Russia in Global Affairs

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No. 2.1

2019 June/SPECIAL ISSUE

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Contents

The Church at a Historical Crossroads

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

About God and Caesar

Religion and Politics: An Unbreakable Symbiosis?

Old Dog, New Tricks

Andrey Shishkov

State and Religion

Tomos and Its Implications

Anamnesis of the Schism

A Thorny Path of Ukrainian Orthodoxy

Vladislav Petrushko

Ukrainian Church Schism: Political Ramifications

Svyatoslav I. Kaspe

Alexander E. Konkov

A Schism in Universal Orthodoxy?

Peter Petrovsky

Baltic Rehearsal

Sergey Leonidov, Igor Prekup

The Orthodox Vision

“We need a ‘prophecy option’”

Alexander Webster

Not So Great Schism

Momchil Metodiev

Autocephaly and Orthodox Unity

Chrysostomos Stamoulis, Stylianos Tsompanidis, Nikolaos Maggioros, Elias Evangelou

Beyond Faith

Alternative Orthodoxy. Unlearned Lessons

Andrey Vidishenko

Imperialism, Geopolitics and Religion

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

In the Shadow of the Crescent

Pavel V. Shlykov

Articles

The Church at a Historical Crossroads

As the global landscape falls apart into fragments, institutions malfunction in various spheres, and major demographic shifts and migration flows sweep the world, any change in the religious balance can cause great upheavals.

Fyodor A. Lukyanov

Religion and Politics: An Unbreakable Symbiosis?

Religion is the “blind spot” of modern social science, an elephant in the center of the room that no one notices until it begins to crush the china lying everywhere around.

Old Dog, New Tricks

Autocephalous churches are not quasi-state autonomous religious organizations operating exclusively within the space of church relations, but an intricate complex of institutions incorporating state and civil society and operating in a common political space.

Andrey Shishkov

State and Religion

Without secularization understood as the meaninglessness of religion, religious convictions and practices, modernization in politics, law and science would not have been possible.

Anamnesis of the Schism

Constantinople wants to get a political tool for interfering in any conflict situation and using schismatics and legitimizing them for its own purposes.

A Thorny Path of Ukrainian Orthodoxy

What were relations like inside Ukraine’s Orthodox community before the moment when the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople supported the idea of a national Church? Russia in Global Affairs put this and other questions to Vladislav Petrushko, Doctor of Ecclesiastical History, and Professor at St. Tikhon Orthodox University.

Vladislav Petrushko

Ukrainian Church Schism: Political Ramifications

The only problem is that Orthodox canon law is extremely archaic (largely dating back to the times of Ecumenical Councils), confusing and ambiguous, and there is no generally recognized authority in the Orthodox world that could provide firm, reliable and binding interpretations of this law.

Svyatoslav I. Kaspe

The crisis triggered by the Tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine threatens to spill over not only to other countries but to Universal Orthodoxy and Christianity in general and even affect globalization and the world order.

Alexander E. Konkov

A Schism in Universal Orthodoxy?

Ukraine, which became the apple of geopolitical discord in 2014, is now also turning into one of the key factors behind the emerging schism in the Orthodox world. This psychologically and mentally complex factor may be employed in the geopolitical struggle where Orthodoxy, as an instrument of influence and political governance, will be used more and more often for achieving certain goals. Therefore, Orthodox church life may go beyond the narrow religious bounds and become a matter of national security.

Peter Petrovsky

Baltic Rehearsal

In the 1990s Constantinople challenged the Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia. It was then that the contours of the ethno-phyletism Constantinople style became visible. In the longer term, they would serve as the basis for the Phanar’s policies in Ukraine.

Sergey Leonidov, Igor Prekup

“We need a ‘prophecy option’”

We have existed for 2000 years. We have survived, sometimes in small numbers and sometimes in great numbers, every kind of political totalitarianism that the world could throw at us: from Roman emperors to invading Huns, and, in later centuries, totalitarianism of the far right and the far left. And we Orthodox believers didn’t really change anything.

Alexander Webster

Not So Great Schism

There are also good sides to the current dispute: it proves that every Orthodox Church, however big and influential it is, has limits to its influence and power. This will hopefully lead to the restoration of conciliarity, the strongest and most attractive feature of the Universal Orthodox Church.

Momchil Metodiev

Autocephaly and Orthodox Unity

Historical experience has shown that the interruption of canonical communion could inflict severe wounds on the entirety of the body of the Orthodox Church, rendering it a dead body, an object to be artificially preserved since it is completely alien to the anxious questions of the modern world.

Chrysostomos Stamoulis, Stylianos Tsompanidis, Nikolaos Maggioros, Elias Evangelou

Alternative Orthodoxy. Unlearned Lessons

The atmosphere around “the Tomos and autocephaly” is no more than a means of manipulating the electorate, but the presidential team’s expectations of results were overly inflated.

Andrey Vidishenko

As an ideological imperative built on Cultural Marxist dichotomies of oppressor and victim classes (according to sex, race, language, religion, etc.) this effort to transform all human society supplies a missionary zeal no less relevant to American officials’ and their fellow travelers’ efforts than their aspirations of global political dominion.

Imperialism, Geopolitics and Religion

By defending their interests, Eastern European nations can contribute to the emergence of a socially-oriented and independent Europe, which is absolutely necessary for overcoming the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced in history.

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

In the Shadow of the Crescent

The situation with religious minorities in many respects reflects the logic of the political process of recent decades in Turkey. The social base and the core constituency of the ruling AKP are people of conservative views or even supporters of religious nationalism. For this part of society, nationalism and Islamic identity are interrelated and complementary notions.

Pavel V. Shlykov