For 20 years Curtis Elliott has been part of the Salvation Army’s work in concert with the Georgian Orthodox Church to assist internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Georgia. The displacements stem from conflicts with Russia which undermined Georgia’s territorial integrity: in 1992 in Abkhazia (on the Black Sea in the northwest corner of Georgia, very close to Sochi, Russia, where the 2014 Winter Olympics were held) and in 2008 in South Ossetia (in north central Georgia, on the southern flanks of the Caucasus mountains). Elliott reports that 270,000 people (nearly five percent of Georgia’s population of 4.3 million) were displaced by these two conflicts.
This work is a Ph.D. dissertation written at Asbury Theological Seminary. Elliott focuses on the significance of place in people’s religious and cultural identity, arguing that “without places, theologies would only be abstractions unrelated to the lived experiences of people” (p. 26). Combining field interviews of IDPs from Abkhazia with background information on the religious and political history of Georgia and Abkhazia, he concentrates on the significance of borders, lost homes, and lost graves, that is, the inability of IDPs to visit the graves of their departed relatives, in the religious identity of IDPs.
Elliott’s first two chapters deal with methodology used in displaced persons field research and a very helpful historical overview of Georgia, focusing on the development of its Christian identity from A.D. 300-600, the impact of Arab conquests on the Christian kingdom from 650-850, and more recently on the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, especially the 1992 Abkhazian War and the 2008 South Ossetian War.
Chapter three treats the history of Abkhazia and the way the Abkhaz-Georgian War led to disruptions in urban relationships in the region of Gali (a buffer between Abkhazia and Georgia, settled in the 20th century by Georgians). The chapter also describes the ministry of Father Archil, a Georgian Orthodox monk who ministers covertly to both Georgians and Abkhazians in Gali. His ministry involves the use of religious artifacts and icons to reassert the presence of Georgian Orthodoxy in Gali and to create a sense of shared religious identity between the two ethnic groups.
Chapter four treats the nostalgia with which IDPs view a lost home and the role that faith plays in people’s attempts to re-create a sense of place and home after their displacement. It also addresses the role of domestic icon corners in fostering a sense of spiritual space.
Chapter five deals with graveyards and the remaking of sacred space. The cemetery is important in Georgian Orthodoxy as the place where Jesus will meet the dead and raise them to life, and the place for collective expressions of grief and regular acts of religious devotion paid by the living to their dead relatives. IDPs from Abkhazia, who could not visit the graves of their relatives there, came to revere alternative graveyards where IDPs in their new locations paid their respects to their departed relatives.
Chapter six deals with the theology of place, focusing especially on the role of icons in Orthodox theology and practice. The theology of the icon is based on the fact that God has become visible and material through the incarnation, with icons being regarded as the central expression of Orthodox theology. They are regarded as the borderland between earthly and spiritual existence, as the “in between” space between heaven and earth, and as a window into heavenly realities. As a result, the icon is fundamental to Father Archil’s strategy of navigating the border between Abkhazia and Georgia. Just as people are displaced because of war, so also icons are displaced from their proper resting places, and the return of icons to their homes represents and fosters peace in border spaces. Icons further provide a way of thinking about borders, homes, and graves that enables IDPs to cope with their loss of place.
Elliott’s work is very successful in describing the religious dimensions of human displacement and in explaining the efforts of Georgian Orthodox IDPs (and those who minister to them) to re-claim a sense of place. His understanding of Orthodox theology and practice is accurate and profoundly sympathetic. Perhaps surprisingly (considering that Elliott is a Protestant writing his dissertation at a major evangelical seminary), the work never seeks to assess or evaluate Orthodox practice, or even to contrast it with Protestant belief and practice. Nor does Elliott mention any non-Orthodox IDPs in his discussion, although there must surely have been a significant number of Roman Catholics, a few Protestants, and some Muslims among the people displaced by the wars. Instead, his work is almost purely descriptive, and thus he allows the contrast between a Western Protestant approach to space and a Georgian Orthodox approach to shine forth in the descriptions he provides, without overt comment about the differences.
I believe this is an effective method of presentation, and Elliott’s work is very useful for (among others) Western Christians working among refugees and other displaced persons in the Eastern Christian world. We need to remember not only that displacement is a much more severe problem to someone with an Eastern mindset than it might be to a Westerner, but also that Eastern Christendom provides means of coping with displacement that we Westerners would never think of, means from which we too could learn.
Donald Fairbairn, Professor of Early Christianity, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina