Paradigms, power, and identity: Rediscovering Orthodoxy and regionalizing Europe

Abstract

In an effort to explain, to predict and to manage the ways in which organized religion affects patterns of public contestation at the state and regional levels in post-Cold War Europe, social scientists and policymakers have formulated a cultural map that divides Europe into two spaces incompatible by virtue of their historical experiences: one space is ‘modern’, ‘civilized’, Western Christian; the other space is ‘anti-modern’, ‘uncivilized’, Eastern Christian. This paper proposes that a specific ‘orthodox’ version of Eastern Orthodox Christianity has gained ascendance in Euro-American academic and policy discussions, in order to provide a cultural argumentation that supports political-economic and military power objectives in post-Cold War Europe. The paper claims that the ‘orthodox’ version of Orthodoxy is theoretically inaccurate and methodologically unsound, but is rooted in intellectual efforts to salvage a neo-modernization paradigm as well as in Orientalist tendencies in Modern Greek and Central European identity debates. An alternative to the ‘orthodox’ conception of Orthodoxy is presented, along with suggestions for how to analyze and to manage the potential synergy between efforts at consolidating liberal democracies in European societies with an Eastern Christian tradition emphasizing personal freedom and human relationality.