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Volume 16, No.1

Retrieving the Sacred

Blair A. Ruble

Just a few months after the Soviet Union collapsed, a leading “Sovietologist” was invited by a group of even more distinguished Soviet-hands to imagine the “table of power” in the Kremlin a decade-and-a-half hence. Who would be at that table? The leaders of various democratic political parties? Business leaders who competed with equal deftness with their Western counterparts on the great global markets that would surely rule the world?

The speaker began by observing that how people gathered around the table would be as important as who they were. Would members of this elite be elected? Alternatively, would they find their way to power via personal networks? Would they all be ethnic Russians, or would there be a place at the table for representatives of other nationalities? Would women be in the room? Continuing on, he suggested that while the process was unclear, undoubtedly some of those present would be wearing expensive business suits, others would be wearing the uniforms of various security and military forces, and others still would don clerical garb.

The audience audibly gasped and spent the evening trying to explain to the discussion leader that there would be no clerical garb at the Russian table of power. The Soviet Union had been an atheistic society and state, one that had been thoroughly secularized. In addition, the forces of a burgeoning global economy would propel others to the fore. Despite the role that religion might come to play in the private lives of individual Russian citizens, several in the room argued, there would be no public institutionalized religiosity in the former Soviet Union. Whatever aspects of Russian reality were illuminated that evening nearly 15 years ago, even more light was shed on mainstream Washington, D.C. think-tanks. One simply did not speak of religion in polite company, especially when engaging in political analysis.

Religious Resurgence

How different the world – and Washington – seems today. Since the fall of Communism in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries once part of the Soviet Union, religious affiliations and identities have experienced a rapid resurgence. Religion emerged as an affiliation of growing prominence. An increasing number of people today look through the framework of religion in order to understand the world around them. In fact, it is fair to say that religion touches upon all spheres of social, political, and cultural life, and its resurgence has profoundly affected the definition and shaping of broader social movements as well as individual behaviors.

Within such countries as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, we find vast and varied examples of the wide-ranging influence of religion in its many facets. In some cases, religious practices prove to be part of what could be a new cultural dynamism, one that responds to shifting social reality. For example, over the past couple of years, mullahs in Tatarstan have begun to read their sermons in Russian rather than in Tatar. They have done so in response to the arrival of increasingly large numbers of migrants from the Caucasus region who are seeking religious sustenance in the language they share with local clergy: Russian. Some observers of this phenomenon detect an increasing radicalization of the content of local sermons, so that Russian may in fact become the language of Islamic fundamentalism in the Central Volga. At the same time, because the sermons are in Russian, they offer a new, wider access to the sacred texts of Islam – a process which can serve to demystify Islam for Russians, an important step on the way to growing tolerance.

In another example, the new mayor of Kyiv – Leonid Chernovetsky – was an unexpected candidate and an even more surprising electoral victor, given his religious affiliation. Chernovetsky is a follower of Pastor Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian Pentecostal minister who has built up a congregation in Kyiv’s left-bank neighborhoods that is said to now total 25,000.

Within the thorny question of church/state relations in the region, several interesting configurations have developed. For example, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church is lobbying for the introduction of religious training in Russian public schools. At the same time, the Patriarchate praises the separation of church and state in neighboring Ukraine. In Belarus, a new law on religious freedom – first thought of as a counterpoint to the post-Soviet state atheism still in effect in the country – has forced many followers of minority

religions outside of the frame of the law, simply because they meet in private homes. In the Northern Caucasus, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions in the world, Islam is playing a role that leads both to stability and to radicalization. It is practiced not only by a small but devastating group of rebel warriors and “black widows,” but mostly by men and women hoping to quietly re-familiarize themselves with a religion long closed to them. It is clear that religion, through a variety of institutions and confessions, has become a vital and vibrant force in the region.

Cold War Neglect of the Study of Religion

During the Cold War, Westerners barely thought to study religion in the Soviet Union. It was, after all, an atheistic state and, in any case, the questions that interested students of the region clearly clustered around themes of high politics and international relations. When the Soviet state collapsed, scholars had unprecedented chances to sort through the many sides of life that had been left out of the scholarship examining the Soviet Union. Still, we in the West who try to understand and explain the region often seem much more comfortable talking about oligarchs and parliamentary negotiations than considering the content of Islamic and Pentecostal sermons. Yet, the political may be the least dynamic aspect of post-Soviet life.

When the Kennan Institute was founded 32 years ago, it may have been hard for some of the finest scholars of the Soviet Union to imagine a time such as this, when the region was actively reinventing itself in important ways, especially along cultural and religious lines. Even if conflicts in the region appear to cluster around religious identities, it is crucial to remember in these dynamic and sometimes very troubled times that religion and the fact of religious diversity can play a positive role in individual minds, hearts, and communities. It seems crucial to pay respect to that positive function as we strive to understand this vast, rich, and complex region. F

Blair A. Ruble is director of the Kennan Institute (covering Russia and surrounding states), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC.

