Western observers frequently accuse the Orthodox Church of legitimating the Putin regime in exchange for wealth and privilege. Not long before presidential elections in March 2011, Patriarch Kirill described Putin's rule as a miracle of God. Several months later, the state imposed stiff prison sentences on members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot, after they entered Christ the Saviour Cathedral to protest the church's unholy alliance with the state. The state has introduced religious education in the public schools, provided property for new church buildings and invited hierarchs to bless army troops and national security agents. Everywhere, the constitutional wall between church and state seems to be falling.
Irina Papkova's new book cautions us not to jump to premature conclusions. Carefully analysing events from 1995–2008, Papkova demonstrates that the church achieved almost none of its legislative goals at the federal level. Even the 1997 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, which restricted the work of Western evangelical missionaries, was less a result of church lobbying than of a popular turn against the West after the economic and political confusion of the Yeltsin years. In other areas, such as religious education in the public schools, the state took firm stances against church interests.
Particularly valuable is Papkova's refusal to treat the Orthodox Church as monolithic. While the Patriarchate has represented traditionalists who favour cooperation with the Putin state, a small group of liberals has quietly supported democratic transformation of Russian society. Meanwhile, Orthodox fundamentalists have loudly protested sexual immorality in the media, and artistic blasphemy such as the 2003 ‘Caution, Religion!’ exhibition in Moscow's Sakharov Centre, but have been no more successful than the traditionalists in winning legislative support.
Papkova argues that the church has limited political influence because few Russians, even if they call themselves Orthodox, are guided by church pronouncements. What does warrant further attention, says Papkova, is the way in which the church since the fall of communism has given many Russians a sense of national identity and historic destiny, while helping Putin legitimate his own pretensions to greatness.
Papkova is a political scientist responding to Western perceptions of church and state in Russia. Her book would be helpfully complemented by studies of how the Orthodox Church understands its theology of mission. Of particular significance is the cult of the new martyrs, those who died for their faith under communism. They remind the church that Christian faith always stands in tension with social norms and state interests. A figure like St Elizabeth (Romanova), sister of the last Czarina, unites Orthodox liberals, traditionalists and fundamentalists in her example of prayer and self-giving love to those on the margins of society.
The church has advanced major initiatives in social work, such as model programmes of care for the elderly and rehabilitation of drug addicts. In cities like Moscow and St Petersburg hundreds of new parishes are being established. Church-based religious education has become a major priority, including catechesis of parents who want their children baptised, and establishment of Orthodox schools and universities. Legislative activity is only one part of a larger programme to re-Christianise Russian society.
Papkova's book will help us ask better questions about the church's prospects for shaping national identity in a Russia which honours Orthodoxy while keeping its distance. The most important question for the church, however, has become not legislative influence but rather how to draw Russians into the church and its eucharistic life.
