Globalization and Orthodox Christianity

The Transformations of a Religious Tradition

Victor Roudometof

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135014681
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Denominaciones cristianas

With approximately 200 to 300 million adherents worldwide, Orthodox Christianity is among the largest branches of Christianity, yet it remains relatively understudied. This book examines the rich and complex entanglements between Orthodox Christianity and globalization, offering a substantive contribution to the relationship between religion and globalization, as well as the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and the sociology of religion – and more broadly, the interdisciplinary field of Religious Studies.

While deeply engaged with history, this book does not simply narrate the history of Orthodox Christianity as a world religion, nor does it address theological issues or cover all the individual trajectories of each subgroup or subdivision of the faith. Orthodox Christianity is the object of the analysis, but author Victor Roudometof speaks to a broader audience interested in culture, religion, and globalization. Roudometof argues in favor of using globalization instead of modernization as the main theoretical vehicle for analyzing religion, displacing secularization in order to argue for multiple hybridizations of religion as a suitable strategy for analyzing religious phenomena. It offers Orthodox Christianity as a test case that illustrates the presence of historically specific but theoretically distinct glocalizations, applicable to all faiths.

1 Globalization and Orthodox Christianity

Preliminary Considerations

With approximately 200 to 300 million adherents worldwide, Orthodox Christianity is among the largest branches of Christianity, yet it remains relatively understudied.¹ Orthodox Christianity is still often cast in the role of the “subaltern Other” and falls victim to a latent yet widespread Orientalism. In Western Europe and North America, knowledge of Orthodox Christianity is all too frequently tainted by negative stereotypes, partiality and partisanship.² This volume examines the variety of entanglements between Orthodox Christianity and globalization. At the heart of the arguments pursued in the book’s chapters lies an effort to show the rich and complex nature of these entanglements. With this effort, the book aims to make a substantive contribution to the relationship between religion and globalization as well as to the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and the sociology of religion—and more broadly, to the interdisciplinary field of religious studies. To the extent possible, the book has been written with the goal of rendering the arguments accessible even to nonspecialist readers. Although the book is deeply engaged with history, its objectives are not to offer a history of Orthodox Christianity as a world religion, to address theological issues or to exhaustively cover all the individual trajectories of each subgroup or subdivision of the faith. Orthodox Christianity is the object of the analysis, but the goal is to speak to a broader audience interested in the general themes of culture, religion and globalization. The broader objective is to use the historical record of Orthodox Christianity as empirical material to theorize the varied historical entanglements between local cultures and world religions within the context of world-historical globalization.

This introductory chapter begins with a critique of widely held preconceptions about Orthodox Christianity. Rejecting these preconceptions, the chapter views Orthodox Christianity as capable of adapting to various eras and settings. To contextualize the book’s topic within the scholarly traditions on the study of religion in the social sciences, this chapter examines the recent re-evaluation of the secularization paradigm and the emergence of globalization as a distinct problematic for analyzing the relations among religion, culture and social change. The use of globalization as the overarching framework offers a new way to understand the historical trajectories of Orthodox Christianity and has the potential to offer a more evenhanded treatment of this religious tradition. This chapter concludes with a discussion of various issues regarding historical periodization in relation to the book’s topic and outlines the themes pursued in the following chapters. Readers unfamiliar with the hierarchical order of the faith may consult the appendix for a brief outline of Orthodox Christianity’s hierarchal structure.

