1001: A Spiritual Odyssey

What will the Russian Orthodox Church he like after its millennial celebration?

The fate suffered by the venerable Russian orthodox Danilov Monastery in Moscow following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution symbolizes the relationship between church and state foisted upon the Russian people by its then new Soviet government. Communists gutted its halls and churches, and painted over the icons. They dismantled the bell tower over the main gate and sold its bells to an American. Over time, the 14-acre compound was converted first into an umbrella factory, then a refrigerator plant, and finally a children’s detention center; there the children from the Pentecostal families known as the Siberian Seven were once housed.

Then, in 1983, the Soviet government returned the 700-year-old monastery to the Russian Orthodox Church, and $45 million was spent on its restoration. Last June, with official sanction of the Communist party chief, Mikhail Gorbachev, a culminating event of the 1988 Millennium of Christianity in Kievan Rus’ was celebrated at the reconstructed monastery.

A Curious Church-State Linkage

Throughout 1988, Soviet Communist party leaders have encouraged the celebration of 1,000 years of Christianity on Russian soil. They have even linked the Russian Orthodox Church with Russian patriotism. As early as December 1987, in an interview with NBC’S Tom Brokaw, Mikhail Gorba chev—who only one year earlier had urged “an uncompromising struggle with religion”—promised: “Next year we shall be celebrating the millennium of Christianity.” In subsequent months, further statements supportive of religion were made—particularly of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Whose Millennium Is It?

While traveling in the West in March 1987, Alexei Bychkov, general secretary of the All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, told a group of American pastors that no one should say of the church celebrations taking place in the USSR, “It is the millennium of Russian Orthodoxy.” Rather, he urged, it is the millennium of Christianity in Russia.

While no doubt using Russia as a synonym for Soviet Union, Bychkov, a Russian, nevertheless overlooked Ukrainian sensitivities—even as he expressed concern that evangelicals not be slighted by the Orthodox.

Just who were the people baptized in Kiev in 988? Were they Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians—or a proto-Slavic people yet to be differentiated in modern nationalistic terms? Ukrainians clearly have geography on their side, with Kiev their historic capital and the Russian heartland lying to the north and east. And because Ukrainians far outnumber Russians in emigration to the West—as well as outorganize and outspend them—the various small Russian Orthodox bodies outside Russia cannot compete with the well-funded efforts of North American Ukrainians.

But the Ukrainians have by no means won the battle of claim to the millennium. When Russia conquered Ukraine centuries ago, the winner took not only the spoils, but also the history. Thus, the writing of Russian history tends to marginalize Ukrainian experience by reducing it to a single chapter in a larger story of the “gathering in of the Russian nations.” According to this interpretation, modern Russia and its Orthodox church are the natural successors of Kievan Rus’. Western Slavic specialists have been heavily influenced by this perspective.

Without question, the Russian Orthodox Church is a descendent of Kievan Christianity. The question is whether it deserves to be designated as the descendent. Recognizing that the Kremlin suppressed both the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the 1930s and 1940s, the politically derived advantage the Moscow Patriarchate enjoys in asserting its ownership of the millennium is evident.

Yet neither Ukrainian nor Russian claims to exclusive ownership of the millennium hold up historically. As Keston College’s Ukrainian researcher Andrew Sorokowski has sensibly put it: Russians, as we think of Russians, and Ukrainians, as we think of Ukrainians, did not exist in 988. Prince Vladimir was no more exclusively a member of either nationality than Charlemagne was exclusively German or French. In all fairness, there are “multiple claimants” to the Kievan legacy.

It is important to remember that evangelicals have outstanding differences with Orthodox and Eastern-Rite Catholic Christians. These include the relative importance of Scriptures and church tradition, the sacraments, ordination, the intercessory role of Mary and saints, icons, and monasticism. Less often noted, however, are the absolutely central tenets of historic Christian faith we share in common, including the integrity and trustworthiness of Scripture, the nature of God, and the saving work of Jesus Christ.

