Serbs fear for the destruction of medieval churches and monasteries, but when Bishop Artemije of Raska and Prizren called in February for up-to-date weapons and volunteers from Russia, he was exemplifying something peculiarly Orthodox -- the church's identification with the nation.
Asked by the Glas javnosti ('Voice of the public') tabloid whether his fire and brimstone was too strong for a man of the cloth, Artemije condemned the Orthodox hierarchy for adopting an 'anaemic' position on Kosovo, which he attributed to His Holiness Patriarch Pavle's incapacity. Yet he is not the only Orthodox clergyman to stand up for the nationalist cause recently:
Georgian Orthodox Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II asserted Georgia's rights in Abkhazia and South Ossetia on Palm Sunday.
Georgian Orthodox Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II asserted Georgia's rights in Abkhazia and South Ossetia on Palm Sunday.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II called on April 9 for mutual support between Russian diplomats and priests abroad.
The Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate has processed against NATO in Kiev (Ukraine also has a rival autocephalous church under the Kiev Patriarchate).
Such intertwining of church and state is an eastern tradition going back to Constantine the Great. In Russia, the identification, strong under the tsars, but shaken by communism, is making a comeback.
Metropolitan Kirill, a Russian orthodox bishop, said recently that opponents of the church were people 'who don't love Russia'. Those who vandalised an anti-religious art exhibition in Moscow in 2003 were acquitted; thereupon, artist Anna Mikhalchuk, who appears to have committed suicide recently after moving to Berlin, was tried for inciting religious hatred. The Federal Security Service, which as the KGB persecuted the church and had senior clerics as informers, now has its own church in Moscow -- St Sofia of God's Wisdom, off Lubyanka Square.
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