Transnational Religions: The Roman Catholic Church in Brazil & the Orthodox Church in Russia

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2001 by Ralph Della Cava

Not even after a later successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, the author of "glasnost," officially promoted the 1988 celebration of the Millennium of the Slays' Conversion to Christianity, was such a fundamental policy essentially altered. For example, the 1990 "election" of the fifth patriarch in modern times (the currently presiding head of the church, His Holiness Aleksiy II) was reportedly marked by direct state interference and manipulation.

Russian Orthodoxy: "Reform from Above"?

Did the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the unexpectedly new won religious freedom bring ROC any closer to church reform? A now historic 1917 plan of the bishops to convene a "Local Council" (or pornestniy sobor), a national church's most authoritative assemblage (and the only vehicle proper to "modernize" doctrine and practice), had been short-circuited by the October Revolution. Recently revived, it barely speaks to the current realities of the Russian Church. Nor do the conclusions of councils held in this century by overseas churches "in the West." Indeed, since 1991, ROC has had to face up to sharply reduced numbers of believers after seven decades of Soviet rule, economic hardships experienced under the new Russian Federation, and costly conflicts between internal factions. Perhaps precisely because of their immediate insolubility, members of the current Holy Synod finally decided in July 1999 to postpone the much discussed and eagerly hoped for convention (in June 2000) of the Loca l Council (Bychkov 1999b).

As an interim alternative, however, a special drafting commission of the Moscow Patriarchate, mandated by the bishops at their 1994 meeting, was finally constituted in 1997. Its task has been to set down Russian Orthodoxy's views on church, state and society. Experts from various walks of life were hastily recruited to draft position papers on a variety of issues. But the brunt of the labors, conducted largely behind closed doors, fell to a handful of handpicked collaborators of Archbishop Kirill, the prominent Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, a permanent member of ROC's governing Holy Synod, and longtime director of the Moscow Patriarchate's powerful Office of External Church Affairs (Gundayev 2000).

Fifty-three years of age, a brilliant orator, and already a prominent personality on both the national political scene and the international church circuit, Kirill is invariably viewed by friends and foes alike as the "power behind the throne" and the "second most powerful churchman in Russia." He is widely accused of coveting the post of Patriarch. That is partly the reason his motives and deeds have almost always come under greater scrutiny by the press and give rise to endless rumor in political and ecclesiastical circles.

Nonetheless, with regard to "up-dating" the Russian church, Kirill's strategy appears to be anchored in two objectives. First, it aims to neutralize warring factions within the church. An ultra-nationalist, xenophobic wing has proven particularly troublesome. Over the past decade, it has publicly badgered the Patriarch into striking down progressives, while boxing him into awkward silences on certain political and social issues for which not only the progressive, but also the moderate wings had desperately and unsuccessfully sought the hierarchy's sanction (Pospielovsky 1998).