A thousand-year church anniversary in the USSR is hard for evangelicals to grasp. And a history lesson alone is not enough to cause us to develop enthusiasm for the celebration. After all, the event being commemorated was an involuntary, mass conversion (see p. 20). Prizing personal piety and recalling the Reformation, we can hardly be expected to warm to faith by state decree.

Evangelicals might best observe this millennium of Eastern Slavic Christianity by commending Orthodox and Eastern Catholic faithful for remaining true to the undeniable essentials of biblical faith, honoring and learning from Christians tested by persecution, and rejoicing with all Eastern Christian traditions celebrating the millennium.

By Mark Elliott, director of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Marxism at Wheaton College (Ill.).

Last April 29, in the first meeting in 45 years between heads of state and church, Secretary Gorbachev met with Russian Orthodoxy’s Patriarch Pimen and five other church leaders, and promised “a new law on freedom of conscience.” He declared that “mistakes made with regard to the church and believers in the 1930s and the years that followed are being rectified.” Gorbachev pledged “new approaches to state-church relations” and said that “believers are Soviet people, workers and patriots, and they have the full right to express their convictions with dignity.” He referred to the millennium of Orthodoxy as a “significant milestone” in the history, culture, and political development of Russia.

In the early eighties, as the millennium of Orthodoxy approached, attacks initially appearing in the Soviet press both discredited and downplayed the event. A 1984 government-sponsored panel emphasized that “any attempt to treat the coming of Christianity to Russia as an event of epochal universal significance for the nation must be countered by atheist propagandists with well-argued, serious criticism.” Other pronouncements accused the church of using the millennium to present itself falsely as heir and preserver of the cultural traditions of Russian people. Still other articles belittled Christian morality and attempted to prove the leading role of atheism in both ancient and contemporary Russia.

But following the accession of Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet authorities began to shift their stance toward the millennial event, endorsing the celebration, and even exploiting it as a proof of perestroika (restructuring). The official Communist party atheist publication, Nauka i religiya (Science and Religion), declared in 1987 that “The Christianization of Rus’ was an epoch-making event, the significance of which transcends confessional and national frontiers.” Also in 1987 the Soviet government even proposed that UNESCO adopt a special resolution: “On the Celebration of the Millennium of the Introduction of the Christianity of Rus.”

The millennium has also been marked by government permission for Orthodox and other Christians to import or print comparatively large quantities of Christian literature. The Russian Orthodox Church, for example, received approval to print 100,000 Bibles—within the USSR. In addition, Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Byelorussia received permission through the United Bible Societies for 100,000 copies of the Bible in Ukrainian. The Soviet state also gave the Russian Orthodox Church permission to import 150,000 sets of a three-volume Russian study Bible, which is being reprinted in Scandinavia. And in August, Open Doors International was given permission to send one million New Testaments to Soviet Christians.

A sobor, a main event of the 1988 millennium celebration, was held in early June, and the Soviet government helped the church roll out the red carpet (see sidebar, p. 20). The 1988 millennial celebrations have provided an especially rare glimpse of relations between the Soviet state and its largest church. The life of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR—with its 50 to 70 million adherents—is best understood, however, in light of its thousand-year history.

Russian Christianity’S Thousand Years

Traditionally, Orthodox Christianity among Eastern Slavs is dated from the conversion of Prince Vladimir of Rus’, a principality cradled in Kiev. Vladimir was a leader whose turn to Christianity seemed unlikely. Before his conversion, he trod a bloody path, killing relatives and recalcitrant subjects, including two Christians who refused to sacrifice to pagan gods. Preoccupied with sex, war, and power, Vladimir initially spurned the influence of his godly grandmother, Olga, who had encountered Christianity in Constantinople.

The prince’s change of heart in 988 may have been primarily political: religions were rising and paganism was declining in the kingdoms around Kiev. Also, Byzantine Emperor Basil II promised his royal sister, Anna, in marriage to Vladimir if the prince would convert to Christianity. So early in 988 the prince ordered the mass baptism of his subjects in the Dnieper River.

