Panorthodox Synod : NATIONALISM AND THE LOCAL CHURCH: THE SOURCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL CONFLICT IN THE ORTHODOX COMMONWEALTH

Τετάρτη 26 Ιουνίου 2019

NATIONALISM AND THE LOCAL CHURCH: THE SOURCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL CONFLICT IN THE ORTHODOX COMMONWEALTH

Daniel P. Payne, Nationalities Papers , The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, Pages 831-852 | Published online: 06 Nov 2007.

Much of the social science literature pertaining to the development of civil society in post-communist Eastern Europe focuses on the issue of religious pluralism, especially the relationship of religious minorities and new religious movements (NRMs) to the state and their established Orthodox churches. Their findings suggest that the equation of ethno-religious nationalism, cultural identity, and the state becomes a hindrance to religious pluralism and the development of civil society in these nation-states.1 1. The chief protagonist of this viewpoint has been Samuel Huntington. See his “The Clash of Civilizations?,” 22–49; idem, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Others have argued that Orthodox Christianity is a hindrance to civil society and the institutions necessary for it. See Radu, “The Burden of Eastern Orthodoxy,” 283–300; Payne, “The Clash of Civilisations,” 261–71; Pollis, “The State, the Law, and Human Rights in Greece,” 587–614; idem, “Eastern Orthodoxy and Human Rights,” 339–56. Responding to this position, several scholars have argued that resources can be found in the Orthodox tradition that may provide for the possibility of the development of civil society. See Marsh, “Orthodox Christianity, Civil Society, and Russian Democracy,” 449–62; and the important articles in the works Burden or Blessing? and Civil Society and the Search for Justice in Russia. See also Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia; and Gvosdev, Emperors and Elections. Another response to Huntington's challenge has been the use of S. N. Eisenstadt's concept of “multiple modernities,” understanding that the Orthodox have not completely disavowed Western democratic institutions and norms but have contextualized them within their own particular national cultures. See, in particular, Makrides and Molokotos-Liederman, “Introduction,” 459–70; Makrides, “Orthodox Christianity, Rationalization, Modernization: A Reassessment,” 179–209; and Prodromou, “Negotiating Pluralism and Specifying Modernity in Greece,” 471–85. For a critique of “multiple modernities” theory, see Schmidt, “Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?,” 77–97. View all notes As a result, social scientists depict these national churches, and in most cases rightly so, as being the caretakers and fomenters of ethno-religious nationalism in their particular states. A factor in this debate that is often overlooked, however, is the role of the local church in intra-ecclesial relations. Is the concept of the “local church,” which developed in the time of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, to be identified with the modern national church? If this is the case, these churches may be guilty of the sin of ethno-phyletism, which the Council of Constantinople condemned in 1872 in regards to the Bulgarian schism. Additionally, while the development of religious pluralism in post-communist society with the proliferation of Protestant Christian sects and NRMs challenges the religious hegemony of the national churches, even more problematic has been the issue of inter-territorial Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe. The existence of a plurality of national Orthodox churches in the same territory violates the ecclesiological principle of the “local church” as well as perpetuates the sin of ethno-phyletism. While some social scientists may laud the development of a multiplication of churches in the same territory, from an ecclesiastical standpoint such a multiplication denies the unity and identity of the Orthodox Church as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, which it confesses to be. What social scientists have failed to discuss is this important self-understanding of the Orthodox churches, especially as it pertains to inter-Orthodox ecclesial relations. Only with this self-understanding of the church blended with the issue of ethno-nationalism can the problems pertaining to the relations and development of ethno-national churches be properly understood.

In this paper I will describe the development of ethno-religious nationalism in Eastern Europe and how the concept of the “local church” came to be nationalized, creating the rifts that we witness in the Orthodox commonwealth of churches today.2 2. The Orthodox commonwealth is understood to be those churches in communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this regard, the national Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe, i.e. Greece, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the newer churches of Estonia, Finland, Poland, and the Czech Republic, all comprise the Orthodox Commonwealth of churches, sharing the same faith, yet having autonomous or autocephalous control of their administrative structures. An autocephalous church has complete administrative independence from the mother church, while an autonomous church is still under her spiritual leadership. The issue of autocephaly will be discussed later in the paper. View all notes Secondly, I will provide a short history of the concept of the “local church,” of how it developed from the early Church through the Church's relationship with the Roman and Byzantine imperial system. Thirdly, I will examine three test cases regarding this problem: the conflict between the Macedonian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church, especially in regards to the recent case involving Archbishop Jovan of Ochrid, the conflict over the formation and recognition of the Estonian Orthodox Church, and the intra-Orthodox conflict resulting from the multiplication of Orthodox churches in Ukraine. It is my position that these conflicts are a result of the misunderstanding of the concept of the “local church” as utilized by national religious leaders in these countries, and that the appropriate use and de-nationalization of these churches would lead to the cultural pluralism needed for the formation of civil society to occur in the post-communist world.

