{"id":1674,"date":"2007-05-25T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T16:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/advantagewho.html"},"modified":"2007-05-25T16:26:21","modified_gmt":"2007-05-25T16:26:21","slug":"advantagewho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/advantagewho.html","title":{"rendered":"Advantage…who?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From today’s WSJ on the Russian Orthodox reunion noted earlier this week:<\/a><\/p>\n

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From the time when Russia became communist and atheist after 1917, the Church Abroad had sought to be the free voice of Russian Orthodoxy world-wide. Its independence was authorized by the courageous Patriarch Tikhon in 1920, who resisted Communist domination. <\/span><\/p>\n

But in 1927, the Soviet government imprisoned the independent bishops and transferred leadership of the Russian Church to Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodsky), who infamously declared that the Soviet Union’s "joys and successes are our joys and successes, and [its] sorrows are our sorrows." From that moment, the official bishops inside of Russia did not utter a word of public protest to anything the state did, even though the country was drenched in the blood of tens of millions of people, many of whom were believers, and thousands of whom were clergy. <\/p>\n

Instead, the leadership took to referring to Stalin as "the wise, God-appointed leader of our Great Union." In 1930, when the ruthless extermination of the faithful was at a fever pitch, Sergii announced, "There never has been religious persecution in the U.S.S.R., nor is there now." <\/p>\n

Today’s Moscow Patriarchate is the as-yet-unrepentant inheritor of this legacy. Rather than distancing himself from Sergii’s appeasement, Patriarch Aleksy wrote a lengthy foreword to a 2003 biography, praising the "heroic path" taken by Sergii and viciously castigating the critics of this appeasement (including dissenting Orthodox groups in Russia and abroad). He has blessed the construction of a memorial complex in honor of Sergii, complete with a square, a museum and a monument. In 2005, Alexy wrote a congratulatory epistle to the president of Vietnam on the occasion of 30 years since the communist victory in the Vietnam War, calling it a "glorious anniversary." Similar letters were sent to the leaders of North Korea and Cuba. <\/p>\n

As long as the Church Abroad existed as an independent entity, it implicitly challenged the authority of Moscow to speak for the Russian Church. It consistently denounced the collaboration of the church with the Communist Party, called for a more positive valuation of Russia’s prerevolutionary and anticommunist past and served as a hopeful beacon to Orthodox Christians in Russia seeking an alternative. <\/p>\n

Many in the Church Abroad wonder how this merger went through at all. The process was secretive, and there has even been speculation that some American businessmen with Russian ties helped to push it along. But now having accepted Moscow’s authority, the former Church Abroad faces many questions. Can its leaders press Moscow to reject the church’s tradition of collaborating with both the Kremlin and the KGB? Can they hold on to the church properties they have maintained for the past 80 years? Will the Moscow Church dispatch pro-Kremlin clergy to promote political aims? And, above all, can the leaders of the Church Abroad stem the tide of defection from the disappointed faithful that has already begun? <\/p>\n

These problems may be averted if the Russian Church Abroad uses its new status to actively engage Moscow. But last week’s glad-handing suggests that it is the Kremlin, rather than heaven, that is smiling on this union.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From today’s WSJ on the Russian Orthodox reunion noted earlier this week: From the time when Russia became communist and atheist after 1917, the Church Abroad had sought to be the free voice of Russian Orthodoxy world-wide. Its independence was authorized by the courageous Patriarch Tikhon in 1920, who resisted Communist domination. But in 1927,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAdvantage...who? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/05\/advantagewho.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Advantage...who? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From today’s WSJ on the Russian Orthodox reunion noted earlier this week: From the time when Russia became communist and atheist after 1917, the Church Abroad had sought to be the free voice of Russian Orthodoxy world-wide. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}