Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Demacopoulos vs. the Russians... again

Some might remember the Demacopoulos piece "On Orthodox Fundamentalism." Here, there, in conference, and in other writings he has shown himself to be staunchly anti-Muscovite. The below article strays from that position not one iota.


(GOARCH) - Pundits from both America and Europe have recently ascribed religious motivations to the actions of Vladimir Putin. Is Orthodox Christianity to blame for his militant incursions, reactionary policies, or anti-Western rhetoric?

Absolutely not.

The notion that the Ukrainian crisis has religious causes is both factually wrong and religiously offensive. What’s worse, it is politically foolish, playing directly into Putin’s preferred narrative of a culture war.

Nonetheless, the idea is gaining a foothold among powerful Western politicians. Carl Bildt, the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently asserted that Putin’s efforts to destabilize the Ukraine and his “anti-Western and anti-decadent line” have been “building on deeply conservative orthodox ideas.” The irony is that both Mr. Bildt and Mr. Putin, who have opposing political goals, are employing a strikingly similar misrepresentation of Orthodox Christianity—that it is incompatible with the modern West. Many readers will in fact agree with this assessment. Commercialism, narcissism, and rabid secularism are hallmarks of the modern West. Recent legislation decried as foolish, injurious, and amoral by many jurisdictions is the fruit of the pleaching of pluralism and "rights" at the expense of traditional ethics.

Mr. Bildt is not the only global leader to presume the incompatibility of Orthodoxy and modernity. Since the early 1990s, US and European foreign policy has been profoundly shaped by a political thesis first advocated by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. Huntington argued that both the Slavic-Orthodox and the Islamic “civilizations” were incapable of embracing Western-styled democracy. Their religious and cultural traditions were supposedly too primitive to accept the Enlightenment principles championed in the West. Foreign policy consultants Molly A. McKew and Gregory A. Maniatis have sounded similar notes, recently linking Mr. Putin’s “revitalization” of “orthodox morality” to his “expansionist vision” and repressive domestic policies.

Only the most superficial of analyses can claim that Mr. Putin’s actions are motivated by Orthodox Christian faith. He is, in fact, doing little more than masking his own political objectives behind the veil of a moralizing principle. Mr. Putin’s efforts to criminalize homosexuality or public swearing are a function of his political calculus, not the inevitable legislative outcome of Orthodox Christian faith. Says who? What does barring homosexuality do to strengthen state power (In fact, homosexuality and the practice thereof is perfectly legal. Propaganda and enticing the youth is not.)? For that matter, how does endorsement of homosexuality ring true with millennia of Orthodox theology?

Throughout history in both East and West, political activists have routinely attempted to solidify their bases by demonizing a religious other. Mr. Putin seeks to present himself as a valiant defender of traditional Russian values against a vacuous and immoral West precisely because he believes that linking himself to the cause of a self-made Christianity will authorize him to enact his stated desire to reintegrate the ancestral Eurasian lands of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. This is an odd accusation considering Putin introduced legislation making canonical religious texts "... the Bible, Quran, Tanakh and Kanjur" protected speech (see here). One could also see his spearheading a return to Christ as in important task considering the slaughter of millions of Orthodox Christians by the previous Soviet regime.

This is not Orthodox Christianity, but classic political showmanship. And it’s far from unique to Mr. Putin. Dressing up political ambition in the clothes of traditional values goes back as far as Caesar Augustus—and for good reason. This rhetorical move is often, unfortunately, effective. While leadership as strong as Putin's is not the American way, the Russian people have always sought strong leadership that goes beyond the bounds of what Mr. Demacopoulos is comfortable with (The Liturgy itself still maintains a structure that signals the entrance of monarchs so it seems we have not cast off monarchial rule entirely.). While Putin is no Emperor, neither is America the model that Russia is trying to construct its state from. The Greek Church is not immune from secular pressure either. The New Calendar, pressed onto the Church from corporate and governmental forces, is an illuminating example.

Mr. Bildt should know better, and perhaps he does. But a more sophisticated parsing of the religious rhetoric is not useful to him and his neo-conservative American supporters. It would undermine their desire to paint the Ukrainian crisis as an exaggerated clash between East and West, wherein the West is modern and good and the East is dangerously religious and totalitarian. I'm not sure what place neoconservatives have in this discussion. As a not infrequent reader of the Weekly Standard I don't see this to be the narrative they are proposing. Nor, really, does the neoconservative movement hold nearly as much sway as it did at its apogee under the Bush years.