East European Nationalism

Most scholars agree that nationalism as it developed in the East is distinct from its West European counterparts.3 3. See Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” 20. View all notes Hans Kohn recognized this distinction in his early studies on Eastern Europe, attributing the differences to the “less advanced” political and social institutions of Eastern Europe. In the East, according to Kohn, “nationalism became there first a cultural movement, the dream and hope of scholars and poets.” That difference can be found in the appropriation of the thought of Johann Gottfried von Herder by East European nationalists.
Peter Sugar demonstrates the importance of Herder for East European nationalism. According to Sugar, Herder's concept of the Volk was transformed in the Eastern European context. In the concept of the Volk, Herder simply meant nationality and did not imply the nation as such. In his arguments against the search for the ideal state, Herder maintained that the concept of liberty must conform to the needs of each particular nationality. Sugar notes: “This is a romantic and, even more, a humanitarian concept. It condemns those who place the state, even the ideal state, ahead of people.”4 4. Ibid., 14. View all notes Consequently, in Eastern Europe this contextualization on the basis of each particular nationality led to a unique messianism in the particularization of each Volk. In this particularization a “confusion of nationality and nation, of cultural, political, and linguistic characteristics was further extended to justify the Volk's mission. This mission could be accomplished only if it had free play in a Volksstaat, nation-state.”5 5. Ibid., 11–12. View all notes Thus, the concept of the nation-state as it developed in Eastern Europe was very different from the Western understanding. In the East each Volk needed its own nation-state in order to fulfill its messianic mission rooted in the Volksville. Herder's romanticism combined with the political ideas of the West, creating the form of cultural-political nationalism that is uniquely its own.6 6. Ibid., 19–20. Another important influence of Herder on East European nationalism came through the inspiration of folklore studies that provided the historical justifications for the development of East European nationalism. Nationalists created histories to justify the existence of the various peoples in Eastern Europe. Additionally, linguistic studies leading to the writing of grammatical and philological works provided the means for inspiring national movements ranging from Czech and Slovak lands in Central Europe to Ukraine in the East and Greece and Serbia in the South. See Hayes, Nationalism, 67. View all notes
This “proto-nationalism,” as Eric Hobsbawm would call it, was also tied to religion. Religion itself, either Roman Catholicism as in Poland, Slovenia and Croatia or Eastern Orthodoxy as in Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria, provided the unifying ideology for the peoples.7 7. Merdjanova, “In Search of Identity,” 233–62; Velikonja, “Slovenian and Polish Religio-National Mythologies,” 233–60; Sells, The Bridge Betrayed. View all notes This blending of religion and nationalism led to the development of a “political religion” similar to what Robert Bellah has labeled “civil religion” in the United States.8 8. Merdjanova, Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society in Eastern Europe, 32–33. Nikolas Gvosdev argues similarly in regards to the role of Orthodoxy in Russia. See Gvosdev, “‘Managed Pluralism’ and Civil Religion in Post-Soviet Russia,” 75–88. For Robert Bellah's view of American civil religion, see his groundbreaking essay “Civil Religion in America,” 1–21. View all notes
The relationship of religion to nationalism in Eastern Europe is highly complex and is rooted in the particular histories of the various peoples. The roots of the issue are vestiges of the Byzantine understanding of the relationship between church and state. For the Byzantines, political ideology equated people, citizenship, and Christianity. Historically, this can be seen in the development of the Church of Bulgaria and the Church of Serbia, with each empire desiring its own imperial church with a patriarch of equal rank with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Following the example of Constantinople, the Bulgarian and Serbian Empires understood the imperial ideology of the oikoumene to mean a universal church in their empires not composed of a particular nationality, which would occur with the advent of the nation-state in the late nineteenth century.9 9. Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” 28–29. View all notes
With the advent of nationalism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Eastern Europe, which led to the eventual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the various nationalities revolted not only against their Ottoman overlords but also their clerical authorities, especially the Ecumenical Patriarch (EP). Under the leadership of the Greek patriarch, a process of Grecification had occurred to insure ecclesiastical unity in the millet. Instead of the use of Church Slavonic in the Slav churches, the Greek liturgy and practice was enforced, especially in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Additionally, the high taxes placed upon the Orthodox people by the hierarchical authorities to insure their positions with the Sublime Porte produced increasing anti-clericalism in the Balkan peoples. This anti-clericalism against the Greek bishops was also rooted in the Enlightenment ideas of Western Europe.10 10. See Clogg, “Anti-Clericalism in Pre-Independence Greece c. 1750–1821,” 257–76. View all notes Borrowing the Erastian model of church–state relations that developed in Western Europe, whereby the Church was placed under the authority of the state, East European secular nationalists, desiring their own independent churches, argued for the creation and subjection of national churches to the political authorities. As Aristeides Papadakis argues, “Significantly, one of the first steps taken by these independent states was to separate the church within their frontiers from the authority of Constantinople. By declaring it autocephalous, by ‘nationalizing’ it, they hoped to control it.”11 11. Papadakis, “The Historical Tradition of Church–State Relations under Orthodoxy,” 50. View all notes
At the time of the development of nationalism in the Balkans, there were two differing opinions as to the direction of the polity to succeed the Ottoman Empire. On the one hand, many of the Phanariots believed that the Ottoman Empire eventually would become Greek, allowing for the resurrection of the Byzantine Empire. Thus, they did not support the various nationalist movements that led to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Instead, they looked to its natural devolution. This understanding was supported by the traditional Byzantine political ideology of the oikoumene, which holds that the one empire has only one church. In a modified position, Rigas Pheraios Vestinlis articulated an understanding of an Orthodox commonwealth of nations in the succeeding empire, with the EP as its head.12 12. See Zakynthos, The Making of Modern Greece, 157–65. Victor Roudometof offers a similar analysis of the importance of the conflict between Byzantine universalism and secular nationalism at the time of the Greek Revolution in 1821, with secular nationalism eventually ascending in the newly created Greek state. See Roudometof, “From Rum Millet to Greek Nation,” 11–48. View all notes However, the Western-educated secular nationalists contested the vision of Rigas and what Zakynthos calls “neo-byzantine universalism,” employing instead the Enlightenment ideas of Voltaire to articulate the development of independent nation-states with autocephalous national churches. Adopting the secular national vision of the state with its concomitant national church led to the transmogrification of the Orthodox understanding of the “local church.”13 13. For an understanding of how these political and philosophical changes affected Orthodox theology and its understanding of the church, see Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West. View all notes
