Orthodoxy and Europe's future

..."given the rapidly growing numbers, influence, and wealth of the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe..."

A study released today says there are 105 abortions to every 100 live births in Eastern Europe. How influential are these vaunted Orthodox values, I wonder?

"Still, I'm skeptical..."
wow... we agree...

I'm particularly noticable of this:
"... dialogue with Orthodox Christians. The goal of such as dialogue would be to stress the common roots that bind various religious traditions, to encourage models of tolerance that do not presume secularism, and the different ways to balance the disparate roles of church and state, while avoiding the total estrangement of one from the other"...
within those good but somewhat unrealistic goals, he seems to be implying "come, all you secularists and believers of other faiths... come dialogue with us Orthodox believers... your limited perspective will be enlightened so much by our vast Orthodox perspective..."

I mean...
it's reasonable to think that secularists and "other" believers would take that dialogue as a stage to express how the Orthodox should turn to their ways of thinking...
I especially don't see secularists excitedly jumping at the thought of having such a great opportunity before them to enhance their secular views through such dialogue...

Mr. Petro is particularly delusional when he states that "Western Europeans are likely to lose" to the Orthodox Churches...
such a grand inflated view of his own side of the conflict...

faith hope love joy peace to all...

Rod:

In regard to your mention of Orthodox statements rejecting Western ideas of separation of Church and State, in the 90s, the Russian Orthodox Church issued a white paper called "Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church." It contains a thorough presentation of an Orthodox attitude toward church and state issues. It is far from simplistic. It reviews various systems from Old Testament times to modern times, including the separation of church and state in the USA. It is fair to say that it rejects the American system, but it still seeks to keep the state from interfering with the Church's proper role, and vice versa.

The white paper is probably available on several sites, but I first found it on the site for the Russian Orthodox Church Representation to the European Institutions, which is headed by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna, a very able spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church.

Jim Cole

And the American protestant churches are packed because no one gets asphysxiated by the verdammt incense!

Ok, I'm having fun as usual, but the truth is that Orthodoxy requires a certain mystical (in the traditional meaning) bent and it helps to come out of a culture that supports it. I just can't see Western Europe buying into that.

Hey, I miss the incense on those rare occasions (family duty stuff) when we go back to a Protestant church. Yes, Orthodoxy is mystical. So, if you happened to miss it, is Catholicism. As the core of our worship is the Eucharist, how could we not be mystical? The Gifts still look like bread and wine, after all, even though we know them to be the very Body and Blood of Christ. Traditional Christian faith is mystical through and through, even if some contemporary Christians are sadly deprived of their ancient heritage.

So, how evangelized are the Russians, taken as a whole country? The Orthodox Church has regained its establishment privileges since the fall of Communism and especially under Putin, who digs anything that speaks to Russia first. I just don't observe much other than a normal rebound after 70 years of oppression. Love that the Russian Orthodox think England and France need evangelizing. Please.

I look askance on stories about full churches, whether in Russia, Romania or on 1-70 here in the USA. In a world of 6 billion people, or even a country of 300 million, having a full church, even a megachurch with 5000 members, is statistically meaningless. Sometimes all a full church means is that there is a shortage of churches and/or an inability of the Christian community to plant new ones.

I agree about it being wishful thinking. I believe statistically the Orthodox Church throughout the world is in decline.

Reasonableness should be welcome. No need to encourage religion or have hopes on religion, religion has no connection to reasonableness, often religion is against reasonableness.

C. A.: The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware, published by Penguin Books, is the standard introduction (insofar as one exists) and a good place to start.

Richard

Rod, my view is that the Orthodox church in Europe and elsewhere (I'm in Canada, and my wife is Ukrainian) is overall beneficial. But I can't see Europeans or secular people embracing it or it's teachings.

They totally sided with the Russian Fuedal system under the Tsars before the Russian revolution when educated intelligent people should know better. Much of the Eastern European fatalism I feel is due to the Orthodox influence... suffer happily because Christ suffered, submit to authority, especially if we are in bed with them. After the establishment of the Soviet Union, they lost more credibility by laying low ... no grass roots upheaval here. The only thing they cared about was their rituals and status. They got to keep the rituals, but that's about it.

Where I live, the Eastern Orthodox churches have strong communities, but based more on culture than on Christianity. They have dancing classes, craft stuff, traditional music, baking and perogie making, etc. The biggest thing at easter is decorating baskets (as works of art) and dressing up fancy to show off how prosperous you are and how great of a basket you can make. The priests care only about their ethnic groups, there is no outreach to the surrounding community. We had a baby sitter from Ukraine who had come at the invitation of a wealthy family to see if she would marry one of their sons. The son was a jerk, and she said "no thanks", so the priest pointed her to the Mennonite community who gave her a place to stay and she did some baby sitting work until her visa was over. The priest didn't want to piss off wealthy contributors by making waves is my theory.

I don't think the Orthodox system is better or worse than anything else. They teach Christian principles, but only within their own cultural context. So don't hold your breath on them re-Christianizing Europe. They are too busy with Greek or Russian or Ukrainian cultural activities. They will spend all day explaining the origins of their customs and rituals, but could care less about anyone elses.

Nathaniel Davis, in "A Long Walk to Church," put the percentage of Russian Orthodox who actually practice their faith (as apart from nominal baptism) at something like 2-3%.

I think the Eastern Catholics have a much better track record in the post-Soviet east because they kept their integrity and suffered greatly for their faith. Their bishops and priests were murdered and their churches forcibly turned over to the Orthodox, but when the Iron Curtain fell the Eastern Catholic churches were reborn with vigor. Moscow's response: to compain that Rome's support of the Eastern Catholic churches is "proselytism" on their "canonical territory." Never mind that the Orthodox have no qualms about setting up dioceses in the Catholic west!

M-David,

I see evidence of religion growing in the third world but not in the first world. Also, you can't simply go by numbers. Sure, the Catholic Church continues to grow in terms of numbers, but that is because the Catholic Church counts membership in terms of baptisms (as does the Orthoox Church). What percentage of these baptized folks are actually attending Church? I bet it's not that high.

Whether secularization causes the first world countries to implode is a separate issue. Even if this does happen, that doesn't mean that people are going to turn back to serious commitment to religion. And I think that once the third world becomes westernized & modernized, we will see religion wane there as well, even in Muslim countries.

I think what you will find worldwide are pockets of serious commitment to religion and spirituality. But, for the most part, you will find a fairly secularized consumer-driven public.

Ultimately, of course, the significance of religious sentiment and belief cannot be measured in numbers, since people have varying and even conflicting reasons for stating their adherence to a particular church or other religious group.

Think of a Russian who has never been baptized and rarely visits a Church but prays often through icons of Christ or the Theotokos: Is he "Orthodox"? Technically not, but that doesn't exactly make him irreligious either. And that may be one of the larger religious groups in the Russian population.

Also, sensible people should greet religious membership numbers with a high degree of skepticism. At best they are based on telephone surveys of a few hundred people. At worst, they are pure propaganda, based on nothing at all. To take one hot button example: the numbers frequently repeated in the media for Muslims (both for the U.S. and worldwide), don't really add up and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. But those inflated numbers serve the interests of both promoters and sharp critics of Islam, so they casually repeated and rarely challenged.