The “clash of civilizations” viewpoint also relies on flawed assumptions about Orthodox Christian history and doctrine. Over the past decade, scholarship has conclusively demonstrated that the supposed cultural divide between Christian East and Christian West was largely a political invention that reaches back centuries. How strongly can I disagree with this unsupported statement? A lot. Christian leaders from Popes to Patriarchs agree that there is substantive difference after a thousand years of separation. Two lungs (one for the East and one for the West) says Rome, and they say the Church must breathe with both in complementarity. Both sides say that love is the bridge between the gap, but no one pretends that there is but one monolithic breathing apparatus. 

From opposing sides, then, both Mr. Bildt and Mr. Putin exaggerate the incompatibility of Orthodoxy and the modern West because it allows them to paint the political unrest in Ukraine as something other than it actually is—a political crisis brought on by the interconnection and fierce competition within the global debt and commodity markets.

The significance of these issues stretch beyond the current crisis in Russia/Ukraine because Orthodoxy is the dominant expression of Christianity in many other global hotspots, including the Balkans and the Middle East. If the economic and political interests of the West in these regions are going to be well served, then we must resist the facile characterizations of the Orthodox world and Orthodox/Western difference. They originate from an outdated and dangerous colonial vision that assumes the rest of the world should be measured according to an imaginary Western European standard. Ironically, though, the foundations of democracy, international trade, and Christianity originate from the very locations that are presented by Mr. Bildt and Mr. Putin as incompatible with the Western world. Then they will certainly be proved wrong by how smoothly the assemblies of bishops across the globe in the "diaspora" are integrating themselves into local, unified Orthodox bodies. In fact, we see no such progress and a cursory examination of the declarations written by those bodies in recent years seem to target supposedly innocuous Western actions in the areas of same-sex marriage, abortion on demand at any time, and wars fought to secure oil at the expense of innocent lives.

Our world—both West and East—offers enough real examples in which religious convictions misguide public policy and foreign affairs. We need not create a new one by believing the rhetoric of Mr. Putin.

Co-authored by Fordham Professors: Aristotle Papanikolaou, Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Orthodox Theology and Culture, and George E. Demacopoulos, Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.

24 comments:

  1. 1. This removes any doubts about what he meant by "Orthodox Fundamentalism" in his earlier eruption. He meant "Orthodoxy."
    2. What is it with Fordham??

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    1. The answer to #2 is a sort of secular captivity of the mind and soul. The trick is not to be a dupe of the spirit of the age - clearly Demacopoulos is not very good at this - it's all politics to him. In practice, this mean keeping your children and loved ones from Fordham's "Orthodox Studies" department...

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  2. This was written a year and a half ago and I didn't take it seriously then, either.

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  4. I am usually fairly supportive of Demacopoulos' perspective, because it provides a good counterbalance to some of the more uncritical Orthodox material that has been published in print (especially in the mid-20th century, and recently by small confessional presses) and of course on the web. I nodded approvingly at his piece on Orthodox fundamentalism, knowing exactly the sort of thing (I thought) he was talking about. I met the guy at a conference and appreciated his provocative textual analysis of several Greek fathers.

    However...this very dubious piece makes me suspicious that Demacopoulos has "bought in" to the modern American cultural geist...the same one that thinks gay marriage is a matter of "personal opinion" and that there should be a strict separation of church and state, among other issues.

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    1. "However...this very dubious piece makes me suspicious that Demacopoulos has "bought in" to the modern American cultural geist."

      Now that this is understood, go back and read the "Orthodox fundamentalism" piece under the new light. What do you see?

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  5. First off, let me start by saying that I have little love for Putin. His invasion of the Ukraine was just that and his support for the Yanukovych regime was ill conceived.

    However, the fact that he is the only leader who wants to fight ISIS instead of arm them is commendable. Do I believe his support of the Orthodox church is because he wants a Christian Russia that can serve as a base to spread the word of Christ? No. I believe he wishes to use religion as a tool to halt the decadence which has caused a demographics collapse in his nation. This, again, is not worthy of condemnation and just shows good sense in contrast to the secular western leaders who are too eager to embrace their own suicide.