Greek sociologist Paschalis Kitromilides argues similarly, using Benedict Anderson's concept of “imagined communities,”14 14. See Anderson, Imagined Communities. View all notes that the national historiographies smoothed over the antinomical relationship between Orthodoxy and nationalism. He states: “It was the eventual abandonment of the ecumenicity of Orthodoxy, and the ‘nationalization’ of the churches, that brought intense national conflicts into the life of the Orthodox Church and nurtured the assumption concerning the affinity between Orthodoxy and nationality.”15 15. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy, 179. View all notes The various national histories created imagined national communities whereby the Church's opposition to nationalism was dismissed and its support as a nation-building institution was promoted. Kitromilides argues that the Church instead opposed nationalism and the Enlightenment ideas underlying it in order to sustain its traditional theological position of being the “one” Church. However, under the influence of secular nationalism, the Church's position eventually changed, assuming a nationalist position, especially in regards to the Macedonian crisis of the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, as Kitromilides maintains, the EP resumed his position against nationalism with the attempt of Greek nationalist bishops to take control over the patriarchate.16 16. Ibid., 179–84. View all notes What resulted from the ecclesiastical conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the destruction of the Orthodox commonwealth into independent nationalist churches. What took its place was “the new sense of community cultivated by the national states, which, after administratively and linguistically homogenizing their societies, found in religion a powerful additional support for their national unity and external aspirations.”17 17. Ibid., 184. View all notes Therefore, religion did not develop East European nationalism; it simply cemented it.18 18. Ibid., 185. View all notes

The Local Church and Canonical Territory19 19. For a brief summary of the historical development and problems associated with the concept of “canonical territory,” see Hilarion Alfeyev, “La notion du territoire canonique dans la tradition Orthodoxe,” given at the International Symposium of Canon Law at the Catholic Theological Academy of Budapest, 7 February 2005, <http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_12> (accessed 27 March 2007). Metropolitan Hilarion provides the historical development without addressing the fundamental ecclesiological problems associated with this historical development. View all notes

The concept of the “local church” is rooted in the earliest ecclesiologies of the Church. In the Apostolic Age, the Church of Jerusalem had preeminence, with apostles being sent out from one end of the empire to the other to establish churches in the various cities. In the New Testament, the apostolic writers used the term ecclesia in the singular when speaking about a church in a particular city, while they used the term in the plural when speaking about a geographical area.20 20. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 248. View all notes The church of a particular city was considered to be the local church.21 21. Zizioulas dismisses the issue of the “household church” as not being a challenge to the singularity of the city church. Instead of understanding the concept as being a church that meets around the household unit, it should rather be understood as a city church that happens to meet in a particular household. See his Being as Communion, 249; and Eucharist–Bishop–Church, 87–93. View all notes In each city there was but one church presided over by an episkopos with his college of presbyteroi assisted by the diakonoi. The “oneness” of the church was an expression of the unity of the believers in the one Body of Christ. The physical manifestation of that union was expressed in the Eucharistic celebration where all Christians communed with the risen Christ and his fellow brothers and sisters in the faith through the eating and drinking of Christ's body and blood. The episkopos expressed the unity of the body as a physical icon of Christ himself in the local community.
As the Church became part of the imperial system of the later Roman Empire, certain bishops of larger cities became metropolitans with attendant bishops. Some of these metropolitan bishops emerged as the recognized administrative leaders of the Christian Church forming the famous Byzantine pentarchy of patriarchs: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. However, even with this administrative development, it did not alter the fundamental ecclesiology of the church: each bishop was equal to every other bishop by virtue of his sacramental authority. While attempts were made to identify the “local church” with metropolitans or patriarchates, such an understanding was not achieved on the basis of the unity of each church rooted in the apostolic succession and sacramental authority of the office of the episkopos.22 22. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 252. View all notes
Alongside the imperial church system of the Roman Empire, we witness also the development of independent churches with ties to the imperial church. In the early fourth century, the first “national church” came into existence in the Kingdom of Armenia. At first the church was not a true national church, for it remained under the ecclesiastical authority of the metropolis of Caesarea, and it included all of the Christians, regardless of nationality, in the kingdom. It was not until the later fourth century that the Armenian Church became a national church with a “catholikos” as its head and its separation from the see of Caesarea as a result of imperial politics.23 23. Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 102–05. View all notes
In the tenth century, the Rus' became Christians through the conversion of their leader, Vladimir of Kiev (988). While the church in Kiev was under the authority of Constantinople, after the fall of the city the church of the Rus' attained its autonomy and eventually the status of a patriarchate.24 24. See Pospielovsky, The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia. View all notes Furthermore, the development of the churches of Bulgaria and Serbia, due chiefly to the political claims of their leaders, led to the development of independent churches with patriarchates in those territories. Again, these were not national churches per se, for they included the various nationalities within their territories. These kingdoms simply adopted the Byzantine imperial ideology of the oikoumene, entailing the existence of an autocephalous church with a patriarchate. However, the Church allowed the existence of this plurality of self-ruled churches, for they did not exist along national lines. The decisions of the ecumenical councils, especially of Nicea (321), allowed for “ecclesiastical regionalism in the framework of a universal unity of faith, secured by councils.”25 25. Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church, 224–25. View all notes
With the nineteenth century and the arrival of nationalism, the concept of the local church was transformed into the national church. Beginning with the unsuccessful uprisings in Serbia in 1804 and in Romania in 1821, a wave of nationalist revolutions sparked across the Balkans against the Ottoman Empire. The first successful uprising, the Greek Revolution in 1821, achieved independence for a small state based on Greek ethnicity. Having achieved independence from Turkey, the Greek nationalists, together with cooperating nationalistic clergy, established the Church of Greece in schism from the Church of Constantinople in 1833. In 1850 the Church of Constantinople issued the Synodal Tome officially healing the schism and recognizing the autocephaly of the Church of Greece. Consequently, with the success of the Greek Revolution, other Balkan nations revolted, establishing their own particular nation-states with national churches separated from Constantinople. These churches were not universal but particularistic to a nationality. John Meyendorff comments:

