Nationalism and Religion in Post-Soviet Russian Civil Society: An Inquiry into the 1997 Law “On Freedom of Conscience” (Part I)

What will be the contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church to the creation of a civil society in post-Soviet Russia?  Much depends on whether the Russian Orthodox Church is a nationalist institution.  On the one hand, if the Russian Orthodox Church is in fact a nationalist institution, then its contribution to a democratic civil society will be negative; on the other hand, if the Russian Orthodox Church is not a nationalist institution, then its contribution to civil society can be a positive one.

Of course, the answer to this question depends upon how one defines nationalism.  Rather than relying on a popular definition of nationalism (e. g. demonstrating unqualified support or loyalty to one’s own nation as opposed to other nations or supranational institutions),  I have decided to use Eric Voegelin’s definition: nationalism is a fundamental re-orientation of man’s and society’s spiritual condition that mistakes the mundane for the divine.  It is an attempt to remake the world into man’s own image.  Voegelin’s definition of nationalism as well as his methodology allows us to explore the issues that “modernization theory” is unable to address.  It also gives us the opportunity to examine empirical phenomena via Voeglin’s “new science,” something which few academic works have attempted to do.

There are also practical consequences to determining whether the Russian Orthodox Church is “nationalist.”  Since the collapse of communism, the Russian Orthodox Church has been the only nation-wide institution which the Russian people have continually trusted.^[1] Political parties of all stripes as well as social institutions such as the media have failed to capture the confidence of the Russian people.^[2]  Given this high degree of trust from the people, what does the Russian Orthodox Church plan to do with it?  More importantly, how will the future direction of church-state relations impact the development of a civil society?

The recent passage of the “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” legislation, which in essence made the Russian Orthodox Church the de facto state religion, may be a harbinger of what the Russian Church might do.  The new statute clearly violated human rights as guaranteed by the new Russian Constitution and Russia’s international agreements.^[3] Nevertheless, Yeltsin signed the legislation into law in September 1997 over the objections of international human right groups, Pope John Paul II, and the United States Senate.  The Russian Orthodox Church was quickly derided by its critics, both within Russia and abroad, as a “nationalist institution.”  Supporters of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, argued that the “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” legislation was merely a return to an older Byzantine conception of symphonia, or harmony, between church and state, what in the Western parlance might be termed as “accommodationist.”^[4]

In order to determine whether the Russian Orthodox Church is nationalist, a scholarly analysis is required that not only provides an adequate definition of nationalism but is also sensitive to the historical, cultural, and theological context of the Church.  Without an awareness to these concerns, scholars may apply a priori definitions, concepts, and theories to the empirical phenomena which they are studying and thereby arrive at dubious conclusions about the role and function of the Church in post-Soviet Russian society.

Modernization Theory

One of the most prominent explanations of nationalism is modernization theory.^[5] It states that the political development of all societies follows a single path towards modernity that is characterized by “structural differentiation,” “cultural secularization,” and “nationalism.”  Structural differentiation is the bureaucratization, rationalization, and specialization of functions of people and institutions; while cultural secularization is the process whereby individuals become increasingly rational, analytical, and empirical in their political action.  Nationalism, for its part, is the process by which people understand themselves as a nation and therefore demand a sovereign state.  At the center of nationalism is the idea of the nation, which is said to embofy: the traditional, implicit, and unquestioned values of a community–itself acting as the irrational limitation of cultural secularization.^[6]  Modernization theory therefore defines modernity as a rationally-ordered society that is planned according to specialized, rational, and bureaucratized designs that holds an irrational value, the nation, as its primary principle of self-identification.

The persistent existence of religious institutions in the modern world, however, have caused some scholars to revise the modernization thesis into a “deprivatization” one: religious institutions re-enter the public sphere to “defend their traditional turf” and “to participate in the very struggles to define . . . private and public spheres,” after years of being marginalized to the outskirts of society.^[7]  Religious institution are not viewed as spiritual or symbolic entities; rather, they are power structures that mask socio-economic interests:

“religion is relevant to politics only as a surrogate for some other form of ‘real’ social conflict.  For example, the religion of a low status group may simply reflect the correlation between the pattern of religious affiliation and socio-economic status.”^[8]

Religion, however, is not merely a “surrogate for the social disadvantage.”^[9]  People of higher socio-economic status, for example, could share religious symbols and beliefs that supported the regime.

According to these thinkers, religion’s persistent existence is not because it appeals to man’s spiritual or symbolic nature, but because it has preserved in the modern world a society’s  cultural beliefs, practices, and rituals. ^[10] These beliefs, practices, and rituals in turn have a practical effect within society.^[11]  In other words, religion is not beneficial for its own sake but for its instrumental use to the regime:

“Religion is not merely a set of ‘beliefs’ about a ‘world beyond’ but also, and perhaps more important, a set of beliefs about how the present world should be organized, what the relations of hierarchy in society should be, and what the nature of authority and law is.  Liturgy and ritual are less important for their own sake than as occasion for the reaffirmation by a community of the authority . . . leaders.”^[12]

Since religion preserves a society’s cultural beliefs, practices, and rituals, they can provide the basis for a common citizenship.  If a religious body possesses “doctrinal unity of the whole mass of the faithful,” then “religion, or a particular church, [can] maintain its community of faithful.”^[13] The state for its part then would absorb “the Church in order to better preserve its monopoly with the support of that zone of ‘civil society’ which the Church represents.”^[14]  Religion is valued for its political instead of moral or spiritual use.

