Ecclesial Boundaries and National Identity in the Orthodox Church

Tamara Grdzelidze

Description

Grdzelidze’s study evaluates the present state of ecclesiology in the Orthodox Church, focusing on the history of autocephaly and its relationship with the rise of religious nationalism.

To date, the Orthodox Church has not sufficiently addressed the pressing problem of religious nationalism. Tamara Grdzelidze’s Ecclesial Boundaries and National Identity in the Orthodox Church fills this lacuna, offering a solution to the ecclesiological problems posed by the rise of group-related sentiment in Orthodox communities.

Grdzelidze’s monograph begins with an examination of the history of autocephaly and synodality in the Orthodox Church. As she explains, the political autonomy of local churches in the Eastern Roman Empire, which was later transformed into autocephaly, instinctively carried the kernel of group-related sentiments, whether national or ethnic. Over time, such sentiments have given rise to religious nationalism, which has further resulted in the inability of autocephalous churches to disengage from their national political involvements. Consequently, Orthodox Churches are unable to conduct a conversation on the hermeneutics of authority.

After sketching this historical background, Grdzelidze offers a solution to this ecclesiological problem, proposing a eucharistic hermeneutics by which the concepts of autocephaly and synodality might be preserved from misappropriation by religious nationalists. This proposal is centered on the principle that the Church represents the Body of Christ and thus embraces the whole people of God and the whole of God’s creation through the sacramental life. Ultimately, this eucharistic mode of visioning the Church furnishes a solution to the crisis of borders and boundaries in the Orthodox Church.

The political autonomy of local Churches in the Eastern Roman Empire, soon to be transformed into autocephaly, instinctively carried the kernel of group-related sentiments, whether ‘national’ or ethnic. This kernel of ‘national’/ethnicity/group related-sentiments has never been addressed by the Orthodox Church. Historically, some of these sentiments gave rise to religious nationalism, in which belonging to a particular territory is significant (and always has been so). Under various circumstances, this ‘territorial belonging’ has also been translated into belonging to extra-territorial borders. There are two phenomena proving the latter: the so called diaspora that has become common to all autocephalous Churches; and the shifting of its religious-cultural boundaries far beyond its geographical borders by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.

For reasons of facilitating the analysis of autocephaly - a complex imperial construct based on the intertwining of geographic borders with ethnicity/group and other socially determined boundaries - it seemed appropriate to glean wisdom from contemporary studies on nationalism. Taking a bold step to research nationalism has been justified by the prosopographic approach which studies the common characteristics of historical groups. The ‘group’ under discussion has been the Orthodox autocephalous Churches with a particular emphasis on the Church in Georgia, Russia and Ukraine; they maintain a series of shared characteristics, among them nationalism, but demonstrate diverse expressions in different places throughout ages and until the present day. ‘Boundary’ is one of the most frequently used terms in this research. It emerged first in anthropology, as an analytical term, to categorize or catalogue ethnic groups according to their external characteristics, and then found its way into the social sciences, most notably into politics (and geopolitics). It is a marker defining insiders and outsiders but each context accommodates the concept in its own way. For example, ethnic boundaries and national boundaries may have different political adaptations that can be manipulated by the nationalistic principle.

Current political climate in post-Soviet states of Russia, Ukraine and Georgia is not understandable without addressing a contemporary teaching and aspiration of the Orthodox Church that is a big political player in each of these contexts. With this consideration, the study sought answers to questions on the role of the Orthodox Church in the ongoing crises of geopolitical, pluralistic, secular and national character.

In the ex-Soviet countries of Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine, relations between citizenship and the religious are very complex and far from homogeneous. Until recently Ukraine and Georgia have manifested a fair mobilization of civil society, while Russia’s attempts in that direction seemed feeble until the detainment of Alexei Navalny in January 2021. The scale of the Putin’s regime, however, sustained by the size of the state together with its multiculturalism make the Russian population too vulnerable in the struggle to build a civil society. On the other hand, Ukraine and Georgia have been under the constant pressure of the same forces as those that constrain the civil activity of the Russian population. One of the geopolitical visions of the Putin’s KGB-run state is to spread its geopolitical influence over the ex-Soviet states through various channels one of which is that of religious nationalism. The Russian Orthodox Church is actively involved in both places, Kiev and Tbilisi: in Ukraine where the Russian Orthodox Church continues its jurisdictional claims and in Georgia where it acts as a ‘big Orthodox brother’. The parallels drawn between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church with regard to interference in domestic and foreign politics are very similar and easily detectable. Pressing the levers of religious-national sentiment has been an effective tool not only for spreading pro-Russian political influence but also for keeping societies in Ukraine and Georgia concentrated on defending/preserving their religiously expressed national identities that may not always be in agreement with their recently upheld political preference, namely, becoming full members of the Euro-Atlantic Alliances. In these feeble civil societies, often, lack of experience in dealing with boundaries creates the uncertainty over one’s national identity and citizenship that are one yet distinct.

