Whence this anger?

[Steve Hayes]

Fr. Georgy Chistyakov: Whence This Anger?

Published in Russian by Russkaia mysl, October 10, 1997. English
translation by Fr. Alvian Smirensky. 1997

By Fr. Georgy Chistyakov, Moscow

Today Orthodox religiosity includes, as an almost inseparable
component, a struggle against Catholics and Protestants, an attempt to
expose them as enemies of our faith and of Russia, as well as a
complete rejection of ecumenism and of any openness towards other
confessions. The very term "ecumenism" has become pejorative and an
accusation of affinity towards it is seen as evidence of a certain
betrayal of Orthodoxy.
It is a given that our relations with Christians of other confessions
haven't always been smooth, we do not understand each other in
everything, certain elements of Catholic or Protestant theology are
not acceptable to us, but this does not mean that we must detest each
other and consider all those who do not belong to the Orthodox Church
akin to servants of the devil, as is proclaimed by authors of books
and newspaper articles as well as broadcasters.
We are Orthodox. Why?
While St. Seraphim of Sarov saw a friend in everyone, the Orthodox
people today are besieged from all sides by enemies, heretics, and
insufficiently Orthodox priests, bishops and even saints, among whom
are Dimitry of Rostov and Tikhon of Zadonsk. One young person,
fancying himself a theologian, and to tell the truth brilliantly
educated, announced to me that he cannot agree with the views of the
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh and Father A. Schmemann, inasmuch as
they, living in places which are highly contaminated (this is what he
said!) with various heresies, have diminished their keen perception
of Orthodoxy. Where does such self-assurance and spiritual pride come
from? "Everyone is wrong except us" they proclaim literally with
every step. Where does this come from?
This chosen path of self-assurance has nothing in common with
correctness. We did not elect Orthodoxy because it is the only correct
teaching of faith, since correctness can only be demonstrated in the
sphere of knowledge, but not in matters relating to faith which
transcends into the realm of the indemonstrable. No. We elect
Orthodoxy only as a way, known to us from the experience of actual
people whom we trust absolutely, seeing them as our closest brothers
and sisters. For me, these are Fathers A. Mechev, S. Bulgakov and A.
Men', Mother Maria, Metropolitan Anthony [Bloom], Archbishop John
(Shahovskoy) and my grandmother. Loyalty to that path is not
evidenced in declarations or oaths, not in the publication of
anti-Catholic catechisms and pamphlets such as "Baptists: Out Meanest
Enemies", not even in the organization of a kind of competition with
Christians of other confessions, to prove the preeminence of one's
faith. No, and again, no -- our loyalty to Orthodoxy consists in the
possibility that our very life becomes a testament of our righteous
path and not only in words to show its correctness, exclusiveness and
preeminence. And it is precisely a possibility, which does not cover
over our weaknesses which even we possess.
At first Fathers S. Bulgakov and G. Florovsky and later, Metropolitan
Anthony and Oliver Clement attained world-wide reputation not because
they proclaimed the exclusiveness of Orthodoxy, pointing out that only
within it can unspoiled Christianity be found. No, they merely spoke
about their faith and its potentialities, in no way opposing it to
other confessions, and frequently not even touching upon the problems
of other confessions in any degree. As far as the Metropolitan, he
never speaks about Orthodoxy -- he speaks only about Christ and the
way to Him.
But on the other hand, Ms Perepelkina, author of the book "Ecumenism:
The Path Leading to Perdition", and authors of numberless books and
pamphlets in the same vein, never speak about the potentialities of
Orthodoxy, they only call upon all calamities to rain upon the heads
of heterodox and ecumenists and as far as the Orthodox faith, its
readers can attain loyalty to it only in the fear of being destroyed
by everything which is not Orthodox. Surprisingly, their writing
style resembles the magazines "Communist", "Political Self-formation"
and others published under the aegis of the CC CPSU [Central
Committee, Communist Party of the Soviet Union]. Their authors always
saw enemies in everything and frightened their readers with
calamities which would follow any departure from the Marxist-Leninist
line.
Alas, I have not found anyone yet who came to Orthodoxy thanks to
booklets of that type. On the other hand, I often found people who
became Orthodox because they found new possibilities in our faith for
themselves. Many (among Christians of other confessions) were
attracted to the Orthodox faith by the love for icons, by our Church
singing, by Russian religious philosophers or by Orthodox asceticism,
by the Byzantine ritual, or by the examples of our saints. But no one
yet has become Orthodox through fear, which the authors of booklets