Edited excerpt reprinted with permission from Blair A. Ruble, “Director’s Review,” Kennan Institute, 2005/2006.

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Volume 16, No.1

Polish Nuns Resistant to Secret Police Pressure

Jonathan Luxmoore

Polish nuns withstood pressure from Communist secret police better than male clergy, according to Mother Jolanta Olech, president of Poland’s Conference of Superiors of Female Religious Orders. Nuns who researched Interior Ministry files found that no more than 30 people associated with women religious had been recruited by secret police during the 1980s, when collaborators were most active.

“Documentation shows nuns were much tougher to recruit than priests,” Mother Jolanta said. “We can certainly say that in this very difficult situation, the sisters passed the test.” At least 10 percent of priests are estimated to have acted as informers under Communist rule.

Most of the country’s 44 dioceses and at least 30 religious orders set up commissions to investigate possible collaboration following the 7 January 2007 resignation of Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus of Warsaw after he admitted working with Communist secret police. According to church historian, Jan Zaryn, religious sisters were harder to blackmail than male clergy because of their stronger rules and traditions of obedience. F

Excerpted with permission of CNS

www.catholicnews.com. Copyright © 2007 Catholic  News Service

Book Review

Mapping Baptistic Identity/Towards an Understanding of European Baptist Identity: Listening to the Churches in Armenia, Bulgaria, Central Asia, Moldova, North Caucasus, Omsk and Poland. Edited by Rollin G. Grams and Parush R. Parushev. Prague: International Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. Reviewed by Roger Chapman.

Mapping Baptistic Identity is arranged around the findings of a 2002-2003 survey of “baptistic” leaders and seminary students of various countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as administered by the Institute of Systematic Study of Contextual Theologies at the International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS), Prague.

Rollin G. Grams and Parush R. Parushev, the editors, define the term baptistic as believing communities (“gathering” fellowships) that share in the practice of adult baptism and “radical moral living” and are part of churches neither under state sponsorship nor oriented around ethnic identity. In actuality, most of the survey respondents are Baptists, under the umbrella of the European Baptist Federation, but the editors also count Pentecostals and Adventists as baptistic. IBTS undertook this research of baptistic identity by taking advantage of its contact with seminarians and conference participants from some 52 Baptist unions and member churches across Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Each chapter offers cursory information on the specific country or region under focus and usually something about the existing Christian context. This is followed by information on how the specific survey was conducted, the number of respondents, their ages and gender, as well as theological background. The findings, covering five broad categories (theological issues, moral issues, leadership areas, church issues, and church and state/culture issues), constitute the bulk of the book.

Collectively, spiritual life (e.g., prayer, reading the Bible, fasting) ranked as one of the top theological concerns in the surveys. Under church unity, respondents regarded marital issues and speech (e.g., gossip, slander) as major moral topics in need of addressing. Under leadership, chief concerns included education of church leaders, misuse of power, and leadership transition within congregations. Mission work, church programs for select groups, and church/denominational unity were ranked most important under the subject of church issues. Finally, registration of churches with state authorities, teaching Protestant education in schools, and freedom to evangelize were main topics of concern under the church and state/culture category.

The editors acknowledge that this research is a preliminary sketch at best. The most serious shortcoming is the scant number of respondents for large swaths of geography: North Caucasus (Russia), 15; Armenia, 20; Bulgaria, 44; Central Asia, 21; Moldova, 23; Omsk Oblast (Russia), 24; Poland, 23. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that the concerns of seminary students match those of rank-and-file church members. F

Roger Chapman is assistant professor of history, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Palm Beach, Florida. From 1993 to 1997, he served as a Church of Christ missionary in Russia.

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Volume 16, No.1

Book Review

Payton, James R., Jr. Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition.

Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007. Reviewed by Donald Fairbairn.

This book does not attempt to evaluate or critique Orthodoxy, but simply aims to help Western evangelicals learn from the Eastern Church. Payton concentrates on Orthodox theology and practice, and each chapter describes the major differences between East and West on the issue at hand and concludes with several specific lessons that Payton believes Westerners can learn from Eastern Orthodoxy.