Waiting For The Church’S Gorbachev

Last June’s national council of the Russian Orthodox Church—called a sobor—was only the fourth held since 1917. This was the first sobor since the Bolshevik Revolution to be convened for anything other than election of a new patriarch. It was attended by 74 Russian Orthodox bishops and held in the historic Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery in Zagorsk, outside Moscow.

Before the sobor, some Orthodox Christians were calling for the resignation of Patriarch Pimen, who is both elderly and ill, and who has carefully cooperated with the government during his 17-year leadership of the church. Although speculation circulated unofficially during the sessions about which younger metropolitan might succeed Pimen, a new patriarch was not elected. Noted Suzanne Massie of Harvard’s Russian Research Center, “I’m waiting for the Gorbachev of the Russian Church.”

A primary accomplishment of the sobor was adoption of a new Polozheniye (statute) of the church. Among provisions, the statute reinstated the priest as head of the local parish, overturning a restriction forced on the church by the state in 1961.

According to Keston College researcher Jane Ellis, three of the provisions of the new statute contradict present state law on religious associations, offering the church more freedoms to purchase property, have representation in court, and participate in charitable activities.

As church bells pealed freely, other official millennium celebrations surrounding the June sobor took place in the dioceses of Kiev, Vladimir, and Leningrad. Celebrations were also held in Moscow at the Danilov Monastery and in the Bolshoi Theater. Approximately 500 religious leaders from 100 nations, as well as state dignitaries that included Raisa Gorbachev, attended the June 10 celebration in the Bolshoi Theater. Evangelist Billy Graham and Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie were present. Notably absent, however, were Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitros of Constantinople, who declined to attend due to a dispute with Patriarch Pimen, and Pope John Paul II, who was not invited.

Delegates from the Evangelical Christians-Baptists also attended Orthodox millennial celebrations in Moscow and elsewhere. A message from Baptist leadership recognized major differences in doctrinal matters, but urged Baptist believers to strengthen relations with Orthodox believers, and recommended that local Baptist churches commemorate the millennium with special services.

By Anita Deyneka.

Vladimir’s selection of Christianity was systematic and shrewd. He explored and rejected Islam, Judaism, and Western Christianity before he chose Eastern Christianity. Tradition tells us that the splendor of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, with its 10,000 flickering candles and gold mosaics, staggered the emissaries Vladimir had sent from Kiev. “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such beauty,” they reported.

However politically motivated Vladimir’s conversion may have been, history hints at some traits of true piety in his life. He swiftly purged his principality of pagan idols, and with a passion he constructed cathedrals and churches, dispatched priests to provide Christian teaching, and defended the poor. The monk Jacob wrote, “I cannot even enumerate all his charities.” Regardless of the depth of his conversion experience, 1,000 years of Christian heritage have flowed from his realm’s acceptance of Christianity and through the culture of the Ukrainians, Russians, and Byelorussians. All of these Eastern Slavs have marked the 1988 millennium, often with varying views of Orthodox Christianity’s source and significance (see sidebar, p. 18).

After its establishment as the state religion under Vladimir, the Orthodox church rapidly became the preserver of Eastern Slavic national identity, especially during domination of the Mongols (1240–1480). Eventually an Orthodox patriarchate arose in Moscow, and Russia proclaimed itself the third Rome after Constantinople (the second Rome) fell to Muslim Turks in 1453.

As its temporal power increased, the church presumed a role at least equal, and sometimes superior, to civil rulers. Though wracked by schism in 1666, it maintained its position until Peter the Great became czar. He abolished the patriarchate and relegated the church to a role of subservience to the state. Nevertheless, until the twentieth century the church still possessed status and wealth sufficient to persecute non-Orthodox Christians. By the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, about 55,000 Orthodox churches, 25,000 chapels, and more than 1,000 monasteries dominated Russia’s landscape.

But while the presence of the Orthodox church was everywhere, its spiritual vitality was sapped by its alliance with the czarist state. The church had largely lost its prophetic voice. By the late nineteenth century, there were calls for reform. Some came from young Christian intellectuals like Nikolai Berdyaev, who had turned from compromised Orthodoxy, explored Marxism, then returned to his Russian Orthodox roots.