And since the political goal of all the nationalities consisted in seeking the creation of nation-states—which were seen as the ultimate fulfillment of cultural growth and maturity—the idea of ‘autocephaly’ came to be thought of as the nation's ecclesiastical equivalent: each nation had to establish its own autocephalous church.26 26. Ibid., 227. View all notes

Of particular importance is the case of Bulgaria. In order to retain control over some portion of the Balkan peninsula, the Turkish authorities in 1870 agreed to the establishment of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church headed by an exarch independent of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The church in Bulgaria provided the cultural and national identity of the people during the Ottoman period. With the arrival of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Bulgarians sought to liberate themselves not only from their Turkish overlords but foremost from the Greek hierarchs that controlled the Church. Thus, with the Bulgarian Church declaring independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1860 and being officially recognized by the Turkish authorities in 1870 as a millet, the Bulgarian schism provided the opportunity for the Ecumenical Patriarchate to rule on the issue of nationalism.27 27. Walters, “Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism,” 360. View all notes In 1872 the Ecumenical Patriarchate called a local council to deal with the issue of nationalism, or phyletism, as it pertained to the Bulgarian schism.
The issue debated at the council was not the question of the legitimacy of an independent church, for the canons provided for such a basis. What concerned the council was the issue of a church based solely on ethnicity. The Ecumenical Patriarchate excommunicated the Bulgarian Church as a result of their ethnic chauvinism, not the establishment of a separate church. The council also distinguished between the “local church” and an ethnic church. The local church allowed for inclusivity of all people regardless of their nationality. What the Bulgarians had done, and they were not alone in this, was to equate the Church with nationality.28 28. Binns, An Introduction to the Christian Orthodox Churches, 184–85. View all notes Such an equation violated the very unity and catholicity of the Church.29 29. See Karmiris, “Catholicity of the Church and Nationalism.” See also Buciora, “Ecclesiology and National Identity in Orthodox Christianity,” 27–42. View all notes
Furthermore, the Ecumenical Patriarchate condemned the Bulgarian schism as a violation of the principles of the local church. The exarch of the Bulgarian Church resided in Constantinople, thus establishing a church alongside the bishop of Constantinople. Having two churches in the same city violated the ancient proscription of having only one church in a city.30 30. Walters, “Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism,” 361. View all notes As previously mentioned, multiple churches in a locale violated the unity and catholicity of the Church rooted in the office of the bishop. The EP condemned phyletism or the equation of the Church with a particular nationality, on the basis of ecclesiology rooted in the Church's understanding of the catholicity of the local church.
Unfortunately, the heresy of phyletism founded in the modern nation-state political system replaced Byzantine universalism and the concomitant understanding of the local church. The Church did not have the institutional resources to battle the nationalist forces arrayed against it. In fact, as Zizioulas argues, the very concept of autocephaly is a modern concept of the Church, rooted in nineteenth-century nationalism. He notes that included in the theological confusion of the Orthodox Church is a misunderstanding of the Church's ecclesiology. Today, as a result of this confusion, many hold that the autocephalous churches are local churches.31 31. See, for example, Alfeyev, “La notion of territoire canonique dans la tradition Orthodoxe.” View all notes To hold such an ecclesiological position is to violate the very idea of the local church headed by the bishop in his diocese. Instead, the autocephalous national church replaces the actual local church of the bishop, denying the principal understanding of the unity of the Church and replacing it with the heresy of nationalism.32 32. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 253. View all notes
With the fall of communism in 1989, East European nationalism once again came to the attention of the world community. As these nations, coming out of the darkness of communist oppression, searched for a basis of cultural identity, nationalism, and especially its religious form, emerged as the political ideology to justify national existence in the world community.33 33. See Merdjanova, Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society, 2. View all notes In particular, the Yugoslav crisis of the 1990s brought to the attention of the world the inherent linkage of religion and nationalism in the Eastern European consciousness.34 34. See, in particular, Sells, The Bridge Betrayed; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno; Perica, Balkan Idols; Michas, Unholy Alliance; Velikonja, “Slovenian and Polish Religio-National Mythologies,” 233–60. View all notes
Problematic for the Orthodox Church with the rise of nationalism in post-communist Eastern Europe is the old problem of phyletism. The internecine conflict between Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe and Russia are due to this fundamental misunderstanding of Orthodox ecclesiology and how secular authorities have maladapted it. For the remaining portion of this article, I will turn to three recent examples of how this conflict has been manifest.

The Case of Archbishop Jovan and the Macedonian Orthodox Church

The recent trial and imprisonment of the Archbishop of Ochrid Jovan, an exarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) aptly demonstrates the clash between nationalistic and ecclesiological understandings of the Church. The case of Archbishop Jovan is endemic to the larger issue of the recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and the Republic of Macedonia. I will discuss each of these issues briefly as they pertain to the question relevant to this paper.
According to the official history of the Macedonian Orthodox Church (MOC),35 35. “A Brief History of the Ecclesiastical Issue in the Republic of Macedonia,” <http://www.mpc.org.mk/English/news2.asp?id=924> (accessed 17 May 2006). View all notes in 1767 the Ottoman Empire disbanded the autocephalous Ochrid archdiocese, placing the control of the Macedonian Church under the EP. It remained under the jurisdictional control of Constantinople until after the First World War where it came under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church. During the Second World War, with the Bulgarian annexation of Macedonia, the Ochrid archdiocese came under the control of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Following the Second World War and the establishment of Yugoslavia, the Church once again came under the authority of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC).
The Macedonian people petitioned the SOC for native-born clergy. In 1958 their petition was granted and Dositheus was enthroned as Archbishop of Ochrid and all Macedonia. In 1959 the church was given autonomous status as the Macedonian Orthodox Church. In 1967 the clergy at the Clergy–Laity Assembly claimed autocephaly for the church, resulting in the current schism between the SOC and the MOC. What is missing in this brief ecclesiastical history is the role of the communist government in establishing a separate Macedonian church and the importance of Macedonian nationalism.
As I have argued, religion in Eastern Europe has been co-opted by nationalists as the legitimating institution of the nation-state. As Vjekoslav Perica shows, because of the uncertainty of the nationality of Macedonians, especially in the post-communist era, what makes a Macedonian a Macedonian is his or her religion. Perica states:

