Dear friends, Christ is Risen!
I have enjoyed a much needed break, but I could not fully forget about the blog and a few current events. Many of you have asked me for my reaction to the meeting between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis but at the time I decided not to comment about it. The time just did not feel right and I was not ready for it. However, during this break my mind naturally returned to spiritual matters and I decided that it was now or never, if I did not tackle the spiritual issues surrounding this meeting, I would never have the time or energy to do that later. So I wrote the article below. You will see that it does not really focus on this meeting at all, being as it is, just the small tip of a much bigger iceberg. I decided to tackle if not the entire iceberg, then at least a good chunk of it. I hope that at least some of you will find some merit in this. To the others I will just say not to worry. This is probably a one-off exercise and the blog will now return to its normal topics.
Hugs and cheers,
The Saker
A negative view of Christianity and religion in general
We live in a post-Christian society, not only because truly religious Christians are now a small minority, but also because culturally and spiritually our society has almost completely severed any links it once had with the original Christianity of the early Church. One of my favorite quotes of all time is “God created man in His image and man returned Him the favor“. This aphorism is so good that it was attributed to Mark Twain, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russel, Frank Wedekind and Voltaire. I think that this sentence contains the best overall summary of what Christianity is in the 21st century. What I want to do today, is to express a few negative views about Christianity and about religion in general. When I say “negative”, I don’t mean to say bad things about it, but rather to say what it is *not*. Believe it or not, this is an ancient form of theological discourse called “apophatic” or “negative theology” (as opposed to “cataphatic” or “positive theology”) – a theology which rather than describing what God is, attempts to describe Him by saying what He is not. What I want to do is to apply the same methodology to the concept of religion in general and to Christianity in particular, and describe what it is not. I won’t go into lofty and abstract theological issues though, but keep is as simple and straightforward as I can.
Of course, by stating what it is not, I do imply that what Christianity was/is is something objective and not just the product of a social consensus or the opinion of a majority of people, but something which can be described, but not redefined or shaped by an opinion. In other words, there was/is a “True Christianity” which is “true” in the Slavonic understanding of the word Istina or the Hebrew Emet (see here for an explanation of “truth according to content”). However, it is not my purpose today to describe in positively, if only because that is something infinitely more complex and subtle than to describe what it is *not*.
The three “levels of religious satisfaction”
One of the greatest Orthodox theologians of the 20th century, Father Lev Lebedev, used to say that people find three kind of “satisfactions” when they go to church: a spiritual level, an psychological level and an emotional level. What he meant is that different people attend religious services for different reasons – some seek a prayerful interaction with God, others find solace from their suffering while others feel uplifted by the aesthetic beauty of the religious ceremony itself. Father Lev correctly stated that ideally one ought to experience all of these different levels at the same time because they are complementary and not mutually exclusive. Father Lev was describing what he observed as a cleric of the Orthodox Church in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s and I think that this somewhat limited his view of the matter. What I would like to attempt now is to describe other reasons which make people identify themselves as Christians/Orthodox and which have absolutely nothing to do with real religion, Christianity or Orthodoxy.
Religions as basis for ethical values
A lot of people nowadays generally approve of the so-called “Christian values” which are basically the Ten Commandments and the various ethical guidelines derived from them: not to steal, not to lie, to be kind to others, to be truthful, to live a life of modesty, to be faithful, etc. These are the folks who will say that religion plays a positive moral and educational role in society, that a non-religious society will inevitably lose a sense of right and wrong, that high ideals are needed to live a worthy life. The “need” for that kind of religion is simple: as Dostoevsky said “if there is no God all is permissible” – there is simply no logical way to define “right” and “wrong” unless you can “peg” these concepts to an absolute, transcendental source/origin of your definition. Stealing is not logically inherently bad – it is bad because “God said so”. I think of this as the “utilitarian God”: we invent ourselves a “God” who just so happens to tell us to live according to the principles we like. You think I am exaggerating? Okay, let me give you a simple example: think of all the folks who condemn Islam for allowing the death penalty for certain actions and who say “how can a religion practice capital punishment? This is so inhuman – I don’t accept that”. Notice that these people never ask themselves a simple and basic question: what if God happens to approve of the death penalty? That, they don’t care about. These people don’t reject Islam because they don’t believe that there is a God or because they don’t believe that Mohamed is His prophet – they reject Islam because they don’t like what Islam teaches, irrespective of the existence of God or whether Mohamed was, or was not, His prophet. These are the same kind of folks who reject Latin Christianity for not allowing divorce or birth control: they simply reject any religion whose teachings do not coincide with their own – and to hell (pun intended) with any objective reality. These are exactly the kind of people who “create” themselves a “God” in their own image.