against ecumenism and such themes, try to instill.
When we proclaim that Orthodoxy alone remains faithful to the
tradition of the Holy Fathers and that it is the only correct means
of faith, we become, alas, not followers of the teaching of the Holy
Fathers but of Suslov, Zhdanov, Andropov and other Party ideologues,
those who imposed Marxism, insisting that it is the only correct and
the only scientific world view. A monopoly of truth is really
extremely dangerous, since it makes us rigid and cruel, but
unfortunately, it is very convenient since it relieves us from the
need to think, to select and to assume upon ourselves personal
responsibility for taking such and such decisions. I am not even
saying that this simply and directly kills truth, since truth can
only be free.
In the circle of enemies
The nature of totalitarian consciousness is such that it demands an
enemy. I remember how on every page of a school history textbook it
was pointed out that the young Soviet republic was always surrounded
by enemies. The authorities and along with them, ordinary people, were
always threatened by spies, enemy agents, subversive activities, etc.
Vigilant citizens more than once detained me on the Moscow commuter
train to turn me over to the police because I was reading books in a
foreign language -- and this led them to see me as an enemy. In
addition to World Imperialism, a political enemy, it was necessary to
have other enemies in the sphere of ideology who were found not only
among a number of writers who for some reason did not experience
sympathy towards Marxism or the idealist philosophers but from among
all those who, in even the most minor thought, did not agree with the
politics of "the Party and the Government."
The Soviet authorities, which inculcated us with a class hatred of its
enemies, are no more, but the image of the enemy is still needed
today. The ecclesiastical dispute between Moscow and Constantinople
in the beginning of 1996 was nothing more than a quarrel between two
sisters, as N. A. Struve correctly pointed out. And as he suggested,
this would not have been too significant except for the reaction
fomented by the communo-patriotic types of media. "Sovietskaya
Rossiya", "Zavtra", "Russkii Vestnik," as well as (which is
especially sad) the Orthodox paper "Radonezh" with the similarly
named youth organization, literally fell all over themselves rushing
to prove that the Ecumenical Patriarchate fell away from Orthodoxy
some time ago, that Vladyka Bartholomew for some time has not been
the Constantinopolian but a Turkish patriarch, that neither he nor
his patriarchate has any influence in the Orthodox world, etc.
Simultaneously with this campaign the paper "Duel", known for its
anti-Semitic position (it was previously called "Al-Khods") published
an article against the then reigning but now deceased, Patriarch
Parthenius of Alexandria, which insisted that he was a Mason or in
any event, he receives large sums from the Masons, that he is an
enemy, a heretic, having for some time been torn from Orthodoxy, etc.
One need not be an analyst to understand the purpose of this campaign:
to tear the Russian Orthodox Church from the local Orthodox sister-
Churches, to set it up against the whole Orthodox world (both in the
East and the Russian parishes in the West) and to proclaim that only
we are right, that all the other Orthodox Churches have fallen away
and have become heretical -- it is precisely this line which is
advanced by Lyudmila Perepelkina's book, which says almost nothing
about God but instead sees Satan everywhere, his acts and
machinations, along with his countless servants, which include all of
us Orthodox Christians abiding under the protection of the Ecumenical
and the Moscow Patriarchates.
Where are the sources of religious intolerance?
This intolerance towards other confessions and proclaiming as Orthodox
the complete hostility towards other confessions, seems to reflect the
recent Soviet past, with its mandatory rejection of everything which
is not ours, with its heralding of undreamed of enemies on the front
pages of all newspapers without exception. However, this is not the
case. In Russia, totalitarianism was able to sink such deep roots
because the soil for it was prepared, it was ready before the
revolution. The search for The Enemy was sufficiently characteristic
for Russia in the period between the XIX and XX centuries. An
eloquent example to this approach can be found in the book by
Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvensky) about which I wrote recently on the
pages of "RM". Vladyka Nikon sees enemies everywhere, especially
among Jews, students, seminarians and even among admirers of the
works of [a famous theater actress] V. F. Komissarzhevskaya. Thus the
sources of religious intolerance should be looked for not in the
psychology of Soviet times which we made our own, but alas, in the
distant past.
It seems that this trouble can be found in that for a long time,
religiosity in Russia was expressed primarily in deep fear and
