The Russian Orthodox Scene
For much of my life Russia -- then part of the Soviet Union -- was a secular, godless, Communist place. We used to hear stories of missionaries smuggling Bibles into the country. Then came the fall of the Communist regime and the end of the Soviet Union. At first all manner of faith communities headed in, but before long the long repressed Russian Orthodox Church got its sea legs, and with the help of Vladimir Putin, it has become the reigning religious force in Russia. That has led to conflict and even repression of other faith traditions -- especially of Protestants.
Martin Marty takes a brief look at the issue, one that seems to need further exploration.
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Conflicts over religion in American politics and among forces of "the religions" and the threats these pose (e.g. Muslim/Hindu) are so preoccupying, so headline- and primetime-grabbing, that many tense subjects of great import get overlooked. Thanks to Clifford J. Levy's front-page and full-page article in The New York Times (April 24), citizens have new reason to reckon with the situation code-named "church-and-state" in President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia, during a time of turmoil, repression, and suppression.
Eastern or Orthodox Christianity has been getting a fair press in the United States in recent years. Some notable evangelicals, seeking to remain evangelical but also desiring to be more anchored in church tradition, have either been converted or have advanced dialogues and conferences which make the Orthodox Church an attractive option. Almost two millennia of "Orthodoxy" behind it, one millennium of Russian Orthodoxy within it, and seventeen years of post-Soviet existence have added to the promise, especially in a time of unsettlement and turmoil world-wide.
Unfortunately, no small measure of that turmoil is being created by the Russian Orthodox and their most prominent member, the Russian President, who in recent years has sounded "born again"—or whatever the Orthodox would call it—and has accompanied his own move with governmental moves, alongside those of Church leadership and against everyone else. As Levy points out, a large Muslim minority has not been singled out for harassment, perhaps because its proselytizing has not made inroads into Orthodoxy. Spiritual and theological ties to Roman Catholicism have been sorely strained since the Iron Curtain tore, as the churches fight over property and prestige. Protestants, however, are getting roughed up and driven into virtual seclusion most of all.
After the Soviet Union imploded, Protestant "sects"—a term the Russians apply to "everyone else"—at first celebrated the opening of Russia and the chance for a Russian Christian spring. Of course, some evangelizers were too aggressive, too competitive, and too ready to give Protestantism a bad name in their thirst for reaping the spoils of Russia that had been ungathered or rendered invisible from 1917-1990. Americans are used to such attempts at conversion—for example, as Pentecostals make inroads in historically Catholic populations, notably the Hispanic. Yet the United States' framework for protecting religious freedom helps keep the peace. Russia does not know anything like it. In most regions its allowance for tolerance or religious freedom appears in name only. (There are local exceptions.) Mr. Putin has encouraged the privileging of one church and the repression if not yet full persecution of the others. And Patriarch Aleksei II, the head of that one church, not only does not help things; he fires them up, his inflammatory rhetoric sounding threatening, almost murderous.
Methodist and Lutheran pastors are besieged and their congregations have had to go into hiding. Protestants find it difficult to get permission to let people know they exist. Ecumenical observers, who had worked to keep channels open with the Soviet-era (and sometimes Soviet-controlled) Russian Church are chagrined that the recently persecuted church is now the repressor, with highest level government aid. The Putin era is not a happy time for "free churches", which all too seldom get the attention they deserve, an attention duly accorded them in Mr. Levy's welcome story about an unwelcome scene.
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
Martin Marty takes a brief look at the issue, one that seems to need further exploration.
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Sightings 5/5/08
The Russian Orthodox Scene
-- Martin E. Marty
-- Martin E. Marty
Conflicts over religion in American politics and among forces of "the religions" and the threats these pose (e.g. Muslim/Hindu) are so preoccupying, so headline- and primetime-grabbing, that many tense subjects of great import get overlooked. Thanks to Clifford J. Levy's front-page and full-page article in The New York Times (April 24), citizens have new reason to reckon with the situation code-named "church-and-state" in President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia, during a time of turmoil, repression, and suppression.