In August 1917, after nearly 200 years without a patriarch, the church gathered in a sobor and elected Patriarch Tikhon. The new leader was enthroned in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin, which had been damaged by shells in the tumult of the 1917 civil war. It was symbolic of savagery the Communists would soon unleash on the entire church.

The Church Under Communism

Patriarch Tikhon tried to withstand the Communist onslaught, anathematizing the Bolsheviks: “Think what you are doing, you madmen! Stop your bloody outrages! Your acts are not merely cruel, they are the works of Satan, for which you will burn in hell fire in the life hereafter and will be cursed by future generations in this life.” His successor, Metropolitan Sergei (locum tenens, 1927–43), became patriarch in 1943. He was pressured relentlessly and aligned with the new Soviet state. The two subsequent patriarchs, Alexi (1945–70), and Pimen (1971–), have increasingly adopted a submissive stance.

Their subjection did not prevent antireligious assaults under Lenin, however. This was intensified by Stalin with a ferocity felt by Christians of all traditions. Almost all Russian Orthodox church bells were carted off and melted down in the twenties and thirties. Icons were often expropriated and burned publicly; relics of saints were dug up and profaned. By the end of 1938, the Communists had closed more than 70,000 Russian Orthodox churches and chapels, and all of the monasteries and seminaries. Two-hundred-eighty Orthodox bishops and as many as 45,000 priests had perished; only four active bishops remained.

Then, during World War II, Stalin relaxed repression against religion to rally support of the Soviet citizens to resist the Nazis. The eviscerated Russian Orthodox Church, by then largely consigned to a catacomb existence, suddenly took on new life. The number of parishes rose from approximately 1,500 to some 20,000; two theological academies, eight seminaries, and a few monasteries were reopened. And even though scarred by 24 years of persecution—as vicious as the church had suffered in the Roman empire—the Russian Orthodox hierarchy cooperated ever more closely with the Soviet government after the war. It served as a mouthpiece for Soviet policies and promoted one-sided Communist peace campaigns.

Nevertheless, such collusion did not exempt the church—or non-Orthodox Christians—from Nikita Khrushchev’s ravaging antireligious campaign in the sixties. By 1964, only about 7,000 Russian Orthodox churches remained open—fewer than one-third of those permitted to reopen under Stalin.

A Compromised Faith

With their position so precarious even during the period of Khrushchev’s reforms, Russian Orthodox leadership has continued a cautious course that is characterized by some critics as compromising. In a 1972 Lenten letter to Patriarch Pimen, Alexander Solzhenitsyn accused the church of being “ruled dictatorially by atheists—a sight never seen before in two millennia!”

But increasingly, Orthodox laypersons have begun to challenge the servility of their hierarchy. After the Moscow patriarchate issued a message in October 1987 on the seventieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution—which lauded Soviet church-state relations and ignored 70 years of Soviet restrictions and repressions against the church—two Russian Orthodox priests and nine laymen penned a painful response:

“The message of the patriarch and the Holy Synod concerning the 70th anniversary of the October revolution caused much bewilderment and bitterness among believers. It depicts the situation of the church in our country and church-state relations as an ideal symphony in terms characteristic of the Stalin era. This message is a political anarchism from beginning to end even though, these days, government leaders are saying that ‘the time has come to stop misrepresenting history.…’ ”

Following the millennial celebration at the Bolshoi Theater last June 10 attended by Soviet officials (including Raisa Gorbachev) and churchmen from around the world, a dozen prominent Russian Orthodox dissidents had a round-table discussion with Father Victor Potapov, Voice of America radio broadcaster. Zoya Krakhmalnikova, a contemporary Russian Orthodox dissident writer who has been imprisoned for her religious beliefs, said: “Today the Communists are constantly canonizing the martyrs of their Communist ideas, but our hierarchs are still insisting there was no repression. Everybody else is lining up to denounce Stalin, but our hierarchs are still expressing gratitude to Stalin, Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Gorbachev.… Yesterday we heard the Patriarch hailing the restoration of ‘Leninist norms,’ the slogan with which Khrushchev closed 10,000 churches.”