trembling before "evil powers" and the attempt to somehow protect
oneself from it. It is precisely this religiosity which N. V. Gogol'
characterized in his "Evenings on the Farm near Dikanka" and in his
other works.
In many eyes, the priest is seen as some sort of a benevolent sorcerer
who comes to your house to sprinkle every corner without exception,
with Holy Water and chase away all bad spirits, demons, little devils
etc. For the same reason (to protect it from evil spirits!) a child
is brought to him for Baptism. For the same reason he anoints the
sick and covers the heads of penitents with a "little apron".
Incantations, charms, amulets, little icons turned into amulets, all
this, and not just in the distant part, plays a significant role in
the religious life of our forebears and even today attracts a large
number of believers. Among the more or less cultured people the
various wood-goblins, water-sprites, hob-goblins, house-spirits, etc.
have lost their colorful folkloric aspect, but they continue however
abstractly, to be the "enemy" and to hold a significant place in the
religious life of the Orthodox person. In general, religion is seen
as a struggle against Evil and not at all as a movement towards Good;
the Mystery, is seen as the magic act of the priest, which
automatically protects us from evil spirits, but not as the graceful
action of the Holy Spirit to which, as Fr. Sergei Bulgakov liked to
point out, we must respond with our movement towards God.
The chief place in religion of that type is occupied not by God but by
satan, as Fr. A. Schmemann regularly pointed out. This becomes a
constant opposition to the devil but not at all a meeting with God.
This is how that kind of Christianity is formed which is not
distinguished by what should be a natural thing for our faith:
Christocentrism but, if it is possible to express this, by
inimicocentrism (from the Latin inimicus, enemy). Centuries go by,
the Church attempts to struggle against such a concept of her role in
society but the victory is not hers, but in the progress in the
cultural sphere. Little by little the educated people at least, stop
believing in Evil Spirits but the tendency to look for Evil remains
in human consciousness. Only its object becomes secular: today it is
no longer satan or evil spirits but living people, the so-called
"internal enemies, Jews and students" against whom the Union of
Russian People and other comparable organizations struggled.
After the revolution and later
After 1917 the situation changed once again. The thought process
remained the same, i.e. it was inimicocentral except that there was a
different actual Enemy since the society's direction was changed. The
Enemy became the landlords, the bourgeois, priests and believing
people, "the formers" i.e. those who were able to use knives, forks
and handkerchiefs correctly. The struggles against them were as
determined and with such beastly methods as was previously directed
against Evil Spirits. During the course of seven and then some
decades of the Soviet regime the intensity of the struggle against
the Enemy did not diminish for a minute except that the nature of the
actual victim changed.
This situation is strongly reminiscent of a photographer's studio of
the Twenties where any body's head can be pushed through a hole and
thus one can be photographed riding on an Arabian stallion or
standing next to the Eiffel tower, etc. Later the Enemy became former
exploiters, the nobility, the so-called "enemies of the people"
(engineers, professors, party workers of the type of Rykov and
Bukharin, the military like Tukhachevsky), later, the Jews and
"stateless cosmopolites", then Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, dissidents
and again the Jews, etc. No matter who figured as the Enemy the
struggle against them was merciless, "bloody, sacred and righteous",
so much like the struggle against Evil Spirits in times gone by.
Finally, 1988 came. Russia turned its face anew towards the Orthodox
faith, but again the mind-set did not change, it remained
inimicocentric. In the changed situation the Enemy was uncovered
surprisingly quickly. Now among the Enemy are the heterodox and
ecumenists, in other words those among us Orthodox who won't live
according to the inimicocentric thought process. And the struggle
began once again. Just as uncompromising as always.
Logically the question arises; why are the new enemies Christians of
other confessions and not atheists, which at first seems to be more
natural. Actually, the answer is very simple.
In the first place the atheists are different only in that they live
not knowing that Jesus is amongst us, and they do not feel his
presence -- but as you know, the new ideologues of Orthodoxy don't
have a Christocentric consciousness either, therefore the barriers
which would separate them from the atheists simply do not exist.
In the second place, and this is of no lesser importance: the atheists
are "ours" and the heterodox are "foreign".
The fact is, that at some moment in the beginning of the nineties it