Beyond the Conventional Image of Eastern Orthodoxy

Traditionally, most of the Orthodox countries have been included in the category of Eastern Bloc nations and, following 1989, in the ambiguous category of “postcommunist” Eastern Europe. Since the 17th century, Western observers have, in general, negatively evaluated the Orthodox religious tradition (Wolff 2001). These evaluations were part of the broader Western European prejudice against Eastern European countries, which were viewed as backward and failing the Western European standards of civilization (Wolff 1994). During the Cold War era, this long-standing assumption in public and academic opinion was expressed by holding the Orthodox cultural legacy, at least in part, responsible for the political imposition of communism. During the 1990s, influential commentators (Kaplan 1993; Kennan 1993; Huntington 1996) suggested a link between the cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the failure of most of these countries to successfully transition to democracy or to successfully integrate into the new post-1989 Europe (Clark 2000). According to this essentialist approach, communism was but a temporary manifestation of an anti-Western and antimodern reaction that is deeply encoded in the Orthodox cultural tradition. Extended to the postcommunist era, this line of reasoning suggests that this cultural tradition has endorsed the two most recent forms of anti-Western and antimodern reaction: ethno-nationalism and fundamentalist protectionism. The special link of Orthodoxy with local national identities is frequently used to support this thinking. As Kitromilides (2007a: xiii) insightfully observes, “[Western] prejudice dies hard and is often rekindled by power politics and an inability to understand the Eastern half of a shared continent—to the point that iron curtains are imagined to be replaced by velvet curtains associated with the aesthetics of Orthodoxy.”

With the collapse of communism, sociological research has to some degree focused on the contemporary situation within Orthodox Christianity (Borowik 1999, 2006; Borowik and Tomka 2001; Roudometof, Agadjanian, and Pankhurst 2005; Byrnes and Katzenstein 2006, part III; Naumescu 2007; Révay and Tomka 2007). In most cases, however, the combination of the experience of communism in the former Soviet Union, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia and the cultural heritage of Orthodox Christianity in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has made it quite difficult to discern the role of Orthodox Christianity as such on contemporary political and cultural developments.³ Instead of focusing on historical specificity, in many cases, generalizations are made about the faith. Ramet (2006:148) writes, “Whatever changes may impact the world, the Orthodox Church refuses, for the most part, to accommodate itself to change, standing fixed in time, its bishops’ gaze riveted on an ‘idyllic past’ which serves as their beacon.” This statement aptly summarizes Orthodox Christianity’s prevailing image. The preservation of a presumed unbroken religious tradition has been the conscious goal of the overwhelming majority of religious movements, authors and activists in the Orthodox cultural landscape (Agadjanian and Roudometof 2005). By and large, the entire material and symbolic order of the faith has been used to preserve or even enhance a sense of difference that remains anchored in the preservation of such a (literal and/or constructed) religious tradition (for a discussion, see McGuckin 2008). In most nations of the Eastern European Orthodox heartland, this religious tradition is fused with local identities into a single genre of identity, whereby church, ethnicity or nationality become signifiers of a single collective entity. The phrase “religious tradition” in this book’s subtitle underscores precisely this feature of the faith, but it is also an acknowledgement that, as MacCulloch (2009:7) insightfully observes, “the Bible . . . embodies not a tradition, but many traditions.”

In Orthodox Christianity, “there has been a taken-for-granted unity between religion and community” (Berger 2005:441). The Church, as Orthodox theologians tirelessly repeat, is not simply the religious hierarchy or the formal institution but the entire body of those who are publicly affiliated with the faith. The importance of the faith lies at the level of public culture—in contrast to individualized expressions of religiosity. Indeed, to the extent that Orthodoxy allows persons to navigate the symbolic universe of religious metaphors on their own, it promotes the individual privatization of religious experience (Kokosalakis 1995:259–60). However, the accommodation of individuality should not be conflated with the public role, function and importance of faith. Instead, the preservation of a dominant position in society and vis-à-vis the state has been a long-held objective for most Orthodox churches, which thus operate as national churches rather than as denominations.

