Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Religions in Movement
The Local and the Global in Contemporary
Faith Traditions
Robert W. Hefner, John Hutchinson, Sara Mels and
Christiane Timmerman
Victor Roudometof
www.routledge.com
Globalization and Orthodox
Christianity
Victor Roudometof
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Victor Roudometof to be identified as the author of the editorial
material has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roudometof, Victor, 1964
Globalization and Orthodox Christianity : the transformations of a religious
tradition / by Victor Roudometof.
pages cm. (Routledge studies in religion ; 32)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Orthodox Eastern ChurchHistory21st century. 2. Globalization
Religious aspectsOrthodox Eastern Church. I. Title.
BX106.23.R68 2013
281.9dc23
2013013554
ISBN: (hbk) 978-0-415-84373-7
ISBN: (ebk) 978-0-203-75416-0
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Maps ix
List of Tables xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
4 Transitions to Modernity 59
Appendix 173
Notes 175
Bibliography 193
Index 219
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Maps
This book represents nearly a decade of work in the field of the sociology of
Orthodox Christianity. Attending and presenting papers at the conferences
and congresses of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (Houston,
United States, 2000), the International Society for the Sociology of Religion
(Zagreb, Croatia, 2005; Leipzig, Germany 2007; Aix-en-Provence, France
2011) and the Association for the Sociology of Religion (Philadelphia, 2005;
New York, United States, 2007) offered me the opportunity to meet, talk
and collaborate with the other scholars who form the relatively small but vi-
brant group of people interested in Orthodox Christianity. This interaction
has been a source of inspiration and has contributed greatly to shaping my
thinking about this project. My participation in the 20092010 workshop
series on Nation, State and Religion in the Mediterranean: From 1789 to
1960, sponsored by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, helped me to further
sharpen the scope and aims of this project.
I should publicly express my gratitude to the University of Cyprus Li-
brary, whose resources were extensively used. In particular, my deep ap-
preciation goes to librarian Evie Antoniou, for her invaluable assistance in
delivering books and articles from other libraries. Many thanks also go to
Aleca Spyrou, who supervised the librarys purchases. I further owe a debt
of gratitude to Denise Rothschild for her expert professional assistance in
proofreading and editing the manuscripts final drafts. For their assistance
with the manuscripts final stage, I should thank the publishers staff. Of
course, all mistakes or other shortcomings in the final manuscript are my
own responsibility. For the cartography, I should thank Dr. Sophia Vyzo-
viti (Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Greece). Further
thanks go to Robert Swanson for this professional assistance in the con-
struction of the books index.
The text contains numerous references to names, places, organizations
and titles. These require rendering words into English or transliterating from
several languages. This is always a challenging task. For some languages
(such as Greek), no standard transliteration system exists. Sometimes, there
are differences in the names of cities or places (for example, Kiev). Other
xvi Preface
times, different citation styles render the same term differently. To the extent
possible, these matters have been dealt with according to standard scholarly
conventions, and an effort was made to achieve consistency. I would like
to apologize in advance for whatever shortcomings the readers careful eye
detects in the manuscript. The preparation of this manuscript has benefited
from the work and advice of numerous individuals. I would like to thank
my long-term collaborators and co-authors Vasilios N. Makrides (Religious
Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany), Alexander Agadjanian (Russian
University of the Humanities, Moscow, Russia), Michalis N. Michael (De-
partment of Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cyprus) and
Anna Karpathakis (Sociology, Kingsborough Community College, New
York) for their assistance, encouragement and help as I have sought their
judgment, advice and expertise on numerous occasions. My warm thanks
also go to my colleagues, Lucian Leustean (Aston University), Tassos An-
astasiadis (McGill University), Effie Fokas (London School of Economics),
Nicos Kokosalakis (University of Liverpool), Lina Molokotos-Liederman
(London School of Economics), Roberto Cipriani (University of Rome III,
Italy), Irene Dietzel (University of Erfurt, Germany), Dimitris Antoniou
(Oxford, UK), Heinz Richter (University of Mannheim, Germany), Athena
S. Leoussi (University of Reading), Catharina Raudvere and Trine Stauning
Willert (University of Copenhagen), George Kourvetaris (Northern Illinois
University) and Gavril Flora (Partium Christian University, Oradea, Roma-
nia) for all their generous offers of knowledge, expertise and assistance over
the years.
