PUTIN’S REUNITED RUSSIAN CHURCH
By Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow Article
TIME
May 18 2007
The Russian Orthodox Church was torn in two by revolution and regicide,
by the enmity between communism and capitalism, nearly a century
of fulmination and hatred. That all formally ended on Thursday in
Moscow. Thousands of the Russian Orthodox faithful – including several
hundred who flew in from New York – lined up under heavy rain to get
into the Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
There, they witnessed the restoration of the "Canonical Communion
and Reunification" of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church (ROC),
which claims more than 70 million adherents, and the U.S.-based Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCOR), which is believed to be 1.5 million
strong. Many among the clergy and laity wept at the end of the 86
year-old schism brought about by the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and
the ensuing murder of the dethroned Tsar and the forced emigration of
hundred thousands Russians defeated in Civil war. While the sumptuous
ritual was clearly an emotional and pious event, the reunification
has political resonance as well because the Russian Orthodox Church
is increasingly a symbol and projection of Russian nationalism.
Indeed, rather than first give thanks to God in his speech, the head
of the ROC, Patriarch Alexy, paid homage to Russian President Vladimir
Putin. The Patriarch emphasized that the reunification could happen
only because the ROCOR saw in Putin "a genuine Russian Orthodox human
being." Putin responded in his speech that the reunification was a
major event for the entire nation.
Nationalism, based on the Orthodox faith, has been emerging as the
Putin regime’s major ideological resource. Thursday’s rite sealed the
four-year long effort by Putin, beginning in September 2003, to have
the Moscow Patriarchate take over its rival American-based cousin and
launch a new globalized Church as his state’s main ideological arm
and a vital foreign policy instrument. In February press conference,
Putin equated Russia’s "traditional confessions" to its nuclear shield,
both, he said, being "components that strengthen Russian statehood
and create necessary preconditions for internal and external security
of the country." Professor Sergei Filatov, a top authority on Russian
religious affairs notes that "traditional confessions" is the state’s
shorthand for the Russian Orthodox Church.
The Church’s assertiveness and presence is growing – with little
separation from the State. The Moscow City Court and the Prosecutor
General’s Office maintain Orthodox chapels on their premises. Only
the Orthodox clergy are entitled to give ecclesiastic guidance to the
military. Some provinces have included Russian Orthodox Culture classes
in school curricula with students doing church chores. When Orthodox
fundamentalists vandalized an art exhibition at the Moscow Andrei
Sakharov Center as "an insult to the main religion of our country,"
the Moscow Court found the Center managers guilty of insulting the
faith, and fined them $3,500 each. The ROC had an opera, based on a
famous fairy tale by the poet Alexander Pushkin, censored to the point
of cutting out the priest, who is the tale’s main protagonist. "Of
course, we have a separation of State and Church," Putin said during
a visit to a Russian Orthodox monastery in January 2004. "But in the
people’s soul they’re together." The resurgence of a Church in open
disdain of the secular Constitution is only likely to exacerbate
divisions in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Russia.
The ROCOR’s American clergy insist that they retain administrative
independence over their churches even as they recognize the Moscow
Patriarch as their Head. Filatov says that the ROCOR has "about as
much [independence] as Eastern Europe’s ‘people’s democracies’ had
in the Soviet bloc." One of the first tests of the new union will be
in the Holy Land, where the ROCOR maintains religious properties –
and has had run-ins with representatives of the Moscow patriarchate
in the past. In 1997, for example, Yasser Arafat forcibly turned over
the only Christian church in Hebron, run by the ROCOR, to the ROC.
(That church includes the site where the Bible says Abraham met three
angels.) The American-based Church still controls St. Mary Magdalene,
with its seven gilded onion domes and Muscovite facade, one of the
most prominent churches in Jerusalem because of its commanding spot
on the slopes of the Mount of Olives above the garden of Gethsemane.
The ROCOR also has a convent on the summit of the Mount of Olives,
a monastery in the Judaean desert founded by a hermit in the third
century, and one chapel in Jericho and another on the Jordan river.
The Reunification deal says that the administration of these properties
will not change. But some observers remain skeptical.
With a reunited Russian Orthodox Church, Putin is pushing Russia’s
dominance in the global Orthodox movement, the traditional Orthodox
leadership is vested in the Patriarch of Constantinople, in a first
among equals style rather than the dominant Papal regime of the Roman
Catholic Church. The Orthodox communion includes churches in Greece,
Cyprus, Ukraine, Belarus and various Balkan states as well as Georgia,
Armenia and Moldova. Historically, the Russian Orthodox Church has
always pressed its pre-eminence among these nations and is likely to
do so again. Putin’s new unified Church will also further expand in
the U.S. and Western Europe as it tries to use the ROCOR’s network
and congregation to become as much an arm of Russian nationalist
politics as well as Russian piety. With Reporting by Andrew Lee
Butters/Jerusalem
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