Religion as a form of national self-definition
Do you know the difference between a Serb, a Croat and a “Bosniac” (i.e, a Muslim from Bosnia)? Their religion. That is not to say that there are no other differences between these south Slavs or that you cannot be a Serb, a Croat or a “Bosniac” and an atheist or, say, a Buddhist. But the root cause, the core of the historical development of differences between these three groups most definitely originates in the fact that Croats are Latins (i.e, “Roman Catholics”), the Serbs Orthodox Christians and the “Bosniacs” Muslims.
Remember that nationalism is really a 19th century West European invention and that in most of mankind’s history people defined themselves according to their place of birth (in a local sense, village, town), according to their allegiance to a leader (Emperor, feudal lord, tribal leader, etc.) and, sometimes, according to their religion. For example, the Ottoman Empire recognized the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople as the “head of the Roman nation” (rum millet) or “millet bashi” as an ethnarch whose authority extended over all the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire regardless of their ethnic or linguistic affiliations. You could be Armenian, Persian, Arab or Serb – if you were Orthodox the “millet bashi” spoke for you and was your leader.
As for the much-suffering Gagauz people (Turkic Orthodox Christians), they were originally considered as “Greeks” by the Turks only to be thought of as “Turks” by many Greeks in the 19th century.
Another example: in the Russian Empire, Karaites were not considered as Jews. In fact, the Russian Empire never discriminated between people on the basis of what we today would call their “ethnicity” but defined their “nationality” on the basis of their religion. In fact, many Russian Czars were mostly of German “ethnic” stock.
Today Empires are gone, but from Ulster, to Bosnia and even to Russia, religion has now become a form of national identity: “I am Orthodox because I am Russian” or “I am a Muslim because I am a Kazakh”. My personal reaction to this kind of “religious patriotism” is that these people really worship themselves. Think of it: any real religion should, in theory, be universalistic: if we are all the creatures of the same Creator and children of the same Father, then we are all brothers and sisters and our ethnic, cultural, linguistic or regional idiosyncrasies should be completely irrelevant to the profound spiritual bond attaching us all to each other.
This is exactly what Malcolm X saw after his pilgrimage to Mecca where traditional Islam made him abandon all his racist views about “blue eyed White devils” and all the rest of the nonsense preached by the pseudo-Islamic sect of the “Nation of Islam” and Elijah Muhammad.
This is also why German Nazis could not accept the unambiguous teaching of the New Testament about Jews: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28); For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit (Gal 5:6); Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God (1 Cor 7:19); For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit (1 Cor; 12 :13)
The sad but also inevitable reality is that in every single case of “religious nationalism” religion is always subservient to nationalism and religion is really an ancillary means towards a much more important nationalistic goal: to proclaim some kind of “imprimatur from God” to a rabid form of nationalism and, really, self-worship. As if God was busy with, or even interested in, our petty nationalistic agenda!
One wonderful Ukrainian Orthodox priest once told me “how can I think of nationalist issues when the angels are standing next to me in the altar!” And he was absolutely right of course. Religious nationalists are also the kind of people who “create” themselves a “God” in their own image.
Religion as an ideological tool of statecraft
The two forms of “utilitarian religion” above are often combined into one particularly insidious form of pseudo-religion which sees the people in power using religion as an instrument to foster patriotism and social responsibility.
