The Polish Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: Prisoner of History by Edward D. Wynot Jr. (review)

Abstract

The Polish Orthodox in Twentieth Century and Beyond: Prisoner of History. By Edward D. Wynot Jr. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. 2015. Pp. xiii, 123. $75.00. ISBN 978-1-7391-98841, clothbound; ISBN 978-0-7391-9885-8, ebook.)This monograph depicts a portrait of church whose appearance is compared to birth of an unwanted stepchild (p. 1) and that managed to become second largest Christian denomination in contemporary Poland. The author tells a fascinating story of this church as a part of broader issues of religion's accommodation to demands of secular politics, of relations between national identity and and of activism in Poland. The research base is extensive, including documents from Polish state archives, published sources, and newspapers and magazines of period. The analysis is supported with statistical data on ethnic composition of Poland, church network, numbers of Orthodox believers and clergy, and maps showing geographical disposition of Orthodox dioceses. The monograph is divided into four chapters and also contains a preface, select bibliography, and index.Chapter 1 (pp. 1-19) provides a sketchy overview of Eastern Christianity in Poland prior to World War I. The author notes important milestones: inclusion of Ukrainian and Belarusian lands into Polish state, 1596 Union of Brest, and struggle of Cossacks in support of Orthodoxy. The 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo is seen as a turning point, as the ?Mother City' of Polish Orthodoxy \Kyiv ... now passed into jurisdiction of Russian Patriarchate (p. 9). No longer simply a minority faith, Orthodoxy in partitioned Poland became an imperial Church perceived with the lasting enmity of Poles from all social strata (p. 15). A nonspecialist in early-modern history, author freely uses anachronistic terms such as Polish Orthodox Church, Polish Metropolitan, and Polish Orthodoxy, which are misleading in relation to historical events he describes.Chapter 2 (pp. 21-56) examines complex fate of Orthodox in interwar Poland. The altered geopolitical situation forced church to accommodate itself in Polish nationalist state where Roman Catholicism became established face. Answering pressures from below and from above, hierarchy under Metropolitan Dionizy (Waledynski) strove to become independent from Moscow. Polish authorities' support was decisive in persuading Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII to bestow autocephaly on Polish Orthodox in November 1924 (interpreted by author as a non-canonical act [pp. 33, 38]). Simultaneously, state authorities saw this church as an instrument of Polonization and Latinization of Slavic minorities. Yet another factor came on scene in period: clergy and lay activists of Ukrainian and Belarusian origin attempted to ensure national character of their church and saw it as a crucial constituent of their respective national movements. The latter's loyalty to state was open to doubt because of treatment of church by ruling Polish majority (the author mentions campaigns of pacification, forced conversions to Catholicism, and Neouniatism), criticized both inside country (by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky) and abroad (pp. …