Orthodoxy, Culture, and the Public Square Group

Chairs:

Effie Fokas, American College of Greece (Athens, Greece)

Effie Fokas is Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Affairs at the American College of Greece (Athens). She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and a Research Associate of the London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory. Her background is in political science and she holds a PhD in political sociology from the London School of Economics. Her publications include Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence, co-edited with Aziz Al-Azmeh; Religious America, Secular Europe?, co-authored with Peter Berger and Grace Davie; The European Court of Human Rights and Minority Religions, co-edited with James T. Richardson; and over 60 articles and book chapters exploring religion in relation to politics, law, human rights, nationalism, and European identity.

Vasilios Makrides, University of Erfurt (Erfurt, Germany)

Vasilios N. Makrides (born 1961) is Professor of Religious Studies (specializing in Orthodox Christianity) at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Erfurt, Germany (since 1999). He has studied theology at the University of Athens (1979-1983) and religious studies, history of religions, and sociology of religion at Harvard University (1984-1986) and at the University of Tübingen (1986-1991). His main research interests are the comparative religious and cultural history and sociology of Orthodox Christianity; the religious and cultural relations between Eastern and Western Europe; and Orthodox Christianity and modernity.

Steering Committee:

Steven Christoforou, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (New York, New York, USA)
Christophe D’Aloisio, St. John the Theologian Institute (Brussels, Belgium)
Mihai-Dumitru Grigore, Leibniz Institute of European History (Maintz, Germany)
Smilen Markov, Veliko Turnovo University (Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria)
Alina Patru, University of Sibiu (Sibiu, Romania)

Vision Statement

It is well-known that religion and culture are deeply intertwined at numerous levels and constantly affect each other. On the one hand, core religious elements such as beliefs, rituals and moral codes may lead to the formation of a shared culture in a given society and thus contribute to the creation of a specific cultural identity and tradition for its members. On the other hand, culture may provide a meaningful frame for religious ideas and practices embedding faith into everyday life and public discourse. However, the interplay between religion and culture is not always smooth and free of tension, given that it does not necessarily presuppose order, coherence, and uniformity. In the context of (Western) secularization in modern times, it was attempted, for example, to dissociate culture from religion and to render culture, especially in its public forms, religiously more neutral. Furthermore, in the context of modern plural and multicultural societies, culture and the public domain were rendered more inclusive. The main idea was that culture should not be monopolized by one religion alone (e.g., Europe by Christianity), as this may affect social cohesion and broader integration. It is also possible that people may take part simultaneously in various cultures, given that hybridity and fluidity characterize the intersections between religion and culture to a large degree. The past of a given country may not necessarily be homogeneous from a religious or cultural point of view and free of any aberrations, a fact pointing to the often antinomical character of such heritage. Not accidentally, the construction of modern nation-states went hand in hand with the dissemination of respective discourses aimed at overcoming such ambiguities and dissonances. The possibility of a conflation or a separation between religion and culture (culturalization vs. deculturalization) also acquires a key significance here, given that such processes may generate various conflicts due to a weakening of specific religious identities or to the rise of essentialist tendencies and even to radicalization in view of an aspired purity and authenticity. The perennial debate here is whether to consider religion as a subset of culture or vice versa, a seemingly intractable problem to solve definitively. Yet, even as a subset of culture, religion may overlap or coincide in many cases with culture as whole, which is why the term “religious culture” may be pertinent. In the end, all this means that both religion and culture should not be approached as fixed categories in an essentialist and clear-cut way.