The contribution of the modernization theorists is their focus on the structures and processes of political reality.  However, these scholars are unable to explain how and why structures and processes coalesced around the idea of the nation.  They also do not  consider whether the structures and processes themselves change as a new social, cultural, and political context emerges.  Finally, these scholars assume a priori that these structures and processes must fulfill some teleological end in history.  The historical configuration of the modernization theory presuppose a rupture between the traditional and modern world.  Unfortunately, this philosophy of history is only posited to us.  It is never proven.

Although structures and processes are important factors in the explanation of nationalism, modernization theorists do not take seriously the role that religion itself may play as a primary cause of nationalism.^[15]  Religion is conceptualized by these thinkers as a passing phase of history or as an instrumental tool used by political elites.  It is never examined on its own terms.  Eric Voegelin’s “new science” of politics can remedy this deficiency because it  takes religion seriously, i.e., as a primary cause, in the explanation of nationalism.  This is particularly required in examining post-Soviet Russian society because of the political potency of Russian nationalism.  If the Russian Orthodox Church is nationalist, then, given its popularity, such a situation bodes ill for a strong, democratic civil society.  On the other hand, if the Russian Orthodox Church is not nationalist, then it may be able to provide an alternative political symbol to Russian nationalism in the creation of a democratic civil society.

Eric Voegelin’s “New Science” of Politics

Eric Voegelin begins his “theory of consciousness”, to explain how man understands the world, by adopting “process theology.”  According to this “process theology,” man participates in various levels of being (inorganic, vegetative, animalic, and divine) with the most important one being his relationship to the divine.  When man encounters divine reality within his consciousness (“inner illumination”), he attempts to translate this experience into an existential order by creating symbols: “the attempt of making the essentially unknowable order of being intelligible as far as possible through the creation of symbols which interpret the unknown by analogy with the reality, or supposedly known.”^[16] These symbols appeal to other people’s consciousnesses (“inner illuminations”) that result in the formation of a political unit–based upon shared symbolism.

With respect to Christianity, Voegelin argued that only those symbols which are non-gnostic (non-nationalist/universal) are valid symbols of right order.  A gnostic is a person who claims absolute certain knowledge of the fundamental principles of reality (while maintaining, however, that this fundamental knowledge cannot be accessed by all individuals, only by a certain few), thereby committing violence to the truth that man ultimately cannot know the mystery of being.  Gnostic movements such as nationalism, which divide people into “us” and “them” on non-objective and unknowable criteria, are characterized by a Manichean obsession with a worldly evil that can be blamed on social disorganization rather than original sin and by a conviction that salvation from the evils of existence can be achieved in one’s lifetime through a historical process dictated by human actions, i.e., historical agents who possess gnosis, a certain knowledge, to guide correct action.^[17]  Voegelin does not believe such a transformation could ever occur, so he regards all gnostic movements, visions, and symbols as magical or delusionary.

The evaluation of a society’s symbols is not merely a scholar’s subjective opinion; rather, symbols are evaluated according to a philosophy of consciousness that has a proper procedure:

“Theory is not just any opining about human existence in society; it rather is an attempt at formulating the meaning of existence by explicating the content of a definite class of experiences.  Its argument is not arbitrary but derives its validity from the aggregate of experiences to which it must permanently refer for empirical control.”^[18]

The political scientist must search for those experiences and symbols that “are amenable to theorization as an intelligible succession of phases in a historical process” so that “the order of history emerges from the history of order.”^[19] The accumulation of these symbols of order becomes the “datum of human experiences” which consists of “God and man, world and society [that] form a primordial community of being.”^[20]   With this datum of human experiences acting as an empirical control, the political scientist is able to evaluate the symbols of order.

The task of the political scientist therefore is to evaluate the symbols by comparing them with a society’s historical culmination of symbols of order (non-gnostic) and disorder (gnostic).  The search for a society’s datum of human experiences is not a scholar’s subjective selection of a society’s symbols; rather, he must attempt to reconstruct the consciousness of political actors who have engage in the symbol-making process.  By examining their situation, behavior, and self-interpretations, the political scientist is able to infer the motives and experiences of the political actors and thereby the symbols that they have created.  Thus, the reconstruction of consciousness requires not only reliance upon written records and cultural familiarity, but imagination, wit, and sensitivity to a society’s historical context.

Unfortunately, this methodology does not guarantee absolute certainty in its results because the experiences, thoughts, and passions of men cannot be rigorously demonstrated.  However, Voegelin’s “new science” is not a substitution of subjective opinion for reasoned investigation.  By using his own and the reader’s experiences as a point of reference, the political scientist is able to consider several alternative explanations in his analysis.  In the reconstruction of a political actor’s consciousness, the political scientist hopefully will be able to determine which explanation seems to be the most feasible to him and to the reader.  Instead of relying upon mathematical models and quasi-experiments, Voegelin’s “new science” of politics asks for introspection about our  knowledge of human nature to determine, in this instance, whether the Russian Orthodox Church is nationalist.

