Political Hesychasm? Vladimir Petrunin’s Neo-Byzantine Interpretation of the Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church

Abstract

Hesychasm is a Christian Orthodox mystical and ascetic tradition that has its roots in the monastic life of early Byzantium. It denotes a method of prayer and a way of life in monastic community, and it describes the overall process of orienting a person's entire being towards an experience of the Divine.1 Asceticism and experiences of self- transcendence are phenomena we encounter in every religion; suffice to think about Sufi Islam, Zen Buddhism or Yoga. Orthodoxy knows the practice of hesychasm, and what is indeed noteworthy about this is that Orthodoxy preserves a Christian ascetic and mystical tradition throughout history, whereas in Western Christianity forms of spiritual exercises and mysticism come to play a minor role. The twentieth century brings about a revival of interest in hesychasm both in Eastern as well as Western Christian theology, a revival that Sergej Khoruzij describes as "anthropological turn in Christian theology" and connects with the names of Georgij Florovskij, Sergej Bulgakov and John Meyendorff on the part of Orthodoxy, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Yves Congar on the part of Catholicism.2 From this theological perspective, hesychasm stands for a form of religious experience and becomes indicative of an anthropological discourse that preserves a sensibility for experiences of self-transcendence.3 If this is the theological and practical meaning of hesychasm, what is political hesychasm? I first encountered the term in the title of the book Politiceskij isikhazm i ego tradicii v social' noj koncepcii Moskovskogo Patriarkha, published by the Aleteija publishing house in Saint Petersburg in 2009 in the series Library of