian public space. Orthodox churches church buildings should stand out from their exist in far greater numbers than other non- surroundings precisely because the sacred is Orthodox religious buildings. This abundance separate from the mundane world. The typical relates to three things: the legislation highlighted Protestant imperative, however, has been to above, the theological motivations of Orthodox liberate individuals from traditions and Christianity, and the theological and social institutions that prohibit living freely and frankly outlooks traditionally held in Protestant before God, or in Webb Keane’s formulation, “to Christianity. abstract the self from material and social The Georgian Orthodox Church’s entanglements” (Keane 2007: 201). Material theological motivation to fill terrestrial space objects - words as well as things - acquired new with manifestations of heavenly glory easily meanings and became potentially hazardous to reinforces the Church’s ideological position as faith because words and things might interfere an ethnonational institution and its spatial with or replace sincere relationship with God monopoly. As Glenn Bowman (1991) explains, with a befuddling opacity. The guarantee of Orthodox cosmology dictates a clear separation God’s grace was not contingent on sacramental between the world of God and the world of encounters in the world but rather on the inner humanity, with the sacred forms and practices of condition of the individual believer. the (Orthodox) Church acting as conduits of These theological presumptions God’s redemptive presence to the fallen world. together with current circumstances of public The Church’s traditional sacramental objects – animosity serve to make the presence of Baptists sacraments, prayers, icons, holy persons, (and similar religious traditions) less visible. liturgies, even church buildings – sit in both Baptists in Georgia traditionally have preferred worlds. To contemplate them is to enter into the functional minimalism to any (to their minds) real presence of God. These are not merely distracting pomp or pretense. The exteriors of pedagogical tools. They are stages for buildings, for example, often look no different cosmological encounters, bearing witness to from buildings next door. They were (and often God’s redemption and ushering of grace into the still are) converted houses with no steeples, no material world. By encountering these crosses, and no ornamentation of any kind to sacramental things, believers encounter the distinguish them. The clergy, too, have revelation of heaven amid the corrupted world: traditionally worn shirts and ties so that they “Within Orthodoxy the divine liturgy as well as looked no different from other parishioners. other vehicles of the sacred like icons or holy Perhaps such plain arrangements worked to relics serve as means for allowing people to ‘step camouflage or insulate Baptist congregations out’ of illusion and to see creation, as a whole, in from an oppressive government and the public relation to its creator…. [Orthodox believers’] suspicion they incurred in the Soviet Union (not entry into holy space presages their entry, at to mention the fear of violence in the post-Soviet death, into eternity” (Bowman 1991: 104). era). Whereas the Christian traditions of the The severity of this “separation from West found it necessary to rationalize such the world” can be measured by the extent of encounters with the sacred, which in Protestant current efforts in the Baptist Church to traditions has been especially true given the encourage parishioners to engage collectively penchant for convincing the unconverted of their with social and civic issues. In my interviews need for salvation based on logical arguments, with Baptist Archbishop Songhulashvili, he Orthodox Christianity traditionally has relatively explainedi: “I think the main thing that the few stated doctrinal absolutes, preferring that the reforms brought us was taking us from the ghetto “logic” of faith show itself in the regular and placing us in the market place.…We had practices, postures, and prayers of worship. In been used to the idea for almost one hundred or this sense, religious practice conflates ritual and more years, that we are…closed, that we should theology. It seems to insist that worship “speaks be confined with[in] these walls, [that] the space for itself,” or as Timothy Ware states, “Lex beyond these walls does not belong to us….It orandi lex credendi: our faith is expressed in our belonged to the Orthodox world.” The reform- prayer” (Ware 1993: 205). inspired processions described above attempt to Orthodox Christianity and Western rites integrate the activities of the church with differ in their value of materiality. Orthodox Georgian society as a means of liberating the
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Anthropology of East Europe Review