I should extend my gratitude to Elisabeth Arweck, editor of the Journal
of Contemporary Religion; David Yamane, editor of Sociology of Religion;
Khacig Tololyan, editor of Diaspora; and Gerard Delanty, editor of the Eu-
ropean Journal of Social Theory, for their constructive role and useful feed-
back in the process of submission and evaluation of the articles published
in these journals. Further thanks go to the anonymous reviewers of these
journals for their sound criticism and useful remarks that contributed to
improving the quality of the work. These articles offered me the opportu-
nity to develop ideas and interpretations that ultimately coalesced into this
manuscript.
Finally, I would like to thank Dimitris Vogiatzis, Giota Politi, Marios
Constantinou, Marianna Papastephanou, Nikitas Hadjimichail, Elisa Dia-
mantopoulou, William Haller, Fabienne Baider, Monica Andreou, Daphne
Halikiopoulou, Nikolaos and Panayiota Roudometof, Costas Danopoulos
and Panagiotis Christias.
Acknowledgments
Scattered throughout the books chapters are paragraphs and sentences that
have been previously published in various articles, chapters and books. This
material has been extensively revised or extended into its current format to
form part of this books broader arguments. In all these instances, references
to the earlier publications are made in the text or in each chapters notes. It
is nonetheless necessary to acknowledge that material previously published
is included in all or parts of the following chapters.
Chapters 1 and 9 include material from my article The Glocalizations of
Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which appeared in the European Journal
of Social Theory 2013 (Vol. 2) 2, pp. 22645. Chapter 6 incorporates most
of Church, State and Politics in 19th Century Cyprus (co-authored with
Michalis N. Michael), published in Thetis: Mannheimer Beitrge zur Klas-
sischen Archologie und Geschichte Griechenlands und Zyperns 2010 (Vol.
16/17), pp. 97104. Chapter 6 also includes material from The Trans-
formation of Greek Orthodox Religious Identity in 19th century Cyprus,
published in Chronos: Revue dHistoire de lUniversit de Balamand 2010
(Vol. 22), pp. 723.
In Chapter 5, the section on Orthodox institutions in the Ottoman Em-
pire includes material previously published in The Evolution of Greek-
Orthodoxy in the Context of World-Historical Globalization in Orthodox
Christianity in 21st Century Greece: The Role of Religion in Politics, Eth-
nicity and Culture, edited by V. Roudometof and V. N. Makrides (Alder-
shot, UK: Ashgate, 2010, pp. 2138).
In Chapter 7, a portion of the section on the Greek American experience
includes material previously published in From Greek-Orthodox Diaspora
to Transnational Hellenism: Greek Nationalism and the Identities of the
Diaspora in The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and
Present, edited by A. Gal, A.S. Leoussi and A.D. Smith (London: Brill/UCL,
2010, pp. 13966). In the same chapter, the section on the dilemmas of
ethnic and religious identity in the United States includes updated and re-
vised material from the chapter Greek Americans and Transnationalism:
Religion, Class, and Community (co-authored with Anna Karpathakis)
xviii Acknowledgments
in Communities Across Borders: New Immigrants and Transnational Cul-
tures, edited by P. Kennedy and V. Roudometof (London: Routledge, 2002,
pp. 4154).
Finally, Chapter 8 is a heavily revised and extended version of Greek-
Orthodoxy, Territoriality and Globality: Religious Responses and Insti-
tutional Disputes, published in Sociology of Religion 2008 (Vol. 69) 1,
pp. 6791.
