Pandemic Bringing Russian Orthodox Fundamentalism to the Fore, Chaplin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 29 – The Kremlin is so accustomed to the loyalty of church hierarchs that is has long assumed that they speak for the entire Russian Orthodox Church, Sergey Chaplin says; but the pandemic has brought to the fore something neither they nor the patriarchate wants to face.

            Many in the church, both clergy and laity, view the state and the Moscow Patriarchate as having betrayed the basic principles of the faith and now are presenting themselves as an increasingly powerful movement of Orthodox fundamentalists, a development neither the state nor the church know how to deal with (carnegie.ru/commentary/82167).

            Patriarch Kirill isn’t willing to risk challenging the fundamentalists too openly because his own position is now very weak, and the Kremlin hasn’t yet figured out even how to define a church which it has assumed is its ideological partner as something else, a force that contains many who oppose everything it does, the specialist on the Orthodox Church says.

            Because some Orthodox fundamentalists have now directly attacked Vladimir Putin, neither Kirill nor the Kremlin can put off for long some response. Kirill is trying to temporize, Chaplin says; but the rise of the fundamentalists may prompt the regime to cut its subsidies to the ROC MP especially in this time of budgetary stringency. 

            “The revolt of the monastery in the Urals and its withdrawal from subordination to the official Church was unexpected both for the Orthodox community and for Russian society as a whole,” he says. The church is used to moving slowly, but the pandemic forced it to speed up – and its steps to protect against the pandemic sparked outrage among the fundamentalists.

            Despite the wisdom and temporary nature of the Patriarchate’s decision to suspend church services, the conservative fundamentalists in the church were outraged. Almost all monasteries ignored the patriarchate order as did many bishops and priests. The result: at least 73 priests and an unknown number of parishioners have died from the infection.

            It would be hard to specify what the fundamentalists think if it were not for the frequent statements by their leaders, Chaplin says.  But at present, it centers on three issues: opposition to any restrictions on church activities during the pandemic, conspiracy thinking about the origins of the coronavirus, and what Chaplin calls “magical fundamentalism.”

            What makes the current upsurge in fundamentalism among the Orthodox is that it is not so much political as was opposition to autocephaly for Ukraine but rather narrowly religious and even “theological.”  That makes it harder for the Patriarchate to deal with and more opaque to the Kremlin.

            The fundamentalists’ other trump card is what can be called “magical fundamentalism,” the conviction that those who keep going to church as the church has typically required will be protected from the infection. That wins them broader support in addition to their traditional anti-Western and anti-modernist views. 

            Following the death of Schiarchimandrite Pyotr on June 5, Shiigumen Sergiy became the effective leader of the movement. A charismatic figure with a complicated background (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/06/russian-church-elder-challenging-both.html), Sergiy rapidly put the Patriarchate in an almost impossible position.

            In addition to attacking Kirill for his policies on the pandemic, the shiigumen condemned the Russian state for fighting against God and even declared it was “creating in Russia ‘a fascist concentration camp of Satan.”  The church had to react: it banned him from preaching, but he ignored that. Then it called him to face a church court, but he has now ignored that too.

            Sergiy knows he has widespread support not only among ordinary believers but also among many prominent media figures and so is unlikely to back down.

            This means, Chaplin says, that there are currently “two big questions” the answers to which are not yet clear.  The first is addressed to the Church: How can so many views exist within the clergy and the faithful?  And the second to the secular powers that be: what should the state do if the Patriarchate doesn’t ensure the church will always support the state?

            The church doesn’t want to deal with the problem of fundamentalism within its ranks, preferring to talk only about fundamentalism in Islam or “’fundamentalism in general.’”  Given Kirill’s weakened position, Chaplin says, this is the worst possible time for the hierarchy to try to respond.

            But at present, the state doesn’t have an answer as to what it should do with the church either. It values the church when it backs the regime, but it certainly won’t continue to do so if large parts of the church are now increasingly hostile to what the Kremlin is saying and doing, Chaplin concludes.