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.religion?

I’ve always been mystified by ICANN (the “Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers”), the US non-profit corporation that manages the internet. Somehow, and without governmental authority, ICANN has gotten users around the world to accept as authoritative its decisions on internet protocols and, in particular, “generic Top Level Domains,” or “gTLDs” — the familiar .com, .org, and .edu designations at the end of internet addresses. A good example of spontaneous ordering, I guess.

Anyway, this spring, ICANN invited proposals for new gTLDs. The organization is now taking public comments. Given the importance of religion on the web, it’s not surprising that many of the proposed new gTLDs involve religion, and that some of them are causing controversy. For example, the Vatican has requested that it receive a new gTLD, “.catholic.” Among the objectors to this proposal is Saudi Arabia, which points out that other Christian communions, for example, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, also refer to themselves as “Catholic”; the designation would thus create confusion. Actually,  Saudi Arabia has objected generally to new gTLDs that name particular religions – for example, “.islam,” – on the ground that no one entity should be able to claim the internet identity for an entire religion. It’s an interesting point. ICANN will accept comments on proposed gTLDs until September 26. (H/t: Christianity Today).

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Update: Pussy Riot Gets Two Years

An update on a story we’ve been following. A Russian court today convicted  three members of Pussy Riot, a punk band that stormed the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral last winter to perform a “punk prayer” to protest Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, of criminal hooliganism and sentenced them to two years in prison. By Western standards, it’s a harsh and disproportionate sentence. By way of comparison, when members of a group called ACT-UP disrupted a Mass at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989, they received only misdemeanor convictions and no jail time. Similarly, in June, a New York court convicted Occupy Wall Street protesters of trespassing on property owned by Trinity Church; again, only misdemeanor convictions and no jail time.

But Russia is different. Before we get all sanctimonious about how much better we are in the West, though, it’s worth reflecting on a couple of things. First, as I’ve written before, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has a sad history. The Communists dynamited the first version of the cathedral as part of an anti-Christian campaign in the 1930s, and Christians remain very sensitive about it. Notwithstanding the politicization and corruption in the Russian Orthodox Read more

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Pussy Riot and the Legacy of Persecution

This week in Moscow, trial began for Pussy Riot, the feminist punk band that stormed the main altar of Christ the Savior Cathedral last winter to perform a “punk prayer” protesting the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Vladimir Putin. (I wrote about the protest here). Prosecutors charged members of the band with “hoooliganism,” a crime that carries a seven-year prison term, and have detained them in prison for months. The long detention has created  sympathy for Pussy Riot among Western human rights campaigners and even among the Orthodox faithful, many of whom think the state has punished the protesters enough. This week, Vladimir Putin himself signaled that the state would show some leniency, telling reporters that he didn’t think the band “should be judged too harshly.”

It’s easy to dismiss the Pussy Riot prosecution as an example of typical Russian authoritarianism — the charge of “hooliganism,” so closely associated with Soviet “justice,” doesn’t help — and I’m sure that the Putin regime and its supporters in the Church hierarchy relished the chance to teach protesters a lesson. It’s not clear to me that authoritarianism completely explains things, though. Westerners may not understand the sensitivities that surround Christ the Savior Cathedral. The present building is, in fact, the second Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. The Communists dynamited the first in the 1930s as part of their campaign against the Orthodox Church (above); they replaced it with a public swimming pool. In the 1990s, with the help of donations from Orthodox faithful, the church was rebuilt, almost exactly as it was, in the same spot. The cathedral thus symbolizes for many believers the rebirth of Christianity in Russia after decades of brutal persecution. Pussy Riot has been punished enough; but the history of Christ the Savior Cathedral no doubt explains why so many Russians, even those who detest the Putin regime, resent the disrespect shown it.

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ECtHR’s Grand Chamber to Hear Romanian Church Autonomy Case

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights  has decided to review the judgment in Sindicatul Păstoral Cel Bun v. Romania, a significant church autonomy case. In the case, a group of Romanian Orthodox priests sought to register as a trade union. The Romanian Orthodox Church objected, arguing that registration would violate the Church’s autonomy, and a Romanian court agreed. In January, however, a  lower chamber of the ECtHR ruled that the European Human Rights Convention granted the priests a right to unionize even over their church’s objections (for details, see our discussion of the lower chamber’s reasoning).  Romania referred the lower chamber’s decision to the Grand Chamber, which has accepted the case. This is not the only important church autonomy case at the ECtHR these days. In May, a different chamber ruled, in Fernandez Martinez v. Spain, that the church autonomy principle allowed a Catholic bishop to fire a priest who had been teaching religion in Spanish schools. Here’s a press release about the Romanian case from the Becket Fund, which represents Romania and the Romanian Orthodox Church.