    As for neoconservatives, where are these neoconservatives who support Putin? All the war-mongering neocons I know (including a couple presidential candidates) want war with Russia.

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  6. This man is the epitome of un-patristic, ecumenistic, politically correct, nonsense. He does not speak for Holy Orthodoxy and he does not speak with the phronema of the Holy Orthodox faith.

    It is time for him to give it a rest.

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    1. Not going to happen, as his little fiefdom of "Orthodox Studies" program at Fordham is well funded. Despite some "internal" conflicts, his worldview is likely to be influential for a while. This would of course be true even if he or the Fordham program ended right now. The disease is secularism...

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  7. so this blog is also run by a fan of that botox-filled adulterer, political murderer, introducer of sharia law in parts of his countrym and invader on two Orthodox countries?

    sigh

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    1. Dear mike,

      It seems that you are a bit delusional.

      Sigh.

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    2. Yes Mike once again your bigotry in the form of rabid Russophobia is showing.

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    3. delusional? please, name single thing I mentioned about Putler that is not true

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    4. For one, his name is Putin. Two, his RF repeatedly introduced anti NeoNAZI and anti FASCIST resolutions to the U.N. only to have the US and places like the Ukraine and Georgia vote against them. Why? Because spokespeople of the current Ukrainian junta have made such statements as "the defeat of NAZI Germany was a tragedy for all of mankind," "that Adolph Hitler was a great friend of Ukrainian national aspirations". That "Stepan Bandera's UPA set the foundation for revolutionary resistance as the foundation of a free and independent Ukraine." Stepan Bandera, whose UPA was responsible for such great feats of Ukrainian ethnogenesis as the Volyn Massacre and the atrocities at Babin Yar. He's the Ukrainian fascist regime's founding father. Let's fastforward, Putin did not invade the Ukraine, which is not an Orthodox country: peoples of the Ukraine democratically voted to be separated from a fascist regime and to seek historical unity with RUSSIA, seeking asylum from fascist repression, religious persecution and ethnic cleanzing, rejecting an illegal, colonial organism which had overthrown the democratically elected government of the Ukraine. Their basis for free elections you can read about in the US Declaration of Independence and in the U.N. Charter under the heading of "the right to self determination of all peoples." Those rights apply to Russian Orthodox peoples as well. HOLD A DEMOCRATIC REFERENDUM THROUGHOUT THE UKRAINE AND PUT RUSSIAN AS A FIRST LANGUAGE, FEDERALIZATION OR EVEN ACCESSION TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ON THE BALLOT! People like you who use stupid words like putler would never dream of it. We both know why - because not only will the Donbass democratically vote for these measures. Not only will the Crimea flee banderofascist neoconialism, but a tide of regions from the Carpathians to the Black Sea to "Great Ukraine" will vote to leave this fascist hellhole. That's why people like you stand with right sector nachtangel swastika wearing thugs murdering children and pensioners for the mere fact that they want to live elsewhere than in the fascist hell called the Ukraine. You belch putler while standing behind a Galician SS swastika and a banderofascist government engaged in ethnic cleansing. You do so sanctioning a government which murders to prevent democratic elections.-

