Russian Orthodox Fundamentalists Undermining Patriarch Kirill, Sergey Chaplin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 4 – The system of church administration Patriarch Kirill created is collapsing, Sergey Chaplin says. Part of this reflects the unexpected pressures from the pandemic which have split the church and spread infections throughout the clergy and hierarchs, but a larger part reflects the increasing power of Orthodox fundamentalists within the church.

            The growing influence of the fundamentalists helps to explain why Kirill did not act as his counterparts did when the coronavirus pandemic began and stopped church services to slow the spread of the diseases, the editor of the Christian culture journal Dary explains (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2020/05/01/1841490.html).

            Kirill was afraid to challenge the fundamentalists head on over this issue and deferred to his bishops, but the result has been that while Catholic priests in Italy died ministering to the ill, Orthodox priests in Russia died while continuing to hold services – and they not unimportantly spread the disease to others.

            While this has been going on, Kirill has not appeared in public and rumors are flying that “he too is ill,” Chaplin says. “Who is running the ROC MP today? There remains the young Bishop Savva (Tututnov), [but] the synod is not assembling.” After all, “it has already been a decorative organ for a long time.”

            As a result, there remain “unresolved problems in church practice and on ethnical and theological issues.  The church has displayed social irresponsibility by giving complete freedom to the actions of the Orthodox fundamentialists,” a “complex and poorly studied phenomenon,” the religious affairs journalist says.

            “Orthodox fundamentalism … has again appeared in the last five year,” Chaplin says. “Patriarch Kirill is afraid of them and from the very beginning of his patriarchate he has played with them and attempted to find the basis for relations. Ten years ago, the patriarch assigned the late Father Vsevolod Chaplin to deal with the church rightists and fundamentalists.”

            “But now there aren’t any more such curators from the patriarchate, and [the fundamentalists’ act more independently and actively.”  They aren’t of course “a single movement,” but they share many ideas and thus one is justified in speaking of them as a trend in church life.

            The core of their position is “the unchanging nature of church tradition,” Chaplin says. “Fundamentalists view all church practices as something established once and for all, completed, and set in stone, and which must be preserved without any change or development” regardless of how small or how long they have actually been in place.

            According to the editor, “groups of Orthodox fundamentalists exist throughout Russia. Probably the epidemic is giving them the chance to spread their views more publicly as they are actively using social networks and working with multi-media content,” far more often and effectively than is the established church.

            But what might be called “’the fundamentalist intelligentsia’” is “not the biggest problem,” Chaplin continues. “Much more dangerous are the fundamentalist monks, especially in the large monasteries.” They not only affect many believers but also priests and church hierarchs, most of whom sprung from their ranks.

            “The harsh vertical” Kirill had put in place “is ceasing to work,” and that raises the question as to whether the patriarchate will be able to reestablish control over the fundamentalists or whether in the absence of such control there will be a serious split against which Kirill at least will be powerless to act.