Eastern or Orthodox Christianity has been getting a fair press in the United States in recent years. Some notable evangelicals, seeking to remain evangelical but also desiring to be more anchored in church tradition, have either been converted or have advanced dialogues and conferences which make the Orthodox Church an attractive option. Almost two millennia of "Orthodoxy" behind it, one millennium of Russian Orthodoxy within it, and seventeen years of post-Soviet existence have added to the promise, especially in a time of unsettlement and turmoil world-wide.
Unfortunately, no small measure of that turmoil is being created by the Russian Orthodox and their most prominent member, the Russian President, who in recent years has sounded "born again"—or whatever the Orthodox would call it—and has accompanied his own move with governmental moves, alongside those of Church leadership and against everyone else. As Levy points out, a large Muslim minority has not been singled out for harassment, perhaps because its proselytizing has not made inroads into Orthodoxy. Spiritual and theological ties to Roman Catholicism have been sorely strained since the Iron Curtain tore, as the churches fight over property and prestige. Protestants, however, are getting roughed up and driven into virtual seclusion most of all.
After the Soviet Union imploded, Protestant "sects"—a term the Russians apply to "everyone else"—at first celebrated the opening of Russia and the chance for a Russian Christian spring. Of course, some evangelizers were too aggressive, too competitive, and too ready to give Protestantism a bad name in their thirst for reaping the spoils of Russia that had been ungathered or rendered invisible from 1917-1990. Americans are used to such attempts at conversion—for example, as Pentecostals make inroads in historically Catholic populations, notably the Hispanic. Yet the United States' framework for protecting religious freedom helps keep the peace. Russia does not know anything like it. In most regions its allowance for tolerance or religious freedom appears in name only. (There are local exceptions.) Mr. Putin has encouraged the privileging of one church and the repression if not yet full persecution of the others. And Patriarch Aleksei II, the head of that one church, not only does not help things; he fires them up, his inflammatory rhetoric sounding threatening, almost murderous.
Methodist and Lutheran pastors are besieged and their congregations have had to go into hiding. Protestants find it difficult to get permission to let people know they exist. Ecumenical observers, who had worked to keep channels open with the Soviet-era (and sometimes Soviet-controlled) Russian Church are chagrined that the recently persecuted church is now the repressor, with highest level government aid. The Putin era is not a happy time for "free churches", which all too seldom get the attention they deserve, an attention duly accorded them in Mr. Levy's welcome story about an unwelcome scene.
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
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This month, the Martin Marty Center's Religion and Culture Web Forum presents an essay by William Schweiker of the University of Chicago: "What Athens Has to Do with Jerusalem: Location and the Origin of Ethics." Commentary from Douglas Anderson (Loyola University), William Burrows (Orbis Books), Terry Clark (University of Chicago), Arthur E. Farnsley II (IUPUI), and Rev. Laura Sumner Truax (LaSalle Street Church, Chicago) will be posted on the forum's discussion board, where readers may also leave responses.
Access this month's forum at:http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/index.shtml.
Access the discussion board at:https://cforum.uchicago.edu/viewforum.php?f=1
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Comments
It's really hard to please some people. A satanic, godless, communist "principality" falls by the grace of God, the Power of the Holy Spirit and by the prayers of the New Martyrs and the Russian Orthodox Church emerges battered, broken, yet undefeated. And this Russian Orthodox Church is fulfilling its mission in the time before Antichrist. Protestant sects and other heretical groups are being marginalized, pushed out? So what? In evangelicalese this is called a REVIVAL, a Russian GREAT AWAKENING.
Elder (Saint) Anatole the Younger prophesied in 1917 during the earliest days of the Revolution:
"There will be a storm. And the Russian ship will be smashed to pieces. But people can be saved even on splinters and fragments. And not everyone will perish. One must pray, everyone must repent and pray fervently. And what happens after a storm? ...There will be a calm.’ At this everyone said: ‘But there is no more ship, it is shattered to pieces; it has perished, everything has perished.’ ‘It is not so,’ said Batiushka. ‘A great miracle of God will be manifested. And all the splinters and fragments, by the will of God and His power, will come together and be united, and the ship will be rebuilt in its beauty and will go on its own way as foreordained by God. And this will be a miracle evident to everyone."
This prophecy is being fulfilled even as I am typing it. Believe it or not, it is happening and I, an American former Evangelical Protestant sectarian, now blessed to be Orthodox, rejoice!