Window on Eurasia: Patriarchate’s Missionary Concept Work of Church Moderates

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 17 –The Moscow Patriarchate’s new statement on missionary activity, approved last spring but only now attracting attention as it is presented around Russia, reflects the thinking of moderate leaders in the Orthodox hierarchy, people who seldom attract as much attention as do the more nationalist and reactionary ones.
In an article posted on the Portal-Credo.ru site today, a site often extremely critical of the Russian Orthodox Church, Roman Lunkin, the site’s editor suggests that the new concept paper is “one of the most democratic church documents of recent times” (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=comment&id=1294).
The new statement, which replaces one the Church issues in 1995, is largely the work of Archbishop Ioan, who heads the Patriarchate’s Missionary Department and whose writings have won him the reputation as one of the most dispassionate and moderate of Russian churchmen.
Not only does the new paper broaden the definition of what missionary activity should be by suggesting that social work is part of what missionaries should be doing, Lunkin points out, but it stakes out a series of positions both by direct statement and omission very much at odds with other church leaders.
Among the most significant of these differences, Lunkin continues, are the following:
First, the paper sharply distinguished between missionary activity and proselytism, between reaching out to those who have no specific faith and trying to convert those who follow a different tradition. The first, the paper says, is what the church should be doing; the second is something it should avoid.
Second, the document makes no reference to Russia as “the canonical territory” of Orthodoxy, an area from which all other religions should be excluded. Instead, it uses the far softer expression, “territory of pastoral responsibility,” a term less likely to infuriate Roman Catholics and Muslims.
Third, there is no suggestion that ethnic Russians are Orthodox by birth, something many Russian churchmen and even more Russian politicians regularly suggest and virtually the only way that it is possible for them to insist that Russia today is truly Orthodox as opposed to Orthodox in aspiration.
Fourth, the paper suggests that the church should use the languages of national minorities to bring them into Orthodoxy rather than insisting that members of such groups come to the faith through Russian – as almost all Russian Orthodox hierarchs have insisted in the past.
And fifth, the paper, while making an obligatory nod toward fighting “sects,” defines them in a remarkably narrow way and pointedly does not include any reference to Islamists, charismatics, or Pentecostals. Indeed, the paper makes clear that there can be Orthodox sects as well.
Indeed, in a passage that is especially likely to infuriate both many Orthodox churchmen and even more radical Orthodox lay politicians, the document specifically suggests that there is now a very real threat in Russia that “pseudo-Orthodox politicizing” is undermining genuine Orthodox belief.
Archbishop Ioan has long had a reputation as one of the Orthodoxy’s leading moderates, Lunkin notes. His 2005 book “The Spiritual Security of Russia,” for example, was much more liberal and democratic minded than its title suggested, for which Ioan was much criticized by Orthodox radicals.
But this latest document, even though approved by the Holy Synod on March 27th, seems certain to generate far more controversy than any of his earlier work. Indeed, many people are likely to read it as a direct challenge by Ioan to Metropolitan Kirill, the odds on favorite to succeed Aleksii II as patriarch, and radical Orthodox lay groups.
Neither Kirill and his powerful staff in the External Affairs Department of the Patriarchate nor Orthodox political groups are going to be happy with these ideas: They may even seek to employ Lunkin’s praise of the document as representing a kind of kiss of death for Ioan and those who think as he does.
But fortunately for the vitality of both the church and Russia, there is some evidence that some other church leaders in some of the eparchates share Ioan’s views: Archbishop Anastasii of Kazan, for example, told an interviewer recently that he favored similar ideas (http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=authority&id=829).
Specifically, Anastasii said, he believed that the church should conduct its missionary activities both among Russians and others who have fallen away from Orthodoxy and among the groups not traditional to Russia but that with regard to Muslims, the Russian Orthodox Church should “simply” try to remain on a friendly basis.

Window on Eurasia: Gerrymandering Russian-Style

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 17 – In order to boost the percentage he and the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party are likely to garner in parliamentary elections later this year, members of the entourage of Kaliningrad Governor Georgiy Boos are thinking about combining his district with the Adygei Republic or with Russian citizens resident abroad.
Combining Kaliningrad with that North Caucasus republic, observers told “Nezavisimaya gazeta-Regiony” today, could guarantee a “crushing” victory for Boos and the Kremlin because Adygeia has never failed to deliver more than 85 percent of its electors for United Russia (http://www.ng.ru/ngregions/2007-09-17/17_boos.html).
But combining Kaliningrad with a district consisting of Russian citizens resident abroad might not have the same effect: while there may be as many as 1.5 million of them around the world, very few of them take the time to cast ballots in Russian elections.
Indeed, one official from the Russian foreign ministry told the paper that in the last election, only 4211 of the 371,444 Russian citizens resident in Germany alone participated – some 1.13 percent – and a figure far too small to make a significant difference in the percentage Boos and the United Russian Party may get.
Three factors are driving this uniquely Russian form of gerrymandering. First, although party lists now predominate over single-member districts in Russia’s parliamentary elections, smaller regions need to combine with larger ones in composing the lists of party candidates.
Second, Boos, like other senior party officials, has been told by even more senior party and government officials that he must find a way to ensure that his election results will be impressive if he is to maintain his influence in Moscow. Should the support he attracts be too small, it could point to his own demise politically.
And third, the RF Central Election Commission has decided to combine electors living abroad not with districts in the Moscow region as has been the case earlier but region by region on an ad hoc basis, thus allowing political entrepreneurs like Boos to propose combinations not employed anywhere else.
This strange reduction in the importance of borders, internal and international, “Nezavisimaya gazeta-regiony” continued, may mean that the vote later this year and in the future will be based on a very strange map, one that might feature a “Kaliningrad-Adygeia” district or one combining Kaliningrad, Poland and the Baltic states.
If that should happen, Governor Boos would be in line to replace Governor Gerry as the best possible eponymous epithet for electoral manipulation: Even the good New England leader never thought to go beyond the borders of his own state and possibly combine districts there with ones from, say, Alabama.