Payton’s significant research in Eastern sources and his long-term personal interaction with Orthodox leaders give his book a wealth of helpful insight. For example, Payton’s historical sketch (chap. 1) includes an outstanding short summary of the differences between the Greek and Latin mindsets that helped to foster diverging Eastern and Western Christian traditions. In his discussion of grace (chap. 9), he notes the Western focus on what grace does vs. the Eastern focus on what grace is, and this distinction brilliantly encapsulates the differences between Eastern and Western theology. Similarly, Payton helps the reader to understand differences in Eastern and Western debates about religious art when he points out (chap. 11) that what the Medieval West affirmed (and thus what the Reformers criticized) was only a small part of the Eastern Church’s much more comprehensive theology of the visual. Payton also offers very helpful descriptions of Orthodox practices, perhaps the best of which is his extensive analysis of the content and the spirituality of the Jesus Prayer (chap. 13).

However, when one attempts to help Western evangelicals learn from Orthodoxy, there seem to be two major ways in which one is prone to distortions. First, in an effort to make clear distinctions between evangelicalism and Orthodoxy, one might tend to exaggerate the differences in order to give Westerners clear lessons to learn from the East, lessons they allegedly could not learn from Western theology. From time to time, Payton seems to fall into this trap. For example, when he asserts that Orthodoxy can help the West explain the good that unbelievers do (p. 117) through its insistence that fallen humanity remains God’s handiwork, he is affirming nothing but what Western theologians also affirm. Almost all serious theologians admit that something of the original goodness remains even in fallen human beings. What Payton claims is a lesson the West needs to learn from the East is actually a lesson that popular Christianity needs to learn from mature theology, whether Eastern or Western.

A second pitfall that Payton falls into is the reverse of the first one. In places where Orthodoxy is particularly problematic, he tends to minimize the differences between East and West, to put the best possible spin on an Eastern teaching that in fact is rarely so acceptable. For example, in his discussion of the fall, Payton asserts that the Orthodox emphases are legitimate interpretations of the biblical texts (p. 108), an assertion that minimizes the chasm that separates Eastern and Western understandings of this issue. Some of the differences (for example, the Western view of the fall as guilt vs. the Eastern view of the fall as mortality) are indeed differences of emphasis that may be complementary, but others (such as the Western assertion that the serpent tempted Eve with something that could not be gained at all, vs. the Eastern claim that he tempted her with a shortcut to a goal that she should reach in another way) are virtual contradictions. Here Payton seems to gloss over an aspect of Orthodox theology that most evangelicals would regard as very problematic; he depicts Orthodoxy as closer to evangelical faith than it actually is.

Both the places where Payton exaggerates East-West differences and the places where he minimizes them are the unintended consequences of his purpose to let Orthodoxy teach us, without also seeking to critique Orthodoxy from a Western perspective. The reader thus needs to be alert to the places when Payton is unable to avoid these natural pitfalls. Despite these problems, I believe Payton’s work makes a very helpful contribution to the West’s understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy and to the crucial task of understanding our faith more comprehensively. This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of Protestant literature interacting with Eastern Orthodoxy. F

Donald Fairbairn is professor of historical theology, Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, South Carolina. He also teaches part-time at Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, Belgium, working primarily with students from Eastern Europe.

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Volume 16, No.1

Letter to the Editor

The articles [in the East-West Church and Ministry Report 15 (Spring 2007)] constitute a rather important set of themes to ponder seriously. The two papers on Russian Protestant conversions to Orthodoxy (Maria Kainova), and Russian Orthodox conversions to Protestantism (Geraldine Fagan), together with the piece by Evgeniy Yur’evich Knyazev on Russian public opinion becoming increasingly negative toward Protestants, are not only an important statement of what has changed in 20 years, but suggest reasons for that shift. Three comments come to mind: 1) Positive attitudes toward Protestants around 1988 had to do with the respect Russian Evangelicals had earned during the Soviet era and the public’s hope that more influence from them would heal the sickness in society; by 2007 Protestant tends to mean Western ways, i.e., the public image of missionaries, and hence scape-goating as social conditions are now much worse than they were in 1988; 2) Cases of the American cultural style of preaching that “dilute even the gravest moments with jokes” were the most obvious of many cultural signals that Protestantism is alien when compared to the feeling of “coming home” when Russian Protestants participated in the Orthodox liturgy; 3) Maria Kainova said little about the shift of the Russian intelligentsia away from Orthodoxy after too many unattractive encounters with obscurantist hierarchs and priests in the present Russian Orthodox Church, nor about the rather limited number that appear to have turned to Protestantism (Podberezky’s essays are an exception). Still, what comes through is that the nature of Orthodox worship and ritual fosters a mystical encounter with the reality of the Trinity and a more sacred experience of the Eucharist than Protestant worship offers (though less true of Russian Evangelicals, as Kainova notes). This seems to be true in spite of the clergy. But an Orthodox concern for a Christian presence in society is not commented on, in spite of the continuing ways Metropolitan Kirill and others keep making speeches and fostering conferences on the Russian Orthodox Social Concept statement of 2000.

Walter Sawatsky

Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary Elkhart, Indiana