The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the “Ethic of Capitalism”

Abstract

The author attempts to explore the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and the “ethic of capitalism” in Bulgarian society. According to the author, the notion of Orthodoxy as a source of the economic backwardness of Bulgaria is a complex result of historical, institutional and epistemological factors such as the impact of nineteenth-century socio-economic dynamics on the institutionalization of the Bulgarian Church, the symbiosis of Orthodoxy with Balkan nationalism, the difficulty of distinguishing between the doctrinal and institutional aspects of Orthodoxy, and the post-communist reading of Orthodoxy as a factor in the economic liberalization of Bulgaria. The author considers that in the Bulgarian case the ethic of capitalism was developed under the influence of Western economics rather than under that of Orthodoxy. It also brought about a specific secularization of society that allowed the appropriation of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church for national ends.