Corruption and compromise have been part of the biography of the Russian Orthodox Church throughout its 1,000-year history. And Russian Orthodoxy has been so intertwined with Russian nationalism that its appeal for many of its adherents may be primarily nationalistic, not spiritual. Nevertheless, Eastern Orthodoxy is also characterized by roots in the very soul of early Christianity, producing a tradition of deep spirituality. In the moral wasteland of Marxism, millions of Soviet citizens seek truth in the Orthodox church. Their hierarchs recently noted that in some areas of the USSR, more than half of all newborns are baptized, and nearly half of all couples have their marriage blessed.

Tatiana Goricheva, a Russian Orthodox Christian, says: “Christian rebirth is the most joyful and hope-giving fact of our Russian reality. Russia is awakening from a nightmare and discovering God. This is the beginning of a slow but sure spiritual recovery in ever-increasing numbers; various segments of our population are being drawn into this process, overcoming fear which had paralyzed Russian souls and driving out death by life.”

A New “Babylonian Captivity”

In the past 70 years, the Orthodox church has carried Christ’s cross through depths of suffering that have purged, purified, and brought renewal to many of its members. Although this ancient, onceprivileged Constantinian church of the Russian empire is still the church most recognized by the Soviet government, it has been toppled from power by the 70-year-old Soviet Communists and forced to find a new temporal identity. Russian Orthodox samizdat (underground publishing) author Kyril Golovin writes: “The Russian church is not celebrating the millennium with imperial pomp and circumstances of yesteryear but from within a sort of ‘Babylonian captivity’—a cleansing, purifying ordeal.… Each Orthodox Christian in our country will commemorate the … millennium of the Russian church, remembering this heroic feat of captivity and not in triumphant worldly ways but with humble prayers for God’s forgiveness, for the sins that were committed by Russia, brought upon it by God’s righteous anger.”

During this momentous millennial year, many voices within the church are urging reexamination of the role of Russian Orthodoxy. For example, the Eastern Orthodox Church has for centuries largely chosen to isolate itself from Western Christianity. And for the last 70 years the church has been caught in the cocoon of communism and permitted only state-sanctioned ecumenical contacts. A Russian Orthodox émigré priest, Michael A. Meerson, observes that his church has been “stripped of its inner consciousness and of the intellectual instruments needed to formulate its own theological evaluation of this or that question of contemporary reality, especially those in the field of culture and sociopolitical life.” Meerson notes that the entire activity of the church is “limited virtually to ritual. The regime permits lengthy ceremonial services in the old Slavonic language, which is poorly understood by the people, but practically does not allow sermons and categorically forbids religious education. The regime tolerates religion—because it has had to tolerate it—as an emotion, a spiritual sentiment evoked by colorful ancient rite. But it does not tolerate religion as the ‘Word,’ as the ‘Message of God’ or as ‘Gospel’.”

Resistance to such secular suffocation and isolation is rising in the Russian church especially during this millennial year. One group of Russian Orthodox Christians has formed an unofficial millennium committee, urging mass collection of signatures to call for the release of all prisoners of conscience and revision of Stalinist legislation on religious cults in order to restore to the church, “first and foremost, freedom of speech.” Other Orthodox Christians have signed an open letter to Andrei Gromyko listing needed legal changes.

Church At The Crossroads

Now, more than at any other time during the church’s tenuous 70-year existence under communism, the event of the millennium has placed it at a pivotal point in its history. Father Gleb Yakunin, a Russian Orthodox who served time as a prisoner of conscience, says of the millennium: “… Having survived the catastrophe of the ‘great retreat’ and slowly recovering from it, today a weakened and devastated Russia is at a crossroads.” Today, at this crossroads, though the fate of the Orthodox church is above all in God’s hands, its future path will be at least partially decided by the direction taken by Soviet rulers.