Sadly, there is a lot of that in modern Russia. Communism, at least in its Soviet form has been pretty much rejected, at least by most people, and Capitalism’s reputation is now roadkill in modern Russia. Oh sure, some Communist/Socialist ideals are still very much respected and proclaimed and most Russians want to have the opportunity to have their own business and make good money. But neither Communism nor Capitalism can play the role which Orthodoxy played in Russia before the 17th century or the Marxist ideology played during the Soviet era. This is why you very often will see Russian politicians say that “Russia needs a national idea”. This is not a spiritual vacuum, but an ideologicalone and, sadly, the “official” Russian Orthodox Church (aka the “Moscow Patriarchate”) has been more than willing to fill this idealogical vacuum. As a result, political officers have often been replaced by priests, official ceremonies now almost always involve a clergyman and the “Patriarch” is now playing a very important political role. In many ways this has been a very positive development because this gives the Russian people a possibility to explore their own, individual, feelings and interest towards religion in general and Orthodoxy specifically, but this also has an extremely deleterious effect on the millions of potential Orthodox Christians who are turned away from this form of Orthodoxy because its obvious subservience to the State, its agenda and policies. You might say that there is no reason for the Moscow Patriarchate not to support Putin, and I would agree but, alas, this is also what the Moscow Patriarchate did under Eltsin and even the Soviet leaders.
As a result, the situation of Orthodox Christianity in Russia is very similar to the one of Latin Christianity in South America: real piety is mostly confined to the parish level while everything above this level is permeated, at various degrees, by politics and cynicism. As I have already described in a past article, by the late 1920s Russian Orthodoxy was split into at least 4 major branches (to which one could also add several Old Rite denominations) and the only reason why the branch which is currently considered as “official” was chosen (by the state and during the Soviet era!) as the “right one” is that it was absolutely and 100% loyal to the Soviet state just as it is now loyal to the new Russian state. Yes, total subservience to a secular state power as a “criterion of Orthodoxy” is, sadly, the only reason why the Moscow Patriarchate is recognized as the “official” Orthodox Church today.
I would note that this is not just a Russian problem – it is exactly the same in many other officially “Orthodox” countries, especially in eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria). By the way, we can also observe the same phenomenon in much of the Muslim world were political regimes get to decide which branch of Islam is considered as “correct” and which one out to be confined to jails. And just as in the Orthodox Church, we see “official” Islamic institution issue exactly the kind of fatwas which the state needs in support of its policies.
Of course, none of the above has anything to do with Christ or Mohammed and, furthermore, none of the above has anything to do with religion as such. This is just a typical manifestation of religion as a tool of statecraft which Marx and Lenin had identified a long time ago. Where Marx and Lenin were, of course, wrong is when they said that all religions must be like that, they religions are inherently a tool of political control. The history of Orthodoxy and Islam are both full of examples of Bishops and Sheikhs and even entire religious hierarchies “rendering unto to Cesar what belongs to God” and “serving two masters“. But you will also find amazing examples in Orthodoxy and Islam where religious leaders openly and courageously defied the worldly powers (I think of Patriarch Hermogen of Moscow or Husayn ibn Ali).
This is nothing new and has nothing to do with religion: it is a profoundly human phenomenon which can be found throughout history and in every place where there is power. Power does indeed corrupt, and it also corrupts religious leaders.
In the West, this tendency to replace a mystical Christianity with a form of “sacralized secular domination” began almost immediately after the fall of Rome and the Western Roman Empire (in 476 AD) and the subsequent separation of Frankish-controlled Rome from the rest of the Roman Christian world (in 1054) which outlived Rome by a full millennium (until 1453 exactly). In 1075 already the Papacy adopted an amazing document which became known as the Dictatus Papae (or Papal Dictation) and which contained 27 principles which had never ever been part of the teachings of the Early Church and the Church Fathers. Here is the full list: (source)
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