1 Globalization and Orthodox
Christianity
Preliminary Considerations
Traditionally, most of the Orthodox countries have been included in the cat-
egory of Eastern Bloc nations and, following 1989, in the ambiguous category
of postcommunist Eastern Europe. Since the 17th century, Western ob-
servers have, in general, negatively evaluated the Orthodox religious tra-
dition (Wolff 2001). These evaluations were part of the broader Western
European prejudice against Eastern European countries, which were viewed
as backward and failing the Western European standards of civilization
(Wolff 1994). During the Cold War era, this long-standing assumption in
public and academic opinion was expressed by holding the Orthodox cul-
tural legacy, at least in part, responsible for the political imposition of com-
munism. During the 1990s, influential commentators (Kaplan 1993; Kennan
1993; Huntington 1996) suggested a link between the cultural traditions of
Eastern Europe and the failure of most of these countries to successfully
transition to democracy or to successfully integrate into the new post-1989
Europe (Clark 2000). According to this essentialist approach, communism
was but a temporary manifestation of an anti-Western and antimodern re-
action that is deeply encoded in the Orthodox cultural tradition. Extended
to the postcommunist era, this line of reasoning suggests that this cultural
tradition has endorsed the two most recent forms of anti-Western and anti-
modern reaction: ethno-nationalism and fundamentalist protectionism. The
special link of Orthodoxy with local national identities is frequently used
to support this thinking. As Kitromilides (2007a: xiii) insightfully observes,
[Western] prejudice dies hard and is often rekindled by power politics and
an inability to understand the Eastern half of a shared continentto the
point that iron curtains are imagined to be replaced by velvet curtains as-
sociated with the aesthetics of Orthodoxy.
With the collapse of communism, sociological research has to some de-
gree focused on the contemporary situation within Orthodox Christianity
(Borowik 1999, 2006; Borowik and Tomka 2001; Roudometof, Agadjanian,
and Pankhurst 2005; Byrnes and Katzenstein 2006, part III; Naumescu 2007;
Rvay and Tomka 2007). In most cases, however, the combination of the
experience of communism in the former Soviet Union, Romania, Albania,
Bulgaria and former Yugoslavia and the cultural heritage of Orthodox
Christianity in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has made it quite difficult
Globalization and Orthodox Christianity 3
to discern the role of Orthodox Christianity as such on contemporary politi-
cal and cultural developments.3 Instead of focusing on historical specificity,
in many cases, generalizations are made about the faith. Ramet (2006:148)
writes, Whatever changes may impact the world, the Orthodox Church
refuses, for the most part, to accommodate itself to change, standing fixed
in time, its bishops gaze riveted on an idyllic past which serves as their
beacon. This statement aptly summarizes Orthodox Christianitys prevail-
ing image. The preservation of a presumed unbroken religious tradition has
been the conscious goal of the overwhelming majority of religious move-
ments, authors and activists in the Orthodox cultural landscape (Agadjanian
and Roudometof 2005). By and large, the entire material and symbolic
order of the faith has been used to preserve or even enhance a sense of differ-
ence that remains anchored in the preservation of such a (literal and/or con-
structed) religious tradition (for a discussion, see McGuckin 2008). In most
nations of the Eastern European Orthodox heartland, this religious tradition
is fused with local identities into a single genre of identity, whereby church,
ethnicity or nationality become signifiers of a single collective entity. The
phrase religious tradition in this books subtitle underscores precisely this
feature of the faith, but it is also an acknowledgement that, as MacCulloch
(2009:7) insightfully observes, the Bible . . . embodies not a tradition, but
many traditions.
In Orthodox Christianity, there has been a taken-for-granted unity be-
tween religion and community (Berger 2005:441). The Church, as Ortho-
dox theologians tirelessly repeat, is not simply the religious hierarchy or
the formal institution but the entire body of those who are publicly affili-
ated with the faith. The importance of the faith lies at the level of public
culturein contrast to individualized expressions of religiosity. Indeed, to
the extent that Orthodoxy allows persons to navigate the symbolic universe
of religious metaphors on their own, it promotes the individual privatiza-
tion of religious experience (Kokosalakis 1995:25960). However, the ac-
commodation of individuality should not be conflated with the public role,
function and importance of faith. Instead, the preservation of a dominant
position in society and vis--vis the state has been a long-held objective for
most Orthodox churches, which thus operate as national churches rather
than as denominations.