This finding should not lead to misguided perceptions that Orthodox Christianity is incapable of tolerating social change or of instigating new practices and institutions that can adjust to newfound realities. According to Orthodox theology, the ancient principle of expediency (oikonomia) allows for subtlety and flexibility in canonical procedures as these necessarily adapt to “popular faith.” Accordingly, the Church can “compromise in order to accommodate transgressions against established doctrine and practice on certain occasions” (Kokosalakis 1987:41). Even when there are texts that establish doctrine on specific issues, these may be subject to flexible interpretation under the principle of expediency. As a result, the Church in general is not concerned with the imposition of strict rules of religious conduct and belief; it can afford accommodations to different situations as these arise. The Church can use popular forms of religious expression even when they seem at variance with its own doctrine and, in turn, can use them to strengthen its own position in society and in its relations with the state. Culture and religion intertwine in a reciprocal relationship in which change is both implicitly accommodated and explicitly refuted (for examples, see Roudometof and Makrides 2010). Although formal introductions of religious innovation are theologically refuted, their practice can be accepted thanks to the aforementioned principle of expediency.

Therefore, it is important to separate practice from rhetoric. If religious rhetoric or the projected image of an unbroken religious tradition is taken at face value, the image of religious traditionalism is transformed into the observer’s reality. Orthodox Christianity is then cast in the role of an inherently conservative antidemocratic or antimodern religion that lacks the resources or the capacities to adapt to the realities of contemporary life. To combat such stereotypes, it is necessary to adopt a far more nuanced approach, one that recognizes the diversity of Orthodox Christianity—hence the reason I speak of transformations (in the plural) of Orthodoxy. Orthodox Christianity should be regarded as possessing the same mutability and capacity as other branches of Christianity to fuse into different contexts.

Shifting Paradigms: From Secularization to Globalization

Although the study of religion was previously marginal to mainstream sociology, the field has become far more central to sociology in the last 30 years.⁴ Until the recent past, sociology conceptualized religion mainly along two dimensions: the institutional and the individual. Lost in this dichotomy was the noninstitutional but collective and public cultural dimension of religion (Besecke 2005:179). This collective and public cultural dimension is particularly relevant to the study of Orthodox Christianity.

The rise of globalization as a new central concept for the study of religion is related to the decline of the traditional secularization paradigm and the subsequent reframing of its use in sociology and related fields. For most of the 20th century, the agenda of the sociology of religion has been dominated by the debate over secularization (Turner 2009). Social scientists have heatedly debated the scope, nature, extent and parameters of secularization in an effort to unveil the overall patterns and/or trajectories of the modern world. These arguments have been superseded by reevaluations favorable to the skeptics of the secularization thesis (Berger et al. 1999, Berger 2002; Socio logy of Religion 1999). In this reappraisal, Western Europe, once regarded as the paradigmatic case of secularization, is viewed as an exception to global patterns, whereas the United States, once regarded as an exceptional case, is viewed as more typical of global patterns of religiosity than previously thought (Davie 2002; for an exploration, see Berger, Davie, and Fokas 2008). As a result, the terms of the secularization debate have been reframed (Taylor 2007; for a critical assessment, see Torpey 2010). Ours is a secular age, not because of a mere decline of individual religiosity or a growing church–state separation, but because our framework of understanding has shifted radically. Whereas one could scarcely be ignorant of God in the Western world of 1500, that is certainly an option today. Secularization is understood as a shift in the overall framework of the human condition; it makes it possible for people to have a choice between belief and nonbelief in a manner hitherto unknown. This generalization remains based on the historical trajectory of the Western or trans-Atlantic world.⁵

Reconsidering secularity remains a project high on the agenda of the sociology of religion. In such reconsiderations, secularism is conceived of as an active project that is articulated alongside the Western modernity of the post-1500 world (Gorski and Altinordou 2008; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and Van Antwerpen 2011). Furthermore, Casanova (2006) argues in favor of refining secularization and addressing Eurocentric biases in the framing of that debate. He suggests that future revisions of the secularization paradigm must take into account the construction of both sides of the secular– religious dichotomy. To do so, one must inquire into the complex negotiations involved in defining the boundaries between them. In turn, this inquiry raises the issue of the role that cultural traditions and, more broadly, culture play in such processes.

