Essays on Orthodox Christianity and Church History
Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine Tradition
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[This
interview between Fr. Leonid and Fr. John Shimchick (JW) took place on
June 25, 1999.]
JW: Your editorials in The Orthodox Church over the past year and your commencement
address at St. Vladimir’s Seminary have featured positive words in
describing the possibilities for Orthodoxy at this time in history. You
have spoken about the opportunities for an Orthodox "response,"
"contribution," "civic responsibility," and "engagement
with culture." It would seem that this century has probably been
the first in which there has, in fact, been any significant Orthodox engagement
with Western culture. Would you, first of all, comment on what you would
see as some of the patterns and lessons we can learn from the Orthodox
engagement with Western culture to this point and what might be some of
the possibilities for the future.
Fr Leonid: When we speak of Orthodox engagement with the
West in this century being more significant we probably mean, the "diaspora."
I think that there is a longer-range perspective. For example, in some
real ways obviously the Church of Russia before the Communist Revolution
of 1917 was, in a fashion, engaged in an encounter with Western culture.
And I think this encounter has even been recognized by the West. For example,
no one would speak about world literature without speaking about Dostoevsky
or Tolstoy. So there has been in that sense a profound encounter which
was aborted in the framework of the Communist Revolution, the persecution
of the Church, the marginalization of Christianity in Russia. And then
the encounter of Russia with Communism was, in a certain sense, an encounter
with the West, since the ideology of Marxism is rooted in Western development
– that’s very complicated, but bears consideration.
What is new in the so-called "diaspora" is that Orthodox
churches and communities are living as minorities in Western contexts.
Therefore we have been drawn into the encounter with the West willy-nilly,
simply as a matter-of-fact. But the responses to this fact are different.
Some of the responses are self-isolating, with Orthodox communities withdrawing
into themselves. Ethnic and sometimes religious identity takes on the
character of self-preservation, and the necessary encounter with the West
is neglected or forgotten. Other elements of the encounter have been expressed,
manifested, and illustrated by such theologians and writers as Frs. Schmemann
and Meyendorff and others. In Western Europe and America our encounter
with the West is a direct encounter, a daily and unavoidable conversation
and debate. It is, I believe, an imperative of our mission not to fear
this encounter and debate. Our encounter with the West should be a source
of missionary energy and intellectual vigor for us.
Now I think the jury is still out what will we be able to accomplish
along this line. Fr. Schmemann wrote his articles on the various crises
in Orthodoxy back in the 1960's. Clearly there are crises facing us that
are spiritual, liturgical, canonical, and these crises have a specific
dimension in the so called, "diaspora" context. When we try
to be fully faithful to the Orthodox inheritance, obviously there are
two ways to go: One is very inward-looking and, in a sense, entering into
a ghetto voluntarily. Another is to engage the civilization of the West
and do it in a living way. We have both of those responses occurring right
now.
JW: Are there certain things that we as Orthodox have to
offer at this time in history? Are there things that we have to say that
are not being heard, that are not being expressed by anyone else?
Fr. Leonid: My presentation at the Commencement was, I think,
reaching toward an answer to that question. It seems to me that today’s
Western civilization is very prone to thinking of itself as a world and
universal civilization. And therefore, whatever it thinks, whatever it
does, whatever it writes, whatever values it has are seen as universal,
by definition. In reality, of course, even if we look at its Christian
dimension, the West very often in practical terms is simply ignorant of
Eastern Christianity. So there is a presumption that the West is equivalent
to universality, but in reality that universality is very much attenuated,
it’s a very partial and selective thing.
What we have to offer in the context of world Christianity is an
insistence on the wholeness of the Tradition, the integrity of the Christian
Tradition in history - meaning both East and West. In my presentation
at St. Vladimir’s, I also pointed out that we Orthodox have our own
demons - religious and ethnic tribalisms - which drive us into our own
particularisms, undermining our witness to Catholicity. To put it another
way: America and the West are very much prone to the arrogance of power
right now. I do think that we also are prone to a kind of triumphalism
as Orthodox. We need, spiritually, to be very aware of that temptation
because arrogance and triumphalism are not the way of the Gospel. The
integrity of the Tradition is meaningless if the integrity of the Gospel
is not fully kept.