In the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Macedonian Orthodox Church became the main pillar of the tiny, barely viable nation. The national church, with shrines it controlled, and the new cathedral in Skopje helped resolve the difficult question: ‘Who are the Macedonians’ (Greeks, Slavs or Albanians)? by providing a simple answer: the Macedonians (by nationality) are members of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.36 36. Perica, Balkan Idols, 174. View all notes

Former Macedonian President Boris Traijovski, who is a Methodist, reflects this sentiment of religious nationality: “I emphasize that the Orthodox Church of Macedonia is also my church, because I am a Macedonian.”37 37. Bjarke Larsen, “Methodist Lay Preacher Declares he is President of All Macedonians,” ENI News Service, 24 March 2000. Quoted in Gvosdev, An Examination of Church–State Relations in the Byzantine and Russian Empires with an Emphasis on Ideology and Models of Interaction, 70. View all notes Additionally, Jordan Boskov, a member of the Macedonian Parliament in the Macedonian Internal Revolutionary Party, asserts that “the Orthodox Church is the hinge of the Macedonian nation.” He dislikes the current separatist model of church–state relations utilized in Macedonia, which he understands to be a hold-over from the Communist Party. Instead, he would prefer the Orthodox Church to have an established position in the state similar to the model of Greece, based on the Byzantine understanding of symphonia.38 38. Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, 199–200. View all notes Because of the intimate relationship between state, nationality, and religion, where nationality is actually construed by religious terminology, the relationship between the SOC and the MOC is highly volatile. The schism that developed between the two churches was fomented by nationalists and communists aligned leading up to the Clergy–Laity Assembly of 1967. The autocephalous MOC received its support from Macedonian communists, who desired an autonomous state. A state church would aid in their struggle for autonomy. While Perica believes that the federal communist leaders did not support the ecclesiastical schism, mainly because of their desire not to promote ethnic nationalism, Paul Mojzes states that the schism did have Tito's “blessing.”39 39. Perica, Balkan Idols, 46; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, 199. View all notes Whatever the role of the federal Yugoslav government, the local Macedonian communists encouraged the schism between the churches in order to bring legitimacy to the Macedonian Republic.
In 2002 the SOC attempted to heal the schism between the two churches by inviting the MOC back into communion as an autonomous church, which was the status of the MOC prior to 1967. Consequently, the MOC hierarchy refused the invitation on the basis of their nationalistic understanding of the local church. Again, the SOC attempted to heal the schism with the use of canonical norms; however, the MOC, which no Orthodox church recognizes, refused on the basis of nationalism. According to Archbishop Stefan, presiding hierarch of the MOC, “‘Each church is organized on a national base, for Orthodox peoples that have their territory, independent or sovereign state.’”40 40. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Why is State Interfering in Orthodox Dispute?,” Forum 18 News Service, 8 June 2005. View all notes He continues: “‘Every nation that has its state, language and church, and also an episcopate and people, has autocephalous status.’”
While the synod of bishops of the MOC refused the overtures by the SOC, one bishop did accept, namely Archbishop Jovan of Ochrid. Archbishop Jovan had been responsible for the negotiations between the SOC and the MOC in regards to the discussion of the autonomous status of the MOC. When the MOC refused, it excommunicated Jovan, who had been Bishop of Veles at the time, for his actions. The SOC, in response to his faithfulness, elevated him to the rank of archbishop and appointed him exarch of the SOC in the Republic of Macedonia. The Macedonian authorities labeled him a traitor, eventually imprisoning him for “‘inciting national, racial and religious hatred, schism and intolerance.’”41 41. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Orthodox Archbishop Jailed—Without the Gospels,” Forum 18 News Service, 27 July 2005. See also Zelimir Bojovic, “Church Rivalry Threatens to Brim Over,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 10 August 2005. View all notes President Branko Crvenkovski of Macedonia stated in regards to his arrest: “‘We are not talking about a member of the Serbian minority in Macedonia,’ … ‘We are talking about someone … whose aim is not to protect the religious feelings of Serbs in Macedonia but to substitute and negate the Macedonian Orthodox Church.’”42 42. Bojovic, “Church Rivalry.” View all notes The creation of a separate Orthodox jurisdiction in the Republic of Macedonia not only violates the canonical territory of an uncanonical church but also, and more importantly, undermines the legitimacy of the MOC and the pillar on which Macedonian identity rests.
The lack of recognition of the autocephalous MOC is tied directly to the politics of the Balkan world. Not one Orthodox church recognizes the canonical status of the MOC. For a church to do so would be tantamount to recognition of the Republic of Macedonia, which is not recognized by Greece under this title. The question ultimately goes back to the Macedonian question at the beginning of the twentieth century. What Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia are fearful of is the destabilization of the Balkan world if a larger Republic of Macedonia is supported. Greece and Bulgaria stand to lose large portions of their “Macedonian” territory if the dreams of a greater Macedonia are realized.43 43. Victoria Clark demonstrates the dreams of a Greater Macedonia in her conversation with Archbishop Mihail in her book Why Angels Fall?, 117. Victor Roudometof has written an excellent monograph on the importance of the Macedonian question. See his Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict. View all notes
Not only has the Republic of Macedonia imprisoned Archbishop Jovan for violating their religious laws but it has also not recognized the SOC exarchate. In fact, Cane Mojanovski, head of the committee for religious communities in the Macedonian government, has stated that the Serbian Orthodox communities in the Republic of Macedonia “will never get registration.” His rationale for denying registration to the SOC exarchate is one based in canon law and in nationalist rhetoric: “There can't be an Orthodox here other than the Macedonian Orthodox Church—our religion law says there can be only one organization for any one faith.”44 44. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Serbian Orthodox ‘Will Never Get Registration,’” Forum 18 News Service, 23 September 2004. View all notes This lack of recognition on the part of the Republic of Macedonia also includes other Orthodox communities. Orthodox hierarchs, priests, and monks of other jurisdictions are made to don civilian clothes in their travels through the country. The Macedonian authorities have also prevented certain ecclesiastics from entering the country at all. This policy, according to the SOC, comes directly from the influence of the MOC hierarchy's influence on the government.45 45. Ibid. View all notes
The issue of the existence of the MOC and its ties to the Republic of Macedonia as a nationalist institution providing legitimacy to the nation has created the current problem regarding the autocephalous status of the church. The non-recognition and imprisonment of a canonical archbishop for nationalist reasons violates the canonical territory of the SOC and the doctrine of the local church. While at the same time, according to the MOC, the establishment of another jurisdiction in its canonical territory violates the doctrine of the local church by having two competing Orthodox jurisdictions. While various human rights organizations and activists pressure the Macedonian Republic for the release of Archbishop Jovan—he was eventually released from prison in the spring of 2006 and has now once again been imprisoned—their argument is based in Western understandings of religious freedom, betraying their ignorance or naïveté in regards to their understanding of the complex ecclesiological issues at hand.46 46. For instance, Peter Moree does not discuss this important issue of canonicity but simply leaves the question at the level of legislation. See his “Identity, Religion and Human Rights in the Balkans,” 287–96. View all notes