Baptist Church from its sectarian legacy: “This is Baptists crossing themselves during their own about affirming what we believe in. We believe worship services), these ritual meanings share in in being fully involved in the life of the multiple discourses that implicate the larger community. Not being separated by the walls of frameworks of national ideology and nation-state the ghetto, but being a part with, being in the building. Implicated in de Certeau’s argument midst of the things that are happening that social spaces emerge from the practice of everywhere where people are and working for place (de Certeau 1985: 101), public transformation.” These words are not in response performances help incorporate ordinary to discrimination, but rather to Baptists’ geographic places into discursive paradigms, so previously self-imposed isolation. That is to say, that performing even what appears the most previously Baptists played a major role in forgettable ritual infuses particular place (even cordoning themselves off from the rest of society the street outside) with specific ideological by removing themselves literally from view. meanings. A case in point is Pelkmans’s (2006) Performing Georgian Orthodox Space investigation into the recent spread of (Georgian Orthodox) Christianity into the predominantly Georgian public space, as I use the Muslim area of Achara at the Turkish-Georgian term, is not simply the result of legislation border. In this borderland area the tension ceding the administrative authority of religious between religious affiliation and authentic matters into the lap of the Georgian Patriarchate. national belonging has been similar. However, it It is also not merely the ubiquity of Georgian is more acute than in Tbilisi and has resulted in Orthodox cathedrals punctuating the skyline and the increased, albeit uneven, construction of the absence of religious minorities from public churches and mosques and other public symbols view. Where it includes the law and the physical among both Muslim and Christian camps. presence of Orthodox buildings, it also includes Pelkmans explains, “The Christian clergy drew individuals’ symbolic action that manifests on financial as well as political resources public connections with Orthodox faith. generated through state structures. The activities “Georgian” space is not filled so much of Muslim leaders, on the other hand, were as it is practiced. Speech and behavior activate denied recognition by the media, were frowned that space and perpetuate it in time and place. upon by nationalist-oriented elite groups, and Take for instance probably the most common were subjected to state interventions” (Pelkmans ritual among Orthodox Christians: making the 2006: 120). He prefaces that section of his sign of the cross on the chest with thumb and ethnography with an anecdote about an Orthodox fingers. While making the sign of the cross Christian pilgrimage conducted in 2000, occurs inside church buildings, for example complete with bishop, priests, pro-Orthodox during the liturgy or while venerating icons, it is intellectuals, and a special icon, snaking its way also customary for believers to cross themselves through a Muslim village to commemorate the while passing by church buildings. Derived from coming of the gospel message to the area almost an acknowledgment of sacred space, this type of two thousand years earlier. In an effort to genuflection is remarkably unremarkable for celebrate the good news, pilgrims were also happening so frequently, whether on the street, in “reminding” onlookers of their Georgian- a taxi, or on public transit. For example, the Christian origins with the hope that “local largest Georgian cathedral, Sameba, itself a inhabitants would return to their original, native dominant religious symbol on Tbilisi’s skyline, religion” (Pelkmans 2006: 93). can be seen from Freedom Square, despite being Another example can be found in the located almost a mile away across the river and event held in 2004 at the graveside of Georgia’s almost blocked by rooftops. It is not uncommon most famous king, St. David “the Builder.” Here to see passers-by face Sameba’s shimmering Mikhiel Saakashvili, then president-elect, swore dome and cross themselves (although I will a pre-inaugural oath in honor of the legendary admit that it is difficult at times to determine if king, siding with the king’s reputation as they are facing Sameba or instead the over-sized, Orthodox Christian state builder and promising gilded statue of St. George that towers over the soul of the departed king that he Freedom Square). (Saakashvili) would lead the country out of While even many Georgian Baptists squalor and ineffective government into a new have no problem identifying with many of these age. The oath-taking ceremony was rituals (incidentally I have observed a few
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Anthropology of East Europe Review unprecedented. Not only did Georgian Patriarch- transformation as tangible possibilities” (Martin: Catholicos Ilia II preside over the ceremony, but 164-165). also the monastery where the ceremony took Unlike in the cases described by Martin, place was packed and covered by the major these processions are not artistic expressions. television stations and newspapers. Whatever Yet they embody an alternative possibility about Saakashvili’s personal motivations, his public space by creating new spaces out of performance was saturated with Georgian familiar places. The streets of the Georgian Orthodox sensibilities and broadcast a statist capital become a template for a new politics that agenda marked with Orthodoxy’s stamp of re-associates public life with religious diversity. approval. Processions signal a claim by religious minorities to equitable belonging despite A Response to Invisibility differences, asserting that Georgian public space is “multi-faith” space. The archbishop explained Tbilisi’s thoroughfares may be ordinary it to me as follows: streets but they are not neutral sites. They are constant reminders of the authority of Georgian It is very