Russian Orthodoxy in the face of European integration

This week, the Russian State University for the Humanities hosted a seminar “Eastern Christianity and European Integration: A View from Russia,” organized by the university’s Center for the Comparative Study of Religions. The topic of the correlation and relationship between Eastern and Western Christianity was discussed first in a historical context, and then based on modern material. It is interesting that in both cases the conversation continually slipped from inter-Christian relations to relations between the West and Russia; other Orthodox churches were only occasionally mentioned, which is probably natural when “looking from Russia,” but is still essentially incorrect. The question “Is Russia Europe?” The debate was especially emotional, despite individual calls to pay attention to the fact that no “objective truth” can be found in such a dispute, that we are not talking about the relationship between political or geographical entities, but about the relationship between different ideas and images emerging in society in different periods .

However, several foreign professors also took part in the seminar, whose approach to this problem was noticeably different. Wil van den Berken from Holland generally argued that Russian political and religious history does not have any special specificity, and for this reason Russia is part of Europe. Turning to today, van den Berken called the Russian Orthodox Church the new defender of Christian European identity, since it, for example, advocates mentioning Christian roots in the European Constitution and is against the admission of Turkey to the EU (at these words, Metropolitan Kirill’s assistant, priest Georgy Ryabykh, shook his head with doubt head).
From the words of the executive secretary of the publication “Catholic Encyclopedia” Alexei Yudin, the picture was exactly the opposite: the historical confrontation between the Orthodox and Catholics moved in 2002 (during the conflict over the establishment of Catholic dioceses in Russia) into the political plane. At the same time, in the bowels of the Moscow Patriarchate, the idea of ​​an “Orthodox civilization” opposed to the West was born - and precisely as a political idea. Yudin does not deny the recent rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox Church and conservative Western, or rather European, churches on the basis of a common opposition to secularism and some liberal tendencies, but he doubts that this rapprochement can be quite serious.

The author of this note also spoke at the seminar. It seems to me that the general anti-Western, that is, anti-modernization sentiment, traditional for the Russian Orthodox Church (and not only for it, of course) and still dominant in it, creates very negative preconditions for the church’s perception of the topic “Russia and Europe.” But this mood is gradually eroding as the Russian Orthodox Church is drawn into European discussions about secularism, and now also about human rights. Of course, from the outside, especially from liberal circles, traditional, even archaic rhetoric is more noticeable, but the process itself is objectively aimed precisely at overcoming the anti-modernization tradition. Another thing is that fundamentalist tendencies within the Church itself call into question the success of this ideological drift.

Representing the Russian Orthodox Church at the seminar, Fr. Georgy Ryabykh can, simply by virtue of his position, assess what is happening from the inside, and he expressed his assessments, it seems, quite frankly. For the Russian Orthodox Church presence in Europe, under which Fr. Georgiy clearly understood that the European Union has two aspects. The first, actually ecclesiastical, is the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the EU countries, of which there are now about 400 (half in the Baltics, i.e. in the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church), and up to 50 parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad are expected to join. The second is relations with the institutions of the EU and European states; and here the dynamics are much more noticeable than in the church “expansion” itself.

In particular, the interest of the Russian Orthodox Church in the human rights of Fr. Georgy explained that the Church views Russia as part of Europe - that is, that civilization where human rights are an integral part of the foundations of society.

At the same time, Fr. George insisted on maintaining the distinction between Europe and the “Russian world.” For example, it is for this reason that the Russian Orthodox Church is against Ukraine and Belarus joining the EU. On the other hand, the “Russian world”, simply due to the fact that there is a fairly large Russian-speaking diaspora in the EU countries, already intersects with Europe. The Russian Orthodox Church, in relations with European Orthodox Christians, insists on consolidation precisely on ethno-cultural grounds (this is its fundamental difference from the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Exarchate of Russian Orthodox parishes in Western Europe subordinate to it) and is ready to make very broad concessions for this purpose: in some Western parishes they even serve according to the "new style".

Answering the question about the distinction between the concepts of “Orthodox civilization” and “Russian world”, Fr. Georgy directly said that they are used virtually as synonyms, but the second concept is more political and convenient for the state. The Church is quite ready to support political initiatives in the spirit of the “Russian World”. In the European Russian Alliance, created in 2005, the chairman is MEP from Latvia Tatyana Zhdanok, and the deputy is Archpriest Anthony Ilyin, secretary of the Russian Orthodox Church representative office in European international organizations.

Of course, the synonymy “Russian-Orthodox” can be problematic, for example, for Ukrainians or Moldovans (and even for Russians themselves). But the Church is not ready to separate the ethno-cultural, essentially political agenda from the confessional one (and this applies not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, but also to many other churches).

Observers usually talk about the conflict between ethnicity and religion from a political science perspective. This approach dominated the seminar as well. But the problem also has a strictly ecclesiastical, ecclesiological aspect, and the consultant of the Synodal Theological Commission, Alexander Kyrlezhev, spoke about it. Of course, in historically Orthodox (entirely or largely) countries, collisions also arise, clearly related to the opposition of two cultural traditions (for example, the “Moscow” and “Romanian” churches in Moldova) or culturally-oriented and confessional-oriented approaches (“ Moscow" and "Constantinople" churches in Estonia). But outside the historically Orthodox countries, in Central and Western Europe, organizing church life is even more difficult.

“Orthodox Europe” finds itself in a dual position: it is a “neighbor” of Europe, understood as the EU (Russia, Ukraine, etc.), or a European outskirts (Greece, Romania, Bulgaria), but it is also represented by a growing diaspora, that is an increasingly visible religious minority in the old EU countries. The Orthodox churches, accustomed to living separately from Europe, are not very prepared for this situation. Perhaps the solution is not a top-level dialogue of churches (Orthodox with each other, Orthodox with the Catholic, etc.), but networked, grassroots interaction that allows taking into account cultural and confessional diversity and not putting undue pressure on the Orthodox themselves.

As you can see, all the speakers proceeded from the fact that the “social weight” of Orthodoxy is far from equal to the “social weight” of Europe, no matter how one delineates the boundaries of both objects of comparison. Orthodoxy, especially Russian Orthodoxy, is a minority. That’s why it was so interesting to listen to senior researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Akhmet Yarlykapov, who spoke about Europe and Muslims, primarily Russian ones. It is noteworthy that, according to Yarlykapov, Volga Muslims (unlike Caucasian Muslims) perceive themselves as Europeans. While all the speakers stated that “Russian Orthodox” (that is, those who speak on their behalf) separate themselves to one degree or another from Europe.

Being a minority in a secular society, Christians must relearn how to speak to society. Unfortunately, this topic, raised by the Dutch researcher Evert Van der Zweerde, simply did not have time to be discussed.

The position of a minority can be perceived in different ways. Of course, it comes into sharp conflict with the traditional self-perception of the Russian Orthodox Church, and this contradiction shows itself every now and then in official church rhetoric. One can, on the contrary, consider it the norm for Christians - the “small flock” (in other places the same Father Georgy Ryabykh said that the Church must realize that the Constantinian era of state support is over). And we can hope for success in desecularization and the return of former influence, but in a new capacity. John Farina (George Mason University, USA) spoke about this at the seminar, but it seems that many other participants dream of the same thing.

It is difficult to say to what extent such dreams can be justified. In any case, desecularization itself in different countries of the European continent, from Ireland to Russia, is so different and real to such varying degrees that a new rich topic for reflection arises here, including on the topic “Russia and Europe.”