The Estonian Crisis

On 23 February 1996 His Holiness Patriarch Alexsy II of Moscow and all the Russians omitted the name of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I from the official commemorations in the Divine Liturgy. The omission of Bartholomew's name from the diptychs was a grave sign that the Orthodox Church of Russia was no longer in communion with the Church of Constantinople. The issue at hand was not theological heresy but ecclesiastical politics tied to the case of the Estonian Orthodox Church.
In 1920, following the Bolshevik Revolution, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow granted autonomous status to the Orthodox Church in Estonia. Estonia had recently become a new state following the disintegration of the Russian Empire. In 1923 the Estonian Orthodox Church came under the authority of the EP due to the problematic situation of the Church of Russia. Under the EP the Autonomous Estonian Apostolic Church (AEAC) became a diocese. In 1944 Estonia came under the occupation of the Soviet Union, with the AEAC coming under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP). However, the bishop of the AEAC fled to Sweden, establishing a synod of bishops under the authority of the EP. Realizing the political situation in Estonia, the EP declared its 1923 decision to be “inoperative,” but it retained its protective role over the exiled church. With the rebirth of the Baltic nations following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1992, Patriarch Alexsy restored the AEAC as an autonomous church of the MP.47 47. Webster, “Split Decision,” 614–19. View all notes This church was composed of mainly Orthodox Christians of Russian descent.
However, in 1993 the Estonian State Department registered the AEAC synod in exile as the official Orthodox Church in Estonia with the legal right as successor to the AEAC prior to the Soviet annexation in 1944. With this registration, the exiled church was given all of the property rights of the church. Consequently, the issue of church property split the Estonian Orthodox churches. The MP filed a lawsuit regarding official recognition of the church and its property as well as its own canonical standing. In order to protect its spiritual rights, the formerly exiled church petitioned the EP to intervene and to once again accept it as a diocese. On 20 February 1993, the EP officially recognized the AEAC-EP as a diocese and appointed Archbishop John of Finland as locum tenens. In reaction to this decision, Patriarch Alexsy suspended communion with Patriarch Bartholomew by omitting his name from the commemorations.48 48. Ibid. View all notes
As Alexander Agadjanian and Kathy Rousselet rightly demonstrate, the issue was certainly about “canonical territory.” Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the issue of “canonical territory” has been in question in regards to the Church of Russia. Problematic in this regard is the linkage between “canonical territory” and political territory. Traditionally, one has been equated with the other. However, as Agadjanian and Rousselet argue, the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church has been “movable,” reflecting the changing borders of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the MP has become “transnational,” for its “canonical territory” now extends beyond the territory of the Russian Republic. They note, though, that the “transnationalism” of the Russian Church is tied to national identity. The identification of Russianness with Orthodoxy has become “more pronounced than ever before.” As a result of the Soviet policy of Russification of the various republics, Russians exist today outside of the Russian Republic. The MP claims these Orthodox people as its own.49 49. Agadjanian and Rousselet, “Globalization and Identity Discourse in Russian Orthodoxy,” 40–41. View all notes
This equation of the concept of the “local church” with nationality has been the problem with nationalism since the nineteenth century. In the case of Estonia, two patriarchates utilize the concept of the “local church” tied to ethnicity to defend their “canonical territory.” The result has been ecclesiastical confusion and the creation of an “uncanonical” situation in Estonia today.
Defending his decision to accept the AEAC as a diocese of the EP, Bartholomew, in a letter to Alexsy, stated that his actions were “to build a bridge over the psychological gap between the Orthodox Estonians and the Orthodox of Russian descent.” It is to be noted that the AEAC-EP is primarily of Estonian nationality, while the AEAC-MP is primarily of Russian nationality. Bartholomew claims that he has attempted to reunite the two ethnicities into one church, which is proper according to Orthodox ecclesiology.
However, the question is whether his policy has actually done so. He accuses, indirectly, the actions of Alexsy of doing the exact opposite, especially by his breaking of communion with those who are in union with the EP. He continues by demonstrating the historical rationale for the recognition of the AEAC-EP as an exarchate of the EP, but Bartholomew's rationale betrays his understanding of the nationalistic understanding of the “local church.” He argues that as a result of the Russification program followed by the Soviets, whereby Russians were translocated to Estonia, the Orthodox in Estonia are primarily of Russian descent. Since this is the case, they are not the legitimate successors of the pre-Soviet AEAC. He asks: “How can a Church be called Estonian when it is made up of Russian immigrants?” The proper successor, according to Bartholomew, then, is the ethnic Estonian church. But according to Bartholomew, the Estonians are not guilty of phyletism as Alexsy accuses. Using the 34th Apostolic Canon, Bartholomew argues that they as a race of people have the right to their own church. Thus, the Estonian Orthodox Church in exile, as Bartholomew argues, is the proper successor of the AEAC; they have the right to their own independent church; and, as such, they are not guilty of the heresy of phyletism.50 50. “Letter of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to Patriarch Alexsy of Moscow Concerning the Orthodox in Estonia.” View all notes
While Bartholomew does not believe that the Orthodox Estonians are guilty of phyletism, what has occurred in Estonia is the separation of churches based on ethnicity. Similar to the uncanonical arrangement that exists in the Western world, in Estonia there exist two Orthodox churches with two presiding hierarchs in violation of the Orthodox understanding of the concept of the local church. While Bartholomew does not agree that this is the situation, for there is but one Estonian Orthodox Church and those Orthodox of Russian descent are in schism from it, the de facto situation demonstrates the opposite.51 51. Fr. George Tsetsis realizes this in an afterward to an article in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review where he states that an agreement had been reached between the two patriarchates “based on ‘canonical economy,’ and was arrived at for the sake of granting peace to the Church of Estonia …” Tsetsis, “Documentation,” 318. In a 2 November 2000 article in Pravoslavie.RU it is stated that the EP has argued that two jurisdictions do not exist in Estonia, that there can only be one metropolitan with the title “of all Estonia,” and that those churches and institutions under the authority of Moscow must be understood as “exarchia” or “metochions.” See “The Scandalous Visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to Estonia is Over,” Pravoslavie.Ru, 2 November 2000, <http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/mainnews001102.htm> (accessed 13 May 2006). View all notes Speaking in defense of the EP, Fr. George Tsetsis, the EP's representative to the World Council of Churches, stated that Bartholomew desired that the Orthodox of Russian descent become a diocese within the AEAC-EP united to Constantinople.52 52. “Rift Threatens Orthodoxy,” The Christian Century 113, 27 March 1996, 319–21. View all notes However, the American Romanian Orthodox priest Fr. Alexander Webster expressed the issue differently:

Both patriarchs have behaved more like the false mother than either the true mother or King Solomon in the classic Old Testament story. By settling, almost cynically, for half of the Estonian daughter church, Bartholomeos [sic] and Aleksy [sic] may have killed her Estonian Orthodox identity in its infancy, or at least plunged this nascent church into a fratricidal conflict that will be played out in congregation after congregation.53 53. Webster, “Split Decision,” 619. View all notes

He continues: “One may expect this situation to worsen in the next four months as each congregation plays the dangerous game of patriarchate by plebiscite.” While a fratricide has not occurred in Estonia, and the Orthodox in Estonia have found a via media, it is the hope, as Patriarch Bartholomew expressed in his most recent trip to Estonia, that the Orthodox in Estonia, of either Estonian or Russian descent, “will certainly form one, undivided Orthodox Church.”54 54. Bartholomew I, “The Orthodox in Estonia: An Address by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,” <http://www.patriarchate.org/SPEECHES/Orthodox_in_Estonia> (accessed 13 May 2006). View all notes While the official schism between the Church of Russia and the Church of Constantinople was short lived, the cleavage between the AEAC-EP and the AEAC-MP remains, resulting in an uncanonical situation that is symptomatic of the larger issue regarding the misunderstanding of the ecclesiology of the Church shaped by nationalism. The decisions and actions of both churches reflect the confusion that exists in the Orthodox world regarding this problem.