This finding should not lead to misguided perceptions that Orthodox
Christianity is incapable of tolerating social change or of instigating new
practices and institutions that can adjust to newfound realities. According
to Orthodox theology, the ancient principle of expediency (oikonomia) al-
lows for subtlety and flexibility in canonical procedures as these necessar-
ily adapt to popular faith. Accordingly, the Church can compromise
in order to accommodate transgressions against established doctrine and
practice on certain occasions (Kokosalakis 1987:41). Even when there are
texts that establish doctrine on specific issues, these may be subject to flex-
ible interpretation under the principle of expediency. As a result, the Church
4 Globalization and Orthodox Christianity
in general is not concerned with the imposition of strict rules of religious
conduct and belief; it can afford accommodations to different situations as
these arise. The Church can use popular forms of religious expression even
when they seem at variance with its own doctrine and, in turn, can use them
to strengthen its own position in society and in its relations with the state.
Culture and religion intertwine in a reciprocal relationship in which change
is both implicitly accommodated and explicitly refuted (for examples, see
Roudometof and Makrides 2010). Although formal introductions of reli-
gious innovation are theologically refuted, their practice can be accepted
thanks to the aforementioned principle of expediency.
Therefore, it is important to separate practice from rhetoric. If religious
rhetoric or the projected image of an unbroken religious tradition is taken at
face value, the image of religious traditionalism is transformed into the ob-
servers reality. Orthodox Christianity is then cast in the role of an inherently
conservative antidemocratic or antimodern religion that lacks the resources
or the capacities to adapt to the realities of contemporary life. To combat
such stereotypes, it is necessary to adopt a far more nuanced approach, one
that recognizes the diversity of Orthodox Christianityhence the reason I
speak of transformations (in the plural) of Orthodoxy. Orthodox Christianity
should be regarded as possessing the same mutability and capacity as other
branches of Christianity to fuse into different contexts.
There are two main gifts bestowed by God upon men: the priesthood
and the imperial authority (sacerdotium et imperium). Of these, the for-
mer is concerned with things divine, the latter with human affairs. . . .
Nothing is of greater importance to the Emperors than to support the
dignity of the priesthood, so that the priests may in turn pray to God for
them (quoted in Zernov 1963:66).
Even if the quotation above provides only a very rough sketch, it is fair
to say that in the longue dure, Orthodox Christianity is a culture with
a profound understanding of the sacredprofane division but also one
in which the secularreligious division became relevant only in the after-
math of the social and cultural modernization of Eastern and Southeastern
Europe, whereby modern states applied the Western-inspired logic of secu-
larism to their domains. It should therefore not be surprising that the theme
of secularity does not occupy a central place in this book.
The significance of culture for the study of religion and particularly of
Orthodox Christianity is revealed in issues of worship, rituals and popu-
lar practices. In Orthodox countries, religious worship and rituals are not
necessarily manifestations of individual belief, and religious practice does
not necessarily reflect the depth of personal conviction or belief (Tomka
2006). A case in point is the celebration of the Orthodox Easter, which is the
focal point of Orthodox Christianitys religious calendar (Berger 2005). Far
from a matter of individual religious self-expression, its celebration is quite
public. The entire rhythm of social life is adjusted to follow the religious
calendar of the Holy Week, culminating in the celebration of the Resurrec-
tion, symbolically set at midnight on Good Saturday but also involving the
Epitaph possession on Good Friday along the streets of towns and villages.
Public officials participate prominently in these rituals, and educational in-
stitutions go on a two-week hiatus, returning to classes one week after Eas-
ter Sunday (for additional examples, see Naletova 2009). Orthodox Easter
reflects broader differences among cultures or traditions. In turn, these dif-
ferences shape the role of religion in society.8
Far from engaging with this problematic, the overwhelming majority of
work in the sociology of religion naturalizes the trans-Atlantic cultural con-
text of its surroundings. Thus, the Orientalism of the past resurfaces as aca-
demic parochialism. Orthodox Christianity has been the object of academic
and lay stereotypes precisely because it exposes the limits of theoretical par-
adigms that work only for a selected group of Western nations or religious