important that religious Orthodoxy. Legal privileges, the physical and people…live harmoniously, without visual presence of Orthodox places of worship, compromising anything, without and the ritual performances of Orthodox compromising any religious principles. believers in public places contribute to a We are saying that we are under heaven ubiquitous Orthodox materiality in Georgian as it were. We have our churches, our society. The Georgian street, in this light, mirrors strategies, our missions, but it is still the dominant national ideology linking specific possible to cooperate….We do not ethnonational interests with state success. The agree with [other religious groups] in Palm Sunday and Red Friday processions everything, but they are friends. It is up traverse through the politically charged public to the “boss” [i.e. God] how to handle streets of Tbilisi, illustrating that to engage them. But it is our call to serve anybody public space in Georgia is to engage space in the name of Christ, to promote peace dominated by Orthodox privilege. and reconciliation in the name of the faith, and be…friends with those who I mentioned that these events bear a do not agree with us and whom we do similarity with what Bradford Martin described not agree with their theology [sic] or in of counter-culture movements in the United their understanding of God. States of the 1960s. Counterculture groups went about “combining street-level politics and dramatic spectacle” (Martin 2004: 164) in an I began this article by situating the Holy effort to draw attention to the deficiencies of Week processions in the Georgian government’s power and the status quo. By relocating their failures to consolidate a successful democratic protest to public venues, artist-activists regime. Equivocal policies and rhetoric have communicated “symbolic messages about social created political ambiguity favoring the interests and political issues to audiences who might not of the Georgian Orthodox Church and at the have encountered them in more traditional same time ignoring non-Orthodox religious venues” (Martin: 4). groups. The root of this failure lies in what now As in the experience of the United must be the familiar shortcomings of Soviet-bred States, which obviously continues to have its nationalism to account for state loyalties that own kinds of “invisible” citizens, Georgia’s exist outside the ideology that links an religious minorities have sought to address their objectified culture with self-determination. This political invisibility with, if you will, the situation is not only an obstacle to religious discourse of feet on pavement. They peacefully minorities. Rather than securing its own challenge the politically ambiguous status quo of independence, the Georgian Orthodox Church their own religious identity-cum-state belonging has inextricably linked itself to the politics of by presenting themselves as non-Orthodox nation-building. Its otherworldly symbology, its religious persons in Orthodox space, “join[ing] discourse, its gatekeeper-status into Heaven’s performers and audience on an immediate level, court, and indeed its ubiquitous presence street with minimal governmental, corporate, and after street paradoxically justify state claims to a electronic filtering, offering communion and terrestrial dominion. While the marches are themselves commemorations of some of the
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Anthropology of East Europe Review most important holidays on the Christian Keston News Service. 2001. “Georgia: calendar they also negotiate Orthodox power. Patriarchate Veto on Alternative Because religion is not divorced from the politics Orthodox Construction.” October 2, of the state, these processions actively engage, 2001.
Martin, Bradford D. 2004. The Theater Is in the Endnotes 1 Street: Politics and Public Performance My interviews with the archbishop were in Sixties America. Amherst: University conducted in English. The archbishop’s quoted of Massachusetts Press. speech in this article is not a translation from Georgian, but is in English as it was originally recorded. Page, Helan and R. Brooke Thomas. 1994. “White Public Space and the References Construction of White Privilege in U.S. Health Care: Fresh Concepts and a New Bowman, Glenn. 1991. “Christian Ideology and Model of Analysis.” Medical the Image of a Holy Land: the Place of Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1, Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Various 109-116. Christianities. In Contesting the Sacred: the Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. John Eade and Michael J. Pelkmans, Mathijs. 2006. Defending the Border: Sallnow, eds. New York: Routledge. Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. de Certeau, Michel. 1985. The Practice of Everyday Life. Steven Rendall, trans. Berkeley: University of California Priban, Jiri. 2004. “Reconstituting Paradise Lost: Press. Temporality, Civility, and Ethnicity, Post-Communist Constitution-Making,” Law & Society Review, Vol. 38, No. 3, Dunn, Elizabeth C. 2008. “Postsocialist Spores: 407-431. Disease, Bodies, and the State in the Republic of Georgia.” American Ethnologist Vol. 35, No. 2, 243-258. Rayeva, Lyuda. 2002. “Georgia: Church and State in Tight Embrace.” Caucasus News Update No. 151. International Forum 18 News Service. 2005. “Georgia: War-Peace Reporting. October 17, Religious Minorities Still Second-Class 2002.
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