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“Pussy Riot,” Russian Feminist Punk Band, to Remain in Jail

I don’t know how many CLR Forum readers are following this story, but it’s a major news item in Russia and has drawn attention in the international human rights community as well. Last February, in a protest against Vladimir Putin, a Russian feminist punk band called “Pussy Riot” (above) stormed the altar at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and performed performed a”punk prayer” called “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out.” You can find the video on the internet; it’s pretty juvenile. Authorities arrested three members of the band for the crime of “hooliganism,” which carries a sentence of seven  years. They have been in jail since March. A Russian court today extended their pretrial detention for another six months, to January 2013. The imprisonment and prosecution has become a cause célèbre in Russia, pitting the Orthodox Church hierarchy, which resents the cathedral protest as a sacrilege, against liberals, who resent the Orthodox Church’s support for Putin and see the threatened punishment as arbitrary and extreme. Amnesty International has declared the members of Pussy Riot “prisoners of conscience.” Russians themselves are divided about the case. In a recent poll of Muscovites, half said they opposed the prosecution, but 36% approved.

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Sharp, “Orthodox Christians and Islam in the Postmodern Age”

In a dialogue between the West and Islam, Orthodox Christians can play a crucial role. Unlike Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox Christians have lived in Muslim societies in numbers for centuries. They suffer discrimination and sometimes outright persecution, but they still comprise the largest Christian communions  in the Middle East today. Orthodox Christians thus occupy a unique position that allows them to help interpret Islam for the West and the West for Islam. Andrew Sharp (Virginia Commonwealth University) has written a new book on the subject, Orthodox Christians in the Postmodern Age (Brill 2012), the latest in Brill’s ongoing series on Christian-Muslim relations. The publisher’s description follows.

The patristic, ecclesiological, and liturgical revival in the Orthodox Church has had a profound impact on world Orthodoxy and the ecumenical movement. Orthodox leaders have also contributed to the movement’s efforts in inter-religious dialogue, especially with Muslims. Yet this book is the first comprehensive attempt to assess an Orthodox ‘position’ on Islam. It explains why, despite being neighbors for centuries, relations between Orthodox Christians and Muslims have become increasingly complex as internal and external forces challenge their ability to understand each other and live in peace. It demonstrates how a growing number of Orthodox scholars and leaders have reframed the discussion on Islam, while endorsing and participating in dialogue with Muslims. It shows how a positive relationship with Muslims (and Islam in a general sense) is an essential aspect of Orthodox Christians’ historical past, present identity, and future aspirations.

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Walter Russell Mead on Religious Identity and the Eurozone

Over at Via Meadia, Walter Russell Mead has an insightful post on the issues of religious identity that surround Greece’s possible exit from the eurozone. One often hears Europe described, sometimes disparagingly, as a Christian club. That’s certainly how Muslim Turks see it. But it may be more correct to see Europe as a Western Christian, as opposed to an Eastern Christian, entity. Of the 17 eurozone members, only two, Greece and Cyprus, are historically Orthodox. Greece is on the brink of  ruin, and Cyprus’s economic fortunes are closely tied to Greece’s. Many Greeks feel intensely bitter about the way other European countries have treated it and do not seem to care too much about remaining in the eurozone. Many other Europeans apparently feel the same way about Greece. If Greece does exit the eurozone, Mead predicts, it will  find solidarity  in a relationship with a similarly alienated Orthodox country, Russia. Mead explains why:

Americans often don’t “get” the Russia-Greek connection. In Ottoman times, Orthodox Russia was the protector of Orthodox Christians in the great Islamic empire and frequently used its diplomatic clout to defend the rights of its co-religionists. Greece looked to Russia as a reliable ally during much of the troubled period after modern Greece gained independence from the Turks.