All this is particularly relevant for the case of Orthodox Christianity and its centuries-old interaction with various cultures. The culture-religion nexus in the Orthodox context ranges from the Eastern Christian appropriation of Hellenism in Late Antiquity through the immense wealth of cultural expressions (e.g., artistic, literary, ritualistic, architectural) in the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire to the variety of the local/national Orthodox Churches/Orthodoxies of today. It is not amiss to argue that local cultures have always mattered a great deal for Orthodox Christians, who have tended to apply methods of inculturation (including indigenization and vernacularization) in disseminating their religion. The Cyrillo-Methodian mission and its heritage are paradigmatic of the latter and led in the long run to the ethnogenesis of the Slavic peoples. However, in modern times we observe a gradually stronger culturalization of Orthodoxy in more exclusive terms and with elitist undertones, closely connected with specific local cultures (e.g., Greek, Russian). There also exist forms of a “cultural Orthodoxy”, which are devoid of any substantial attachment to Orthodoxy as a specific Christian tradition. As historical Orthodox societies have started to become more plural in terms of their composition, the challenge of multiculturalism was rendered in recent decades more than visible. In general, these developments have generated quite diverse responses, ranging from a decoupling of Orthodoxy and culture according to an eschatological perspective to rigorist/fundamentalist attitudes of religious and cultural exclusivity. Orthodoxy may still be officially and publicly recognized as a cornerstone for the historical formation of Orthodox peoples in Eastern and South Eastern Europe as well as in the Near East, yet recent developments caused by massive migration currents call for more inclusivity, despite the dominant and still influential Orthodox cultural repertoire. Moreover, the case of Orthodox Christians (including converts to Orthodoxy) in the worldwide diaspora (mostly in Western settings), usually having a minority status, is particularly instructive here, as these Orthodox are forced to coexist with other religions and cultures and articulate their Orthodox identity accordingly. Hence, the phenomenon of a more “global” or “cosmopolitan Orthodoxy”, detached from any particular culture, appears to be an emerging new trend in recent decades.

Furthermore, the fact that the interplay between religion and culture and its expressions can be observed publicly lead us to take into serious consideration the phenomenon of “public religions” as well, which has recently attracted a great deal of attention internationally. The public reemergence of religion was linked, among other things, to a reassessment of the old secularization paradigm, which had supported the ongoing privatization of religion and subsequently its absence from the public sphere. In reality, we are witnessing today the exact opposite trend—that is, the persistence or comeback of religion in the public domain, which scholars have tried to explain using fresh theoretical frames, such as the multiple modernities approach, the de-secularization concept, or the idea of post-secularity. In other words, religions, apart from being driven by their own motivations and goals, are urged by secular institutions and actors to be actively involved in the creation of viable future societal and cultural structures, either on a local or a transregional/transnational level. Hence, religions are called to promote tolerance, freedom, justice, and civil society more generally and to engage themselves in societal action and the provision of social welfare. Religious communities no longer remain confined to their own enclaves, but turn their attention outwards in becoming more public, open and influential in every respect.

Although the above discussions and debates initially pertained to developments within Western Europe and by extension within the broader Western world, where in fact the theory of secularization had been articulated in the first place, these fundamental changes gradually affected other cultural and religious spheres on a global scale including the manifold world of Orthodox Christianity. However, we should remain here aware of its numerous historical and local specificities across history. In Byzantium, for instance, the Orthodox Church was hardly a “private matter”, but remained always publicly visible and influential. This was due, among other things, to its close relationship with the political power, which had rendered such a strong public dimension of Orthodoxy unavoidable. During the communist period in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, where Orthodox Christianity had always had firm footholds, the Orthodox Church and other minority religions in general were massively discriminated against and persecuted, and were subsequently relegated to the private sphere. However, in the post-communist era, the opposite trend occurred: a strong and prominent reappearance of Orthodoxy in the public realm, which was sometimes accompanied by claims to control specific public domains, or even the entire cultural landscape—a process not devoid of various disagreements and conflicts. It appears then quite pertinent to examine closely the various “public” roles and phases of Orthodoxy and explore their background, contemporary features, and repercussions accordingly.

IOTA’s Orthodoxy, Culture and the Public Square Group aims at bringing together scholars using different theoretical and empirical perspectives to investigate critically and discuss historical cases, contemporary changes, and epistemic paradigms related to the broad domains outlined above. The Group intends to address Orthodoxy’s relations to culture and its public presence and representation, both historically and in the present, in an attempt to bring to light Orthodox local and transregional/transnational specificities that are crucial for a better understanding of the religious and cultural idiosyncrasies of the Orthodox world as a whole. For the IOTA Conferences, the Group will organize both pre-arranged sessions as well as open panels. We are open to a variety of scholarly perspectives with an innovative and multidisciplinary focus on any topic (historical and/or contemporary) related to the presence and relevance of Orthodox Christianity in both culture and the public sphere, as well as the consequences thereof. More specifically, scholars working in the fields of sociology, social anthropology, political science, history, theology, as well as religious, cultural, gender and postcolonial studies are encouraged to submit paper proposals. Papers comparing more than one Orthodox Church or theorizing on different facets of Orthodoxy’s engagement with culture and the public sphere, either historical or contemporary, are particularly welcome.