Citizenship is shaped primarily by the extent and content of participation in the public sphere. This understanding of citizenship, in turn, then shapes a civil society. Evidently, lack of clarity over the differentiated spheres, especially between the religious and the state, begets clashes between those segments of society that consider themselves in the first place to be citizens, perhaps with religious interests but also with clarity over modern boundaries, and those that consider a religious-national conceptualization to be central to citizenship. In other words, the latter case cannot be called ‘citizenship’ proper, although it bears witness to some general features of modern Orthodox citizenship, to the Orthodox presence in the public sphere. So the issue with the local Orthodox Churches is not so much their absence from public sphere but not being in a right place because of the unclarity over boundaries and resistance to comply with the requirements of the modern secular world.

Contemporary believers must know that the Church does not antagonize the particular state or a land or a culture of its abode but helps its citizens, whether Orthodox or any other, to seek a dignified and virtuous life. The Church is not only a shelter but also a means, a mediator, whose words are transformative. The Church must strive to make the world listen to its words not by antagonizing it but by a sincere engagement with the contemporary world.

Contents

Introduction

1. Emerging Ecclesial Boundaries in the Eastern Roman Empire

2. National Borders and Secular Boundaries

3. Autocephaly and a Secular Age: painful adaptation to Pluralism

4. Autocephaly and Studying Nationalism/studies on N

5. Contextualization of Autocephaly:

Russian Orthodox Church

Orthodox Church of Georgia

Orthodox Church of Ukraine

6. Eucharistic Vision as Hermeneutics for Orthodox Synodality

Conclusions

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Religious
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Ecclesiology
• Christian Church
• Theology
• Orthodox
• Christianity
• History
• Church

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268204976
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ecclesial Boundaries and National Identity in the Orthodox Church
ECCLESIAL BOUNDARIES AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

TAMARA GRDZELIDZE
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2023 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950305
ISBN: 978-0-268-20498-3 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20500-3 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20497-6 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction CHAPTER 1 Emerging Ecclesial Boundaries in the Eastern Roman Empire CHAPTER 2 National Borders and Secular Boundaries CHAPTER 3 Autocephaly and the Secular Age: A Painful Adaptation to Pluralism CHAPTER 4 Autocephaly and Studying Nationalism CHAPTER 5 Contextualization of Autocephaly in the Russian Orthodox Church CHAPTER 6 Contextualization of Autocephaly in Georgia and Ukraine CHAPTER 7 The Eucharistic Vision as Hermeneutics for Orthodox Synodality Conclusion Notes Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was possible to accomplish during my stay as a visiting fellow at the University of St Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2019. Dennis Savoie Ambassador of Canada, my ex-colleague, kindly introduced me to the governing board of St Michael’s. I am grateful to James Ginther, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the time, who found resources to invite me as Aileen Driscoll Research Fellow in Ecumenical Theology at the University of St Michael’s College. I hibernated the Canadian winter and enjoyed a warmer Canadian season in the library of St Michael’s and wish to express my sincere gratitude to its staff for their heartfelt assistance and excellent services.
I am grateful to a number of colleagues and friends who read various parts of the manuscript during the process of writing. I would like to express special gratitude to the first reader of most of the manuscript, Bishop Brian Farrell of the Pontifical Council for Promoting of Christian Unity, for his availability and wise words, and to David Wagschal, then at the University of Toronto, for his guidance in the area of canon law. For a careful reading of the manuscript and his helpful comments, I am indebted to Aristotle Papanikolaou.
My sincere gratitude, as always, goes to my teacher and lifelong mentor, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who has been the biggest inspiration for loving contemporary Orthodox theology.
And last but not least, I would like to thank the University of Notre Dame Press for professional assistance in developing the manuscript into a book.
INTRODUCTION
This research is the result of many years of work. The inspiration came from my years as an Orthodox theologian in the Faith and Order Secre-tariat at the World Council of Churches (2001–13). 1 While working toward the theological engagement of Christian churches in their search for unity—“that they may all be one” (John 17:21)—I was focused on the contemporary issues of ecclesiology, sources of authority in the church, and ecumenical hermeneutics. 2
My theological experience in Faith and Order work was enriching in many ways, especially as I came from a small Orthodox church. A logical continuation of my work at the World Council of Churches was an assignment as ambassador of Georgia to the Holy See (2014–18), an important hub of ecclesial life.
The urgency of this study became clear around the time of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in Crete (June 2016), when the pending question, Why is it so difficult for local Orthodox churches to maintain a conversation regarding their current challenges and make binding decisions?, arose more sharply. The later development of autocephaly in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine (2019) defined this study’s final trajectory.