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  8. Demacopoulos is the typical ecumenist orthodoxist AKA Renovationist heretic AKA Eastern Rite Protestant with closeted Uniate tendencies, advocating displacing Orthodoxy by bullying people into accepting something which is not Orthodox, things like organs and papal pedophile lounge suits in the place of cassocks and a quiet drift to hierofeminism. His sectarian standard of fundamentalism brands all Orthodox local churches for the last five hundred years including the Greek churches his kind hail from as fundamentalist for not accomodating their sectarian flights from Orthodox practice. Seems Orthodoxy is wrong and his band of neohellenist agnostics is right. He would be nailing his stupidities to the doors of Orthodox churches and Russian consulates if he could and he would be singing red, white and blue uber alles. His kind produced the modern nation of Greece. They want that type of trainwreck for Orthodoxy in diaspora. Anybody who lets a renovationist russophobe trying to tear down Orthodoxy and push American colonialist fascist ethnic cleansing in the Ukraine from within speak and think for them isn't interested in being Orthodox. First off, Greek interference into the canonical and historical ecclesiastical and territorial continuum of Rus' is something his ep scolds other Greek churches for when they remotely dare to even hint at it in the context of their beloved Istanbul. His kind need to step back and consider the very real consequences of fomenting rebellion and promulgating schism. They will be brought to account as no one is laughing and no one sober will accept their pretensions and worldview. The Russian church is the largest and most prominent and influential church in Orthodoxy, and it considers this man's religious and political views as sectarian, lunatic fringe nonsense. It is the church of the world's Orthodox superpower. Policy by papal money, US state department sergianism is rejected by the vast majority of Orthodox Christians and local churches. His friends are dwindling. The ep and the goa are irrelevant . I avoid parishes and jurisdictions which produce such people as I prefer being Orthodox and in good standing with the Church. The GOA, aside from its monasteries, tends not to cross that threshold into Orthodoxy. Renovationism and branch theory ecclesiology disguised as two lungs of the Church is not Orthodoxy. His GOA with his sectarian, renovationist model of eastern rite liberal mainstream Protestant denominationalism is demographically dying out and will be functionally dead in the next 30 years along with his Roman and Byzantine Catholic sister churches. Be Orthodox. That means rejecting everything sectarians like this man believe and stand for, including their partisanship for a very real antiChristian America.

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  9. But seriously, to all those converts praising Putin and Russian politics despising your own motherland, why won't you move there?

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    1. We are just telling the world that it is unOrthodox and unAmerican to herd 200+ protestors, protesting for democratic elections and the right of self determination, into trade union buildings then to ravage, to beat, to break, to rape them before dousing them and the building with accelerants and then setting them on fire as an act of ukrainian uniate ethnogenesis. Your swastika wearing Ukrainian exponents of red, white and blue uber alles did this for your Emperor Obama in Odessa on 02May2014. People who traffic in the politics of ethnogenesis by Kristallnacht have nothing to say to Orthodoxy, nor to America and Americans nor to V V Putin.

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    2. It is obscene that a liberal, colonialist pushing renovationism and the politics of genocide to wipe out democratic protests and stop democratic elections should in any way dare to sully Orthodoxy or America with his brown vision of jackboots and neopagan amorality. It is a pornographic eyesore.

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    3. So you agree with your Ukrainian Uniate banderofascists that the defeat of NAZI Germany was a global tragedy?

      This is the gist of your Renovationist, colonialist vision for a world forced to sing red, white, and blue uber alles?

      The lunatic fringe speaks in neo liberal.

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    4. It is obscene that a liberal, colonialist pushing renovationism and the politics of genocide to wipe out democratic protests and stop democratic elections should in any way dare to sully Orthodoxy or America with his brown vision of jackboots and neopagan amorality. It is a pornographic eyesore.

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  10. I am not a convert. Strike one. It is American democracy to criticize your government when it stops representing the people and starts representing itself and monied interests. Strike two. These posts are neither about me nor oathes of loyalty to red, white and blue uber alles. Strike three.

    Seems you don't get Orthodoxy, nor the role of liberty and citizen sovereignty in the system of American democracy, nor the role of Russian Orthodoxy and the reemergence of Orthodoxy to global prominence under Putin. Orthodoxy is stronger today than it has been in a century.

    Anyone who hates such things is neither American, not Orthodox, not a legitimate political interlocutor.

    What you seem to want to do is impose fascist loyalty oathes on people who refuse to live in your echo chambers which espouse renovationism, neohellenist spiritual and cultural bankruptcy and banderofascist ethnic cleansing while standing behind American colonialist banners and Uniate Galician SS nachtangel swastikas. Your very brown bathos ensconced in irrelevant western liberal inanity has outlived its shelf life.

    I am just taking out the garbage in homage to Thomas Jefferson.

    Your views and those of the likes of nobodies like demacopoulos are already parodies of themselves and are nothing more than the fading harbingers of the apostate renovationist fringe in the West.

    Crank up your renovationist organ and espouse apostate goa orthodoxism elsewhere. It is apostate and is not Orthodox.

    Go sing red, white and blue uber alles in your own NY Times ministry of truth echo chamber. But colonialist fascist afterbirth will neither dictate the future for Orthodoxy nor for anywhere else in the world nor even for an America in twilight. We are shouting your Babylon down!

    Fear your approaching day at Nuremberg. Pass that message on to renovationist - US State Dept. Sergianist dema-(dermo )-copoulos.

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