Abstract
This essay explores two recent expressions of hostility towards secularization by Russian Orthodox officials (one from the Holy Synod of ROCOR and the other from Metropolitan Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev), and evaluates the likely consequences of this hostility. Drawing from secularization theorists including Peter Berger, Jose Casanova, and Charles Taylor, as well as the thought of Albert Camus, this essay argues that the long-term health of the Russian Orthodox Church will benefit from embracing insights from secularization theorists rather than attempting to “desecularize” Russian society with state support.
Highlights
In a 2014 address to the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy, Metropolitan HilarionAlfeyev of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church asserted, “no matter what researchers say about church-state relations in Byzantium and Rus, at her very heart the Church has remained free, irrespective of the external political circumstance” (Alfeyev 2014)
This essay argues that the long-term health of the Russian Orthodox Church will benefit from embracing insights from secularization theorists rather than attempting to “desecularize” Russian society with state support
In the larger context of the address, which will be analyzed at length below, it becomes clear that Alfeyev wishes to neutralize any concerns about potential negative effects that might arise from increasing collaboration between the ROC and the secular nation-state known as the Russian Federation
Summary
Church as a whole will best achieve the freedom and flourishing it seeks by embracing more nuanced understandings of secularization rather than fleeing from what it perceives to be secularization as such To accomplish this end, this essay will proceed in four distinct sections: the first section will set forth a working definition of the terms “secular” and “secularization”; the second section will analyze and evaluate ROCOR’s recent official statement on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its implicit rejection of all secularization; the third section will engage with Alfeyev’s critique of Western secularism in which he favorably compares the era of the Edict of Milan to the present state of affairs in Russia, arguing that both together represent a superior model for church-state interaction than that of Western secularization; and the fourth section will glean insights from secularization theorists in order to shed light on valid Russian Orthodox concerns about “the West,” and to demonstrate how current ROC and ROCOR attitudes towards church-state relations are likely to harm the health of Russian Orthodoxy in the long term. The essay will conclude by proposing the mentality the Church must adopt towards all state relations if it is to fulfill its prophetic mission to the world
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