Western social theory has been based on the themes of modernity and secularity and has thus ignored Orthodox Christianity (Hann 2011). However, nearly all theories of religious modernity, including both sides of the secularization debate, have been in large part unable to recognize or evaluate the social and cultural power of religious expression (Robertson 2007). Instead, these theories accept as natural or self-evident culturally specific notions of religion, secularity and secularism. These notions have been deeply involved in the making of the Western self-image (Asad 1993, 2003). When one considers Orthodox Christianity, this cultural specificity is exposed, and as a result, the Western self-image becomes problematic (McMylon and Vorozhishcheva 2007).⁶

To consider the articulation of Orthodox Christianity, it is necessary to extend the historical framework further into the past—into Western Europe’s Middle Ages. Although various theological issues were involved in the Orthodox–Catholic disputes in these centuries, the divergent rationale of the two sides centered on two major points. First, “the conflict between East and West was . . . over the relation between the authority of the bishop of Rome and all other authority in the Church” (Pelikan 1977:272). The East rejected arguments in favor of papal primacy. Second, there were differences concerning the understanding of the relationship between sacerdotium and imperium or regnum, or the spiritual realm and the realm of the state (Sherrard 1992). In the Orthodox tradition, imperium was juxtaposed with sacerdotium. For the Orthodox East, several papal practices overextended ecclesiastical authority into the realm of state authority.⁷ These two realms carry the connotations of sacred and profane—but not those of secular and religious per se. Emperor Justinian I (527–565 AD) succinctly summed it up in his Sixth Novella (535):

There are two main gifts bestowed by God upon men: the priesthood and the imperial authority (sacerdotium et imperium). Of these, the former is concerned with things divine, the latter with human affairs. . . . Nothing is of greater importance to the Emperors than to support the dignity of the priesthood, so that the priests may in turn pray to God for them

(quoted in Zernov 1963:66).

Even if the quotation above provides only a very rough sketch, it is fair to say that in the longue durée, Orthodox Christianity is a culture with a profound understanding of the sacred–profane division but also one in which the secular–religious division became relevant only in the aftermath of the social and cultural modernization of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, whereby modern states applied the Western-inspired logic of secularism to their domains. It should therefore not be surprising that the theme of secularity does not occupy a central place in this book.

The significance of culture for the study of religion and particularly of Orthodox Christianity is revealed in issues of worship, rituals and popular practices. In Orthodox countries, religious worship and rituals are not necessarily manifestations of individual belief, and religious practice does not necessarily reflect the depth of personal conviction or belief (Tomka 2006). A case in point is the celebration of the Orthodox Easter, which is the focal point of Orthodox Christianity’s religious calendar (Berger 2005). Far from a matter of individual religious self-expression, its celebration is quite public. The entire rhythm of social life is adjusted to follow the religious calendar of the Holy Week, culminating in the celebration of the Resurrection, symbolically set at midnight on Good Saturday but also involving the Epitaph possession on Good Friday along the streets of towns and villages. Public officials participate prominently in these rituals, and educational institutions go on a two-week hiatus, returning to classes one week after Easter Sunday (for additional examples, see Naletova 2009). Orthodox Easter reflects broader differences among cultures or traditions. In turn, these differences shape the role of religion in society.⁸

Far from engaging with this problematic, the overwhelming majority of work in the sociology of religion naturalizes the trans-Atlantic cultural context of its surroundings. Thus, the Orientalism of the past resurfaces as academic parochialism. Orthodox Christianity has been the object of academic and lay stereotypes precisely because it exposes the limits of theoretical paradigms that work only for a selected group of Western nations or religious traditions. Culture is thus often a means of exoticizing the Other, even when this is clearly not intentional. Eastern Christianity (both in its Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian variants) never experienced the trials and tribulations of Western Christianity, and as a result, it has long been exceedingly problematic to fit the experiences and cultural logic of this tradition within the generalizations made on the basis of the Western experience.⁹

For this reason, the use of globalization as the overarching concept allows less biased and certainly less Western-centered perspectives for studying historical events and contemporary developments. Globalization is a term that has been subject to multiple and often-competing definitions and perspectives that reflect differences in research foci (for overviews, see Robertson and White 2003; Ritzer 2007; Rossi 2008...