Notes

^[1]  According to a recent poll conducted by the ROMIR research group, 66% of Russians trust the Russian Orthodox Church, while only 25% of the respondents trust the judiciary (with 33% completely distrusting it) and 6% trust the media (with 16% completely distrusting it).  Only President Putin scored higher than the Church at 72%.  Alexander Porfiryev, “Russians Believe Putin, the Church and Nobody Else,” RIA Novosti, 5 January 2001, 1.

^[2]  “Russians Trust Putin, Not Courts,” ITAR-TASS, January 3, 2001, 1.

^[3]  Boris Yeltsin, “The President Appeals to Russian Citizens in Connection With His Rejection of the Federal Law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations’”  Rossiiskiye vesti, 24 July 1997, sec. A, 1.

^[4]  ”Yeltsin Signs Religion Law.”  RFE/RL Newsline.  Washington D.C.: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc., 2000.  Archives on-line.  Available from http:/www.rfrel.org.  Accessed 27 March 2000.

^[5]  Although the inspiration for many of the current works about nationalism stem from the Germanic nineteenth century thinkers, Marx, Weber, and Durhkeim themselves only make fleeting references to phenomenon.  Marx understood nationalism as a secondary manifestation of man’s alienation from the workplace, while Weber never analyzed nationalism, though he thought it was not economically-motivated but was derived from “sentiments of prestige from historical attachments of power-positions.”  Differing from both Marx and Weber was Durkheim who conceived of nationalism as the state’s re-creation of a communitarian ideal after it had broken society’s sub-national and trans-national loyalties.  Marx, K. and Engels.  The German Ideology: Part I in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. R. C. Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), 159; Weber, M.  Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 921-925; Durkheim, E.  The Division of Labour in Society, trans. G. Simpson (New York: Free Press, 1933).

For twentieth century theories about nationalism that borrow from Durkheim’s modernization thesis, please refer to the following works: E. B. Haas, “What is Nationalism and Why Should We Study It?”  International Organizations 40 (Summer 1986), 707-44; Deutsch, K. W.  Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundation of Nationality (New York: MIT and John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1953); Fishman. Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays.  (Rowley: Newbury House Publishers, 1972); Fukuyama, F.  The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); Gellner, E.  Thought and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Gellner, E.  Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Lipset, Seymour M. and Stein Rokkan.  Party Systems and Voters Alignments: Cross-national Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967); Seers, D.  The Political Economy of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Seton-Watson, H.  Nation and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and Politics of Nationalism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977).

All these scholars claim that nationalism is a process embedded in a universal tendency towards industrialism and modernism.  Presumably, once a society has become modern, the idea of the nation itself eventually will dissolve under the pressures of rationality.  Other scholars, however, point out that nationalism remains a potent force in the world in spite of the “historical inconsistencies” of an ever-increasingly modern and therefore rational world.  Fukuyama, F.  The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); Hobsbawn, E. J.  Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, and reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Tonybee, Arnold J.  A Study of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1934-1954).

^[6]  Weber, M.  Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).

^[7]  Casanova, Jose.  Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 5-6.

^[8]  Wald, Kenneth D.  Crosses on the Ballot: Patterns of British Voter Alignment Since 1885 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 118.

^[9]  Ibid., 163.

^[10]  Chupungco, J.  Cultural Adaption of the Liturgy (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 78-79.

^[11]  David D. Laitin, “Religion, Political Culture and the Weberian Tradition,” World Politics, 30 (1978): 563-92;  Michael Parenti, “Political Values and Religious Cultures: Jews, Catholics, and Protestants,” Journal for Scientific Study of Religion 6 (1967): 259-69;  Wald, Kenneth D.  Crosses on the Ballot: Patterns of British Voter Alignment Since 1885 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).

^[12]  Pedro Ramet, “The Interplay of Religious Policy and Nationalities Policy in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” in Religion and Nationalism in the Soviet and East European Politics, Pedro Ramet, ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984), 3.

^[13]  Gramsci, Antonio.  Selections from Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith, eds. and trans. (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 328; also see 170.

^[14]  Ibid., 245.

^[15]  It is true that the above-mentioned scholars account for religion in their theory of nationalism, but none of them assign it a primary cause or the main psychological determinant in nationalism.  Those scholars who do study religion do so in the context of political legitimacy, i.e., “power politics.”  They completely neglect the symbolic and spiritual component the religious institutions and movements.  Huntington, S.  The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996); Ramet, S.  Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

^[16]  Voegelin, Eric.  Order and History I: Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 5.

^[17]  Voegelin, Eric.  Science, Politics, and Gnosticism: Two Essays (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1968), 86-87.

^[18]  Ibid., 64.

^[19]  Ibid., 1; Voegelin, Eric.  Order and History I: Israel and Revelation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), ix.

^[20]  Ibid., 1.