Competition for Orthodox Souls in Ukraine

The problem of nationalism and the local church is best shown in the case of the ecclesiastical confusion that exists in the competing Orthodox churches in Ukraine. Additionally, the conflict between the EP and the MP that occurred in Estonia continues in the case of Ukraine, calling into question the jurisdiction of the MP in Ukraine. I will briefly discuss the relationship between Orthodoxy and nationalism in Ukraine, the confusing ecclesiological arrangement, and the conflict between the patriarchates.
According to Victor Yelensky, Orthodoxy has had little effect in the development of Ukrainian nationalism. Because Ukrainian nationalists sought to separate themselves from both Polish and Russian influence, nationalism in Ukraine developed as a reaction against the influence of these empires both politically and ecclesiastically.55 55. Yelensky, “Globalization, Nationalism, and Orthodoxy,” 150–56. Yelensky points out that a further reason why religion was not important in the development of Ukrainian nationalism was its divisive nature. Ukrainians are divided between Eastern-rite Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox. While the Eastern-rite Roman Catholics distinguish themselves from their Polish counterparts by retaining the Orthodox rite, the Ukrainian Orthodox under the protection of the Cossacks were independent of Moscow while also fighting for the prevention of the spread of Catholicism. With the existence of these two nationalist churches it was impossible to attempt to establish a united state based on religious commonality. Instead, Ukrainian nationalists opted for their union in the narodostvo, the common Ukrainian people, which provided a populist movement for a united nation. View all notes However, D'Anieri, Kravchuk and Kuzio argue “Religion is fundamentally linked to politics, to national identity, and to the transformation process in Ukraine.”56 56. D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 71. View all notes With the religious revival in the former Soviet Union that began in the 1970s, religion has increasingly played a significant role in Ukrainian nationalism, especially in the independence of Ukraine and the failed attempt of Leonid Kravchuk to establish a state church to legitimize the newly independent state.
When religious freedom opened in the late Soviet period, Greek Catholic clergy, who lived in a catacomb form of existence, had a choice: either they could remain Orthodox or return to communion with Rome. Many of these clergy elected to remain Orthodox, but there was one caveat: their nationalist views prevented them from remaining united with the MP. Instead, in 1990 they re-formed the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), with Patriarch Dmytrii Yarema as its head.57 57. Mitrokhin, “Aspects of the Religious Situation in Ukraine,” 176. View all notes According to Nikolai Mitrokhin, “It is this church which has come to present the greatest threat to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, since unlike the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church it has a uniquely republic-wide appeal.”58 58. Ibid. View all notes In order to counter the spread of this autocephalous church, the MP granted autonomous status to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP) under the leadership of Metropolitan Filaret Denisenko of Kiev and all Galicia.
As an astute politician, Metropolitan Filaret, who D'Anieri, Kravchuk, and Kuzio blame for the inability of the Orthodox Ukrainians to establish a single Orthodox church, took advantage of the autocephalous claims of the UAOC and the autonomy granted by Moscow. He requested autocephalous status for the UOC-MP. However, the MP refused this request, not desiring to lose the single largest community of churches in its territory. In response, Filaret established an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP), which did not have canonical status.59 59. The MP defrocked Filaret for his actions in establishing a schismatic church. View all notes Together with the UAOC, the UOC-KP provides the possibility for the establishment of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church that could legitimize the fledgling republic.
Leonid Kravchuk, together with Metropolitan Filaret, sought to establish a Ukrainian state church. With the head of the UAOC, Metropolitan Mstyslav, residing in the US, the synod of bishops convened a sobor without his knowledge. At this council they united with Filaret and the UOC-KP, giving Filaret the dubious title of deputy patriarch, which de facto placed him as the head of the church. As Myroslaw Tataryn comments, “This new entity embodied a startling coalition: the former senior bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (Filaret), a former communist and now president of an independent Ukraine (Kravchuk), and ultranationalists, specifically the paramilitary Ukrainian National Self-Defence Organisation …”60 60. Tataryn, “Russia and Ukraine,” 162. View all notes Kravchuk's and Filaret's dream of an established Orthodox Church failed, however, due to two events: a schism in the UOC-KP created by Mstyslav's withdrawal of support for Filaret and assertion of his patriarchal claim and the decision of the EP not to accept the autocephalous status of the UOC-KP.61 61. Ibid. View all notes The EP refused Kravchuk's request to intervene on the basis of the existence of multiple Orthodox churches in one territory. The EP would recognize the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church only if all of the various Orthodox churches unified under his omophorion.62 62. D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 82. View all notes The matter of the establishment of a state church came to an end with the death of Mstyslav in 1993 and the election of two separate patriarchs for the UAOC and the UOC-KP.63 63. The UAOC elected Dymytriy as Patriarch on 7 September 1993, while the UOC-KP elected Volodymyr Romaniuk as Patriarch of Kiev and all Rus'-Ukraine. See D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 82–83. View all notes
With the presidential election in 1994, the religious bodies lined up in support of Kravchuk or Kuchma. The UAOC and the UOC-KP continued their support of the nationalist democrat Kravchuk, while the UOC-MP supported Kuchma, who won the election with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church. Kuchma immediately disbanded the Council on Religious Affairs, which had desired the creation of a state church. However, he reestablished the council the following year in order once again to bring some sort of peace to the Orthodox churches.64 64. Ibid., 83. View all notes In 1995, following Volodymyr's death, Filaret was finally elected patriarch of the UOC-KP. Consequently, because of his poor reputation, many left the UOC-KP to go to the UAOC, thereby giving both churches approximately the same number of parishes.65 65. Kuzio, “In Search of Unity and Autocephaly,” 393–414. View all notes
The issue of the Estonian Orthodox Church came into play in discussions regarding the autocephaly of the UOC-KP. During the schism between the MP and the EP, the UOC-KP backed the decisions of the EP in recognizing the independence of the AEAC-EP from the Russian Church.66 66. Ibid., 408. View all notes Filaret, backing the EP, stated that the EP would be willing to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church if two of the churches united.67 67. Ibid. View all notes
Such a position by the EP would be reasonable based on its decision in handling the Estonian situation. Recognizing either an autocephalous or autonomous Ukrainian Church using the same argument for justifying the recognition of the AEAC-EP would provide for the possibility of two Orthodox jurisdictions in the territory of Ukraine: the UOC-MP and the UOC-KP under the authority of the EP. However, the MP, while arguing that the remedy for the canonical crisis in Ukraine is the reunion of Orthodox under an autonomous church under Moscow jurisdiction, insists that such a recognition on the part of the EP would be uncanonical and a violation of its canonical territory. In the Estonian crisis, the issue really was not the Estonian Church but the Ukrainian Church. Bartholomew's decision to recognize the autonomous status of the AEAC-EP provided ecclesiastical precedent for a future recognition of an autocephalous Ukrainian Church. Ironically, both Moscow and Constantinople argue for the Byzantine universalist model of a transnational church. In either case, each understands the other as violating its claim of canonical territory as a local church. The EP maintains that it is simply protecting the rights of each people to have its own independent church. This raises the question of whether such support of an independent national church is giving into the nationalist understanding of the local church. Bartholomew does not see it this way, for he believes that in the case of Estonia, and most likely in Ukraine, the two peoples, Estonians and Russians (or Ukrainians and Russians), can unite to form one Orthodox Church that is multi-ethnic. Likewise, Alexsy too sees the Church to be multi-ethnic, except under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The results of the 2004 presidential elections may bring change to the status quo relationship of Orthodox churches in Ukraine. With the UOC-MP's support of the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych, who lost the election to the pro-Western statesman Yushchenko, who had been supported by the UOC-KP, the UOC-MP attempted to settle the canonical issue by promoting anti-religious freedom legislation that would make all other non-canonical Orthodox churches illegal in Ukraine, much like the Bulgarian's answer to their uncanonical situation of having two Orthodox churches.68 68. Yurash, “Orthodoxy and the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Electoral Campaign,” 368–71. View all notes However, with the loss of the election, the UOC-MP's presence in Ukrainian society has been brought into question. Will the UOC-MP seek to join the UOC-KP and form one Orthodox Church in Ukraine, or will it continue to maintain its relationship with the MP, losing its relevance in Ukrainian society? As Andrij Yurash states, if the UOC-MP chooses the latter it “will in effect be renouncing the goal of integrating itself into Ukrainian society,” with the result of losing a significant number of its faithful to the competing jurisdiction.69 69. Ibid., 383. View all notes
Yurash is certainly correct in arguing that the UOC-MP's support of the pro-Russian candidate will have a negative result for its future in Ukrainian society.70 70. Zeyno Baran and Emmet Tuohy seem to agree with Yurash's assessment that the MP “will only add to its increasing isolation from a ‘Western civilization’ that now extends to the borders of Russia.” Zeyno Baran and Emmet Tuohy, “An Unorthodox Orthodoxy,” National Review Online, 15 April 2005. View all notes Its decision to support Yanukovych will separate it further from its co-religion which supports a nationalist agenda that is separate from the Russian sphere of control. This may actually lead to the creation of an autocephalous Ukrainian Church under the auspices of the EP and the establishment of two jurisdictions on the soil of another East European nation.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have presented the complexities surrounding the issues of the nationalist understanding of the concept of the local church. While the very concept of a local church disavows nationalism, in the history of the Orthodox Church, the concept was given new meaning with the advent of nationalism in the nineteenth century. The Orthodox churches have on the one hand accepted the transformation of this concept, utilizing it to defend their canonical territories based on the idea of the nation-state, while on the other insisting on the use of the term in its original context: that there cannot be more than one Orthodox church in a particular locale. In this regard, I have presented three cases that demonstrate the confusion of terminology and the dual understanding of the concept. In the case of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, with the imprisonment of Archbishop Jovan of Ochrid of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the question of the existence of two Orthodox jurisdictions in one territory comes to the fore. In the one case, the church is not recognized by any of the canonical Orthodox jurisdictions, yet it maintains that the existence of a Serbian Orthodox exarchate violates the national integrity of the Republic of Macedonia as well as the canonical integrity of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. It is ironic in this situation that the Serbian Orthodox Church on precisely the same grounds refuses to acknowledge a Romanian Orthodox church in its canonical territory. In the case of Estonia, two patriarchates came to schism over the issue of the recognition of the AEAC-EP as the legitimate church in that territory. Both Patriarch Bartholomew and Patriarch Alexsy defended their decisions using the confused idea of the local church being equated to nationality. The most complex situation, though, is the case of Ukraine. In this nation, three Orthodox communities co-exist in violation of the canons of the church. Two of the churches maintain nationalist positions, desiring recognition of their autocephalous status by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, while the third retains its autonomous status with the Moscow Patriarchate. Whether these three churches can work out this canonical problem with their mother church remains to be seen. Since 1997, however, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is continuing to recognize the canonical authority of the UOC-MP and its Mother Church in Moscow, calling on them to heal the ecclesial confusion and resolve the canonical status of the UOC-KP and the UAOC.71 71. Roman Woronowycz, “Ecumenical Patriarch Calls on Russian Church to Lead Reunification of Ukrainian Churches,” Ukrainian Weekly, 28 September 1997. View all notes How long its patience will last with the unresolved situation remains to be seen.72 72. The conflict in the Diocese of Sourozh, the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile with the Moscow Patriarchate, and the ongoing difficulties of the uncanonical situation in the so-called “diaspora” may put additional pressure on the EP to act to consolidate its canonical territory in Western Europe and the New World and to limit the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate by recognizing a Ukrainian Orthodox Church separate from the Moscow Patriarchate. View all notes