The feeling is reciprocal. Russia received the gospel from Greek Christians. The Russian tsars married into the Byzantine royal house; the word tsar (or czar) is the Russian form of Caesar, indicating the strong Russian sense that Orthodox Moscow, after the fall of Constantinople, was the “Third Rome.” Much of modern Russian identity and sense of a unique place in the world is wrapped up in its civilizational connection with Byzantine culture and religion.

Mount Athos, the center of Orthodox monasticism and the spiritual heart of Greece, looms large in Russia. No less a person than President Vladimir Putin has made pilgrimages to this site.

In the 1990s, the late Samuel Huntington wrote a controversial book, The Clash of Civilizations, which discussed, among other things, the Orthodox/Western fault line that runs through Eastern Europe. At the time, Huntington’s work was dismissed as reductive, even offensive, particularly by some Orthodox, who resented the suggestion that they weren’t fully part of Western culture. Shared religious identity really does matter, however, and Huntington was surely on to something, as Mead’s analysis of the present situation demonstrates.

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Valliere, “Conciliarism”

Where does authority lie in the Christian church? Who has the ultimate say on canons and doctrine? These questions have preoccupied Christianity pretty much from the beginning, and one traditional answer has been the “ecumenical council,” a collection of bishops from around the world who convene to consider disputes about theology and practice. The most famous such council was the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., which fixed the date for Easter and issued the historical Christian creed that bears its name. (The council was called by a pagan emperor, Constantine, a fact that itself opens the door to interesting questions about church-state relations). Human nature being what it is, Christians fairly quickly fell into debate about which councils were in fact ecumenical and binding. For Oriental Orthodox Christians, there have been three, the latest of which convened in the fifth century; for Eastern Orthodox, there have been seven, the latest of which convened in the eighth century; for Catholics, there have been 21, the latest of which, Vatican II, ended only in 1965. Protestant Christians, who have a much looser concept of the church, typically do not vest the councils with as much importance.

All of this is background for what looks to be an interesting new book by Butler Professor Paul Valliere, Conciliarism: A History of Decision-Making in the Church (Cambridge 2012). The publisher’s description follows:

Conciliarism is one of the oldest and most essential means of decision-making in the history of the Christian Church. Indeed, as a leading Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann states, ‘Before we understand the place and the function of the council in the Church, we must, therefore, see the Church herself as a council.’ Paul Valliere tells the story of councils and conciliar decision-making in the Christian Church from earliest times to the present. Drawing extensively upon the scholarship on conciliarism which has appeared in the last half-century, Valliere brings a broad ecumenical perspective to the study and shows how the conciliar tradition of the Christian past can serve as a resource for resolving conflicts in the Church today. The book presents a conciliarism which involves historical legacy, but which leads us forward, not backward, and which keeps the Church’s collective eyes on the prize – the eschatological kingdom of God.

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Paris Mayor Opposes New Cathedral

Bernard Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, this week expressed his opposition to a proposed Russian Orthodox Cathedral on the banks of the Seine near the Eiffel Tower. According to Reuters’s FaithWorld blog, Delanoe’s opposition has nothing to do with religion. He simply thinks the proposed design of the cathedral, with onion-shaped domes and a wavy glass roof, lacks éclat. The design is “mediocre architecture conceived in haste,” he complains. France gave its approval for the project two years ago — “without the agreement of the city of Paris,” Delanoe notes — and Delanoe seems to lack authority to stop it now. In fact, he’s asking for UNESCO, the UN body that granted protected “World Heritage Site” status to the Seine riverbank,  to intervene “so that no permission” for construction “can be given without the endorsement of international experts.” Wonder if France has a version of RLUIPA.

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Blitt on the Secular Influence of the Russian Orthodox Church

Robert C. Blitt (University of Tennessee College of Law) has posted Whither Secular Bear: The Russian Orthodox Church’s Strengthening Influence on Russia’s Domestic and Foreign Policy. The abstract follows.

As 2012 presidential elections in Russia draw near, evidence points to a collapse in that country’s constitutional obligation of secularism and state-church separation. Although early signs of this phenomenon can be traced back to the Yeltsin era, the Putin and Medvedev presidencies have dealt a fatal blow to secular state policy manifested both at home and abroad, as well as to Russia’s constitutional human rights principles including nondiscrimination and equality of religious beliefs.
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