One thousand years ago a pagan prince converted to Christianity and shaped Russia. Today Mikhail Gorbachev, with his policies of perestroika and glasnost, has taken significant steps that may favorably mold the future of the Soviet Union and provide new freedoms for its Christian citizens. Speculation abounds about Gorbachev’s own religious roots. In 1984 he said his grandparents had kept icons in their home. Biographers have written that he was baptized in the church as a child and that his mother still regularly attends Russian Orthodox church services.

Indeed, Gorbachev’s government has brought some relief to repressed Christians. Not only have a few revered monasteries been reopened, but so have a few more churches. Furthermore, some 270 religious prisoners have been released; the press has occasionally defended believers’ rights; and religious leaders occasionally appear on Soviet television as religion receives more favorable media coverage—all in addition to granting permission for increased importation and publishing of Bibles.

But crippling restrictions and repressions remain—not only against Orthodox Christians, but against all Christian believers. The supply of Bibles is but a trickle compared to the scarcity of Christian literature and the thirst for it. And at least 107 religious believers, including Russian Orthodox Christians, are still in prison. The right to emigrate freely is still not respected, and though fundamental changes in legislation related to religion have been proposed, they have not been enacted. Such changes are essential if discrimination against Christians—constructed into present Communist laws—is to be eliminated.

Furthermore, history suggests caution in presuming there will be radical reform of religious rights under Gorbachev. Stalin, for example, received the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Kremlin in 1943 in a meeting reminiscent of Gorbachev’s recent reception of Russian Orthodox hierarchs, but after the war he resumed his purges. Yet, under Mikhail Gorbachev, perhaps the Soviet Union will at last move in a more democratic direction. Certainly the need for reforms is indisputable if the Soviet Union is to remain a superpower.

Gorbachev Needs Soviet Christians

To insure the success of his ambitious reconstruction plan, Gorbachev is seeking the support of all Soviet citizens—including Christians. Orthodox adherents alone constitute perhaps one-fourth of the Soviet population. Although Gorbachev has made overtures only to the officially recognized Russian Orthodox Church (largely ignored the unrecognized Uniate, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian Orthodox who are also heirs of the millennium), like Stalin he may need the moral support of all Christian citizens to help reconstruct a disintegrating Soviet society.

Last June, the Soviet news agency Tass declared that Russian Orthodoxy “expounds love and mercy and denounces idleness and money grubbing and inculcates in people high moral standards, which are needed in our socialist society.” Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Filaret recently observed: “If religion was seen before as a brake on development of society, now it is benefiting from the fact that our society is in a period of spiritual and moral renovation.” And Father Gleb Yakunin argues that a revived Russian Orthodox Church can become an ally for Gorbachev in his efforts to combat drinking, drug abuse, prostitution, corruption, and moral deterioration.

Nevertheless, many Orthodox believers are well aware that periods of relaxation and reform have not proven irreversible. Alexander Ogorodnikov recently told a Canadian interchurch delegation that “the current Millennium of Christianity celebrations will only mask the real problems of believers.… The church in the USSR is like a growing child with chained hands and feet.”

When NAE President Billy Melvin visited the USSR in March of this year, he met a Soviet Protestant pastor who had been told by KGB officials he could relax during 1988. But, he was warned, “When the [millennial] celebrations are over. I’ll be back. We know where to find you.”

Father Leonid Kishkovsky, American Orthodox Church bishop and president-elect of the National Council of Churches, also visited the USSR during 1988. He notes: “Many Soviet believers are afraid that what occurs in the 1988 millennial year may not occur in 1989.”

As has so often been true in its 1,000-year history, the fate of Orthodox Christianity in Russia is uncertain. But there is a greater certainty: Orthodoxy is deeply embedded in Eastern Slavic souls. And a succession of Communist leaders has now discovered that such roots are not readily deracinated.

In celebration of the millennium of Orthodoxy in Rus’, bells in many Orthodox churches were rung after 70 years of silence. Perhaps all Orthodox churches—both those banned by the Soviet government and those recognized officially—may find new voices this millennial year.

Anita Deyneka teaches in the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies of the Slavic Gospel Association; her husband, Peter, is director of the sga, based in Wheaton, Illinois.

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