Notes

1. The chief protagonist of this viewpoint has been Samuel Huntington. See his “The Clash of Civilizations?,” 22–49; idem, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Others have argued that Orthodox Christianity is a hindrance to civil society and the institutions necessary for it. See Radu, “The Burden of Eastern Orthodoxy,” 283–300; Payne, “The Clash of Civilisations,” 261–71; Pollis, “The State, the Law, and Human Rights in Greece,” 587–614; idem, “Eastern Orthodoxy and Human Rights,” 339–56. Responding to this position, several scholars have argued that resources can be found in the Orthodox tradition that may provide for the possibility of the development of civil society. See Marsh, “Orthodox Christianity, Civil Society, and Russian Democracy,” 449–62; and the important articles in the works Burden or Blessing? and Civil Society and the Search for Justice in Russia. See also Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in Russia; and Gvosdev, Emperors and Elections. Another response to Huntington's challenge has been the use of S. N. Eisenstadt's concept of “multiple modernities,” understanding that the Orthodox have not completely disavowed Western democratic institutions and norms but have contextualized them within their own particular national cultures. See, in particular, Makrides and Molokotos-Liederman, “Introduction,” 459–70; Makrides, “Orthodox Christianity, Rationalization, Modernization: A Reassessment,” 179–209; and Prodromou, “Negotiating Pluralism and Specifying Modernity in Greece,” 471–85. For a critique of “multiple modernities” theory, see Schmidt, “Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?,” 77–97.
2. The Orthodox commonwealth is understood to be those churches in communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In this regard, the national Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe, i.e. Greece, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the newer churches of Estonia, Finland, Poland, and the Czech Republic, all comprise the Orthodox Commonwealth of churches, sharing the same faith, yet having autonomous or autocephalous control of their administrative structures. An autocephalous church has complete administrative independence from the mother church, while an autonomous church is still under her spiritual leadership. The issue of autocephaly will be discussed later in the paper.
3. See Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” 20.
4. Ibid., 14.
5. Ibid., 11–12.
6. Ibid., 19–20. Another important influence of Herder on East European nationalism came through the inspiration of folklore studies that provided the historical justifications for the development of East European nationalism. Nationalists created histories to justify the existence of the various peoples in Eastern Europe. Additionally, linguistic studies leading to the writing of grammatical and philological works provided the means for inspiring national movements ranging from Czech and Slovak lands in Central Europe to Ukraine in the East and Greece and Serbia in the South. See Hayes, Nationalism, 67.
7. Merdjanova, “In Search of Identity,” 233–62; Velikonja, “Slovenian and Polish Religio-National Mythologies,” 233–60; Sells, The Bridge Betrayed.
8. Merdjanova, Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society in Eastern Europe, 32–33. Nikolas Gvosdev argues similarly in regards to the role of Orthodoxy in Russia. See Gvosdev, “‘Managed Pluralism’ and Civil Religion in Post-Soviet Russia,” 75–88. For Robert Bellah's view of American civil religion, see his groundbreaking essay “Civil Religion in America,” 1–21.
9. Sugar, “External and Domestic Roots of Eastern European Nationalism,” 28–29.
10. See Clogg, “Anti-Clericalism in Pre-Independence Greece c. 1750–1821,” 257–76.
11. Papadakis, “The Historical Tradition of Church–State Relations under Orthodoxy,” 50.
12. See Zakynthos, The Making of Modern Greece, 157–65. Victor Roudometof offers a similar analysis of the importance of the conflict between Byzantine universalism and secular nationalism at the time of the Greek Revolution in 1821, with secular nationalism eventually ascending in the newly created Greek state. See Roudometof, “From Rum Millet to Greek Nation,” 11–48.
13. For an understanding of how these political and philosophical changes affected Orthodox theology and its understanding of the church, see Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West.
14. See Anderson, Imagined Communities.
15. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy, 179.
16. Ibid., 179–84.
17. Ibid., 184.
18. Ibid., 185.
19. For a brief summary of the historical development and problems associated with the concept of “canonical territory,” see Hilarion Alfeyev, “La notion du territoire canonique dans la tradition Orthodoxe,” given at the International Symposium of Canon Law at the Catholic Theological Academy of Budapest, 7 February 2005, <http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_12> (accessed 27 March 2007). Metropolitan Hilarion provides the historical development without addressing the fundamental ecclesiological problems associated with this historical development.
20. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 248.
21. Zizioulas dismisses the issue of the “household church” as not being a challenge to the singularity of the city church. Instead of understanding the concept as being a church that meets around the household unit, it should rather be understood as a city church that happens to meet in a particular household. See his Being as Communion, 249; and Eucharist–Bishop–Church, 87–93.
22. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 252.
23. Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 102–05.
24. See Pospielovsky, The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia.
25. Meyendorff, The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church, 224–25.
26. Ibid., 227.
27. Walters, “Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism,” 360.
28. Binns, An Introduction to the Christian Orthodox Churches, 184–85.
29. See Karmiris, “Catholicity of the Church and Nationalism.” See also Buciora, “Ecclesiology and National Identity in Orthodox Christianity,” 27–42.
30. Walters, “Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism,” 361.
31. See, for example, Alfeyev, “La notion of territoire canonique dans la tradition Orthodoxe.”
32. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 253.
33. See Merdjanova, Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society, 2.
34. See, in particular, Sells, The Bridge Betrayed; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno; Perica, Balkan Idols; Michas, Unholy Alliance; Velikonja, “Slovenian and Polish Religio-National Mythologies,” 233–60.
35. “A Brief History of the Ecclesiastical Issue in the Republic of Macedonia,” <http://www.mpc.org.mk/English/news2.asp?id=924> (accessed 17 May 2006).
36. Perica, Balkan Idols, 174.
37. Bjarke Larsen, “Methodist Lay Preacher Declares he is President of All Macedonians,” ENI News Service, 24 March 2000. Quoted in Gvosdev, An Examination of Church–State Relations in the Byzantine and Russian Empires with an Emphasis on Ideology and Models of Interaction, 70.
38. Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, 199–200.
39. Perica, Balkan Idols, 46; Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, 199.
40. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Why is State Interfering in Orthodox Dispute?,” Forum 18 News Service, 8 June 2005.
41. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Orthodox Archbishop Jailed—Without the Gospels,” Forum 18 News Service, 27 July 2005. See also Zelimir Bojovic, “Church Rivalry Threatens to Brim Over,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 10 August 2005.
42. Bojovic, “Church Rivalry.”
43. Victoria Clark demonstrates the dreams of a Greater Macedonia in her conversation with Archbishop Mihail in her book Why Angels Fall?, 117. Victor Roudometof has written an excellent monograph on the importance of the Macedonian question. See his Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict.
44. Branko Bjelajac, “Macedonia: Serbian Orthodox ‘Will Never Get Registration,’” Forum 18 News Service, 23 September 2004.
45. Ibid.
46. For instance, Peter Moree does not discuss this important issue of canonicity but simply leaves the question at the level of legislation. See his “Identity, Religion and Human Rights in the Balkans,” 287–96.
47. Webster, “Split Decision,” 614–19.
48. Ibid.
49. Agadjanian and Rousselet, “Globalization and Identity Discourse in Russian Orthodoxy,” 40–41.
50. “Letter of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to Patriarch Alexsy of Moscow Concerning the Orthodox in Estonia.”
51. Fr. George Tsetsis realizes this in an afterward to an article in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review where he states that an agreement had been reached between the two patriarchates “based on ‘canonical economy,’ and was arrived at for the sake of granting peace to the Church of Estonia …” Tsetsis, “Documentation,” 318. In a 2 November 2000 article in Pravoslavie.RU it is stated that the EP has argued that two jurisdictions do not exist in Estonia, that there can only be one metropolitan with the title “of all Estonia,” and that those churches and institutions under the authority of Moscow must be understood as “exarchia” or “metochions.” See “The Scandalous Visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to Estonia is Over,” Pravoslavie.Ru, 2 November 2000, <http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/mainnews001102.htm> (accessed 13 May 2006).
52. “Rift Threatens Orthodoxy,” The Christian Century 113, 27 March 1996, 319–21.
53. Webster, “Split Decision,” 619.
54. Bartholomew I, “The Orthodox in Estonia: An Address by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,” <http://www.patriarchate.org/SPEECHES/Orthodox_in_Estonia> (accessed 13 May 2006).
55. Yelensky, “Globalization, Nationalism, and Orthodoxy,” 150–56. Yelensky points out that a further reason why religion was not important in the development of Ukrainian nationalism was its divisive nature. Ukrainians are divided between Eastern-rite Roman Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox. While the Eastern-rite Roman Catholics distinguish themselves from their Polish counterparts by retaining the Orthodox rite, the Ukrainian Orthodox under the protection of the Cossacks were independent of Moscow while also fighting for the prevention of the spread of Catholicism. With the existence of these two nationalist churches it was impossible to attempt to establish a united state based on religious commonality. Instead, Ukrainian nationalists opted for their union in the narodostvo, the common Ukrainian people, which provided a populist movement for a united nation.
56. D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 71.
57. Mitrokhin, “Aspects of the Religious Situation in Ukraine,” 176.
58. Ibid.
59. The MP defrocked Filaret for his actions in establishing a schismatic church.
60. Tataryn, “Russia and Ukraine,” 162.
61. Ibid.
62. D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 82.
63. The UAOC elected Dymytriy as Patriarch on 7 September 1993, while the UOC-KP elected Volodymyr Romaniuk as Patriarch of Kiev and all Rus'-Ukraine. See D'Anieri et al., Politics and Society in Ukraine, 82–83.
64. Ibid., 83.
65. Kuzio, “In Search of Unity and Autocephaly,” 393–414.
66. Ibid., 408.
67. Ibid.
68. Yurash, “Orthodoxy and the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Electoral Campaign,” 368–71.
69. Ibid., 383.
70. Zeyno Baran and Emmet Tuohy seem to agree with Yurash's assessment that the MP “will only add to its increasing isolation from a ‘Western civilization’ that now extends to the borders of Russia.” Zeyno Baran and Emmet Tuohy, “An Unorthodox Orthodoxy,” National Review Online, 15 April 2005.
71. Roman Woronowycz, “Ecumenical Patriarch Calls on Russian Church to Lead Reunification of Ukrainian Churches,” Ukrainian Weekly, 28 September 1997.
72. The conflict in the Diocese of Sourozh, the reunion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile with the Moscow Patriarchate, and the ongoing difficulties of the uncanonical situation in the so-called “diaspora” may put additional pressure on the EP to act to consolidate its canonical territory in Western Europe and the New World and to limit the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate by recognizing a Ukrainian Orthodox Church separate from the Moscow Patriarchate.

REFERENCES

Agadjanian, Alexander and Rousselet, Kathy. 2005. “Globalization and Identity Discourse in Russian Orthodoxy”. In Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age: Tradition Faces the Twenty-first Century, Edited by: Roudometof, Victor, Agadjanian, Alexander and Pankhurst, Jerry. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.