became evident who are the new enemies -- everyone who is not "ours".
This actually cropped up in all spheres of life. In the arts, which
began to be defended against Western influence forgetting that
Tchaikovsky, Pushkin and Lermontov and the Bolshoi Theater, and
Bazhenov with Voronikhin, became prominent in Russia precisely
because of this influence. In politics, where there is talk about
some kind of a special non-Western path for Russia, even though we
know too well that this "non-Western" variant is alas, the way of
Saddam Hussein, Muamar Qaddaffi and other leaders of that ilk. There
is no third place. In the religious sphere, no one considers that the
struggle against confessions because they were brought into Russia
from abroad in essence contains the germ of a struggle against
Orthodoxy because it itself was brought in from abroad in 988.
To stand against "not ours"
The general trend to oppose oneself against everything which is "not
ours", can be seen in the move to proclaim the Church Slavonic
language as sacred and to prove that without it Orthodoxy is
impossible (the translation of liturgical texts in the XIX century
was seen as something natural, now it is seen as a real departure
from the Orthodox faith and the chief heresy of the day) -- but if
one continues in this line we automatically proclaim Romanians,
Arabs, Georgians, Americans and French as well as all the Orthodox in
the West as non-Orthodox or in any case, as Orthodox of the "second
level."
I recently bought a booklet titled "The Russian Orthodox Rite of
Baptism." Why "Russian"? As far as I know (and this is confirmed by
my Greek Euchologion) the Baptismal rite is the same in all
autocephalous Orthodox Churches. But a brief perusal made everything
clear -- in addition to the full rendering of the sacramental rite and
a list of all the Orthodox churches in Moscow, this booklet contains
exhaustive information about fortune telling and signs connected with
a child's birth, as well as about incantations which are recommended
for use in the event of the child's illness. Thus for example, in
order to relieve the child of fright one should "blanch heather with
boiling water and wash the frightened child's face and hands with the
water over a bowl, then pour out the water in the place where he was
frightened. Repeat three times at daybreak." There is a large number
of such recipes. This is nothing more than outright paganism, magic
and sorcery but unfortunately it is under the banner of the Orthodox
faith in a book with the addresses and telephone numbers of each and
every one of Moscow's churches. The value of all such "rites" lies in
that they are "ours". The book is published in the series "Our
Traditions".
The very logic of the struggle against "not ours" is such that it
inevitably (whether we want to or not) leads to complete isolation
and stagnation in the sphere of the arts and politics, and in the
sphere of faith -- to paganism, to an empty ritualism and magic,
completely devoid of the evangelical spirit.
****
The source of religious intolerance is paganism, which is incorporated
with Orthodoxy and mixed with it, the non-Christocentrism of our
thinking and our isolation from the Gospel and from Jesus. It just
isn't clear, whether this is bad or good. Thus for example Oleg
Platonov, an author whose "scientific method for the formation of
Russian national consciousness" (M., "Roman-gazeta", 1995) is
available in the Church's book stores, believes that "by merging the
moral strength of pre-Christian popular outlook with the power of
Christianity, Russian Orthodoxy developed an unprecedented moral
might" (p.27). From his point of view, the "moral might" of our faith
is evidenced in that, in contrast to Christianity of other lands, in
Russia it meshed very strongly with paganism, as he writes "it
absorbed into itself all former popular views on good and evil" and
thus became a philokalia (?). Unfortunately he gives the word
"philokalia" a completely different meaning than that used by Saints
Theophan the Recluse and Paisiy Velichkovsky. For him this is not an
asceticism which leads to the spiritual and moral growth of the
person in God but something connected with paganism and its positive
influence upon Orthodoxy. (I will point out parenthetically that the
same author recently published in the paper "Russkii Vestnik" an
article titled "The Myth of the Holocaust" in which he presents
massive material to prove that the Jews in general, did not suffer in
the years of World War II and that everything said about their mass
destruction is nothing more than a myth.) I don't know what words can
be found to describe Mr. Platonov's world view but I am afraid that
we know those words from that War, which he invites us to see in a
new light.
***
It is not heterodoxy but paganism which poses a danger to the Orthodox
faith in Russia today. Fortunately many people understand this. But
Christ is always with us, amongst us, thus, if we believe in Him, we
need not be afraid.

Priest George Chistyakov
Moscow

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