Fresh thinking is needed to uncover why the Orthodox Church could not fulfill its task of attaining unity during the Crete council. It is urgent that the individual churches discuss fundamental questions of unity, synodality, 3 baptism, and the ecclesial status of other Christians, among other challenging issues.
While this research concerns all autocephalous Orthodox churches, 4 most examples are drawn from the church of Georgia and the jurisdiction of Moscow, as they are the best known to me. 5 Two historic events (which risked becoming nonevents)—the Holy and Great Council of Crete in 2016 and granting the Tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019—served as important sources for my analysis.
Writing on the Orthodox Church’s mission in society today, I found myself in a rather comfortable place, as important work has been done by fellow Orthodox theologians on major challenges to the Orthodox Church’s mission posed by systemic changes in social and political life in the late-modern world. Those reflections were central to this inquiry. When divergences occur, they should not be understood as mutually exclusive.
Marking territories—real and imaginary—is one of the apparent legacies of the Byzantine Church model in the Orthodox Church today. This study is an attempt to coordinate various expressions of border and boundary making in the church through such ecclesiological concepts as autocephaly and synodality, as well as religious nationalism. It may seem that these topics have been the subject of debate in the Orthodox Church only in the past decade or so, but this is not true. In different ways, and less antagonistically, the local Orthodox churches have been confronting these themes for many years. Autocephaly and the national issue (in addition to synodality) have become attributes of the Orthodox ecclesiological tradition, yet they have been deeply embedded in politics, both ecclesial and secular.
One of the main arguments of this study is the ambivalence of national borders from the religious perspective. An examination of the foundational principle of autocephaly since AD 313, when the Christian faith became the state religion of the Roman Empire, reveals the importance of geographic borders in gaining autonomy from the imperial power (both state and church). The emperor was the personal guarantor of church autonomy as well as of church unity: independent local churches lived out their unity through their synodal communion, from council to council. However, universally binding decisions were made at synods called and presided over by the emperor. In a way, both church autonomy (which eventually became autocephaly) and church synodality were not only sealed by imperial authority but were also maintained by it. Correlation between geographic borders and imperial authority became crucial for the formation of local churches as well as for sustaining their synodality at the universal level.
It could be suggested that the emergence of church autonomy, later autocephaly, is a profound act of border making in the Christian church. Fluidity of borders is best felt from the religious perspective as they were involved in dialectics of the limited and the limitless, the circumscribed history and uncircumscribed eternity. This experiential-charismatic drama in the Christian church—perhaps with more direct reference to the Eastern Orthodox Church—involves both empirical borders and imaginary boundaries.
Orthodox theology in the modern era, with some exceptions, is more able to converse with other Christian traditions than directly with the secular world. In contrast, in light of their respective interpretations of divine revelation, other Christian traditions are capable of direct “discussion” with the world. Why are the Orthodox reluctant to maintain an open dialogue with the world? Is it the difficulty of addressing the division between the sacred and profane, the ecclesial and the secular? Or is it the lack of in-depth communication among the autocephalous churches? The Orthodox Church’s internal ecclesial boundaries, however, are flexible; with both options open, either to make them receptive or to make them exclusive, limited to itself.
Orthodox Christians are facing an urgent need to provide hermeneutics for the church’s mission today. Hermeneutics based on the most fundamental principles of the Orthodox faith will not only sustain a dialogue with the world but also help with comprehending the Orthodox paradigm built on the inherited tradition yet always directed to the eschaton. Contemporary Orthodox theologians provide material to seek hermeneutical keys that may facilitate the discernment of personal and communal life in Christ today.

Autocephaly
Autocephaly, like any other concept, has a life span. Rooted in the idea of a local church under the guidance of one bishop, it developed into an elaborate tool to supervise local churches from the imperial center while at the same time granting all necessary attributes for local governance. Within a new imperial nexus, autocephaly seems to have transformed autonomy (as it is described, for example, in the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch) into a bond with a sloppier sense of accountability between the fellow bishops. 6
The historical genesis of the autonomous church, the tracing of its functions from the outset and the grasping of its gradual elaboration, is one of the most important angles of this analysis. We are now accustomed to hearing that the meaning of autocephaly has changed, which is true, but we do not hear as often about its historical genesis: Under what circumstances were provincial churches given autonomy? The core attributes for churches receiving autonomy within the Eastern Roman Empire were geography, ethnicity, 7 and affiliation with the Roman Empire. 8 It will be demonstrated that receiving church autonomy (or a kind of auto