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.
