MARK R. ELLIOTT
In a decidedly sympathetic, but ultimately ambivalent assessment of contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, John P. Burgess provides a wealth of discerning observations on Russia’s majority faith. A professor of Reformed theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the author has spent considerable time in Russia, including sabbaticals in St. Petersburg (2004-05) and Moscow (2011-12), teaching and immersing himself in the life of the Orthodox Church.
Employing the disciplines of theology, history, and sociology of religion to good effect, Burgess focuses particular attention on religious education, Church social work, commemoration of Russia’s New Martyrs, and parish life. A theme throughout Holy Rus’ is the Church’s effort to inculcate faith (votserkovlenie, literally translated as “in-churching”) in a still largely secular population. (Russian polls consistently indicate high levels of identification with Orthodoxy, but respondents frequently affirm their Church as a cultural marker, rather than as a repository of faith accompanied by regular attendance [16-17; 188-89; 211].) In case study vignettes, Burgess enthusiastically commends such phenomena as the exemplary education provided by St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Humanitarian University, the multiple charitable outreaches of Moscow’s revived Convent of Martha and Mary, the drug rehabilitation program in St. George’s Parish in the Ivanovo Region, and the devotion attendant upon veneration of Russia’s roughly 2,000 New Martyrs.
Still, the author expresses reservations almost as frequently as commendations. For example, “Do state policies that privilege the Orthodox Church in education and social work—all in the name of promoting ‘traditional moral values’— respect Russians’ freedom to choose faith for themselves, or do these policies inevitably compromise freedom of conscience” (119)? On the other hand, “Whatever the Church’s faults and failures—and they are real—I have seen how Russia is the better for the Church’s efforts to bring its values into society” (12). Further illustrating his mixed review, Burgess recounts walking daily during his Moscow sabbatical through an underground passageway past shops plying clothes, shoes, souvenirs, and keys. In the same concourse he recalls “a tiny Church kiosk” selling crosses, icons, and religious books. “Orthodoxy, it struck me, has a firm place in Russian society again—but to the tens of thousands of people who passed those kiosks every day, it was just one more consumer option in a crowded marketplace” (207).
The author’s ambivalence is a constant. Russia, Burgess is confident, “is indeed a healthier, more vital society today” because of Orthodoxy’s efforts at spiritual restoration (208). Yet, with regret, he also observes, “In my more sociological moments, I see a Church that is barely noticeable in a pluralistic society” (207).
To the extent Burgess finds himself alternating between admiration and reservation, it undoubtedly stems in good measure from the fact that contemporary Russian Orthodoxy exhibits a host of contradictory tendencies. To this point, the author identifies not one, but five, “Orthodoxies:” an “official” Orthodoxy of the Moscow Patriarchate and its bishops, a moderate Orthodoxy favoring modest reform, a miniscule liberal Orthodoxy advocating more thoroughgoing democratic reform, a larger conservative Orthodoxy antagonistic to modernity, and a popular, folk Orthodoxy largely outside the control of the institutional Church (195).
Burgess’s parsing of a multifaceted Russian Orthodox Church calls to mind an earlier, equally insightful set of sociological case studies found in Wallace L. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006). Similarly, Holy Rus’, in delineating Orthodoxy’s perquisites and constraints in the post-Soviet political order, joins other notable studies in the past decade and a half with the same intent: Zoe Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005); John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Irina Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Katja Richters, The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia (New York: Routledge, 2013); and Geraldine Fagan, Believing in Russia—Religious Policy after Communism (New York: Routledge, 2013).
Besides its strengths, what may be considered missing from Holy Rus’? For one, conservative Orthodoxy, especially its fundamentalist variant, deserves greater attention. This contingent within Russia’s majority faith can amount simply to benign traditionalism. However, the fundamentalist wing of conservative Orthodoxy has devolved into chauvinistic nationalism; violence-prone, anti-Western xenophobia; antiSemitism; and intolerant triumphalism. Fundamentalists are, in turn, emboldened by the state’s extension of privileges to Orthodoxy and its widespread discrimination against minority faiths.
One wishes, in addition, that Burgess had taken note of those obscurantist Russian Orthodox brotherhoods that are anti-global, anti-ecumenical, and monarchical, and of the proto-fascist geopolitics of Alexander Dugin. Conservative Orthodox nationalists gravitate to Dugin’s racially charged, anti-Western message that some contend resonates with Putin.
Holy Rus’ could also have explored in greater depth instances of Russian Orthodox collaboration with the state. The two worked together to orchestrate the 2007 union of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) with the Moscow Patriarchate, to the latter’s advantage; and Putin supported 2012 prison terms for punk rockers who defiled Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior with antiOrthodox and anti-Putin protest songs. For his part, after early tentativeness, Patriarch Kirill supported the Kremlin during Moscow’s anti-Putin street demonstrations in 2011- 12; the Patriarch also failed to speak out against Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine (2014-).
While Burgess does note the broadly united churchstate stance over the punk rockers and Ukraine, the work of the two in tandem further afield also deserves attention. New Putinera Moscow Patriarchate churches from Pyongyang (2006) to Paris (2016) serve as extensions of Russia’s political and cultural influence worldwide. At the same time, these new church outposts are meant to undermine the Moscow Patriarchate’s chief competitor in the Orthodox world, the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The fact that the new Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral complex near the Eiffel Tower is actually owned by the Russian government underscores the reality of intimate church-state coordination in the deployment of Russian soft power abroad. (Andrew Higgins, “In Expanding Russian Influence, Faith Combines with Firepower,” New York Times, 13 September 2016). The Moscow Patriarchate and the Kremlin have also coordinated their efforts in highlighting persecution of mostly Orthodox) Christians in the Middle East and Orthodox charitable projects in Assad’s Syria. The very appellation Holy Rus’ connotes the Kremlin’s support for Russians abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate’s claims to pre-eminence within worldwide Orthodoxy. The Church’s international efforts abroad may thus be seen as part of a larger project aimed at spreading Russia’s political sway beyond its borders.
To be sure, Burgess is well aware of the pitfalls of the Church doing the bidding of a state bent on utilizing it for its own secular purposes. He laments Orthodox “hierarchs’ unwillingness to speak out against obvious social injustices and the political machinations of the Putin government” (26). “Many of my Orthodox friends,” he notes, “see a repetition of the Soviet era, when the official Church yielded to state control in order to secure a measure of public institutional life” (202). Burgess quotes approvingly the warning of historian priest Georgii Mitrofanov that the Church must fight “the temptation once again to seek a privileged status…at the cost of dependence on the state” (160). He also agrees with now out-of-favor former Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate editor Sergei Chapnin who bemoans a “Church of Empire…that consistently supports the political status quo and never places it under divine judgment” (203). Likewise, Burgess sees merit in Father Alexander Shargunov’s “criticisms of the Church’s worldly compromises with the Putin government” (206). Yet, once again, the author of Holy Rus’ changes course as he opines that “the Church knows that it will be able to develop its social ministries only if it maintains a good working relationship with government officials. A policy of quiet but persistent negotiation with the state seems more fruitful than open confrontation, even if such a policy comes at the cost of making the Church seem dependent on and even subservient to the state” (18).
In Burgess’s defense, Holy Rus’ repeatedly hoists red flags in noting the Kremlin’s use of the Church for its own purposes. While greater attention to this theme seems warranted, no author can satisfy every reviewer who would desire more coverage of a given subject. Suffice it to conclude by applauding Burgess for a nuanced and judicious accounting of present-day Russian Orthodoxy.
Dr. Mark R. Elliott is Editor Emeritus of the East-West Church Report.