Yet, in today’s Orthodox debates, any word of caution about
triumphalism is heard by many as advocacy of relativism, as advocacy of
"branch" theories of ecclesiology, as betrayal of the Orthodox
Tradition. But this is certainly not what I have in mind. Clearly, there
is a way of witnessing to the fullness, the integrity, the Catholicity
of the Orthodox Church and not at all falling into relativism and other
reductionisms or into arrogance. Our witness can be given in a way that
has evangelical integrity. To be Orthodox is to be rooted in the Gospel
- which means to have charity and generosity, affirming whatever is right
wherever you find it, affirming Christ - wherever Christ is encountered.
JW: I’m wondering why, despite your own efforts and those of the Serbian
bishops and others who have made efforts to speak with our government,
there still has been an unwillingness to seek out or hear Orthodox views,
to be sensitive to Orthodox contexts, specifically now as they relate
to the Balkans but in other areas as well?
Fr. Leonid: I do think, as I mentioned earlier, that the
Western intellectual climate has a notion of the West as being universal,
liberal, inclusive, and ecumenical. This West is, in fact, very selective,
not hearing other voices very well. But we as Orthodox tend to project
ourselves more along the lines of our tribalisms, than along the lines
of Catholicity - which really is the core of our witness. The difficulty
is both on the side of the West and on the side of Orthodoxy. Now, the
West is, of course, in possession of power - cultural, economic, military,
political, and media power - and therefore there is a very distinct potential
for the arrogance of power, the blindness and deafness of power. The Christian
East is imbedded in societies which relative to the West are weak and,
in many ways, powerless. Therefore the responses that we make as Orthodox
tend to be defensive - aggressive verbally, but, in effect, executing
a kind of defensive strategy. I do think that there is work to be done
on both sides of this division of Christian East and Christian West to
understand both current and deep-rooted civilizational patterns and to
act with responsibility towards the core of the Christian Tradition.
Recently at a Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical setting I
gave a presentation which borrowed from what I said at the Seminary. One
Catholic lay scholar was surprised that I was raising civilizational issues
and pointed out that the Pope, for example, has spoken strongly about
the Christian East and Christian West as being part of one Europe and
has stressed the role on a European scale of Saints Cyril and Methodius.
This is true, the Pope has done that. But the point I made in response
is that while the Pope has said these things, Western Europe and the West
have not heard him. Certainly the record is clear, the Pope of Rome has
tried to address this tension and divide. He has attempted to bring into
Western European consciousness the fact that Christianity in Europe is
of two parts and that there is a Christianity of the East which has made
substantial impact on European history, culture, and civilization. Has
the West heard this? I don’t think so. In my response to the Catholic
scholar I observed that Catholics have not heard or absorbed the Pope’s
message. And therefore the issues remain.
I think both Western Christians and Orthodox Christians in the
various societies are influenced by non-theological factors and by specific
patterns of information, media, and cultural perspective which influence
how Orthodox Christians and Western Christians see each other. There are
stereotypes and caricatures of the West prevalent in Orthodox societies
in the East, and there are stereotypes and caricatures of Orthodoxy prevalent
in the West. Sometimes, simple lack of information affects self-perception
and perception of the "other." The Wall Street Journal recently
published a long article on the Serbian Orthodox Church, "From the
Ruins of Kosovo." At the end, the article describes a twenty-two
year old monk travelling through Kosovo with Bishop Artemije. "Throughout
a five-hour journey, the fresh-faced monk sat silently as the convoy passed
charred Albanian homes, shattered shops and wall daubed with abusive Serbian
graffiti. At the final stop, a church in Urosevac, he whispered a horrified
apology. ‘I'm so ashamed,’ he told a foreigner. ‘I’'m
so ashamed of everything that has been done in the name of Serbia and
the Serbs.’"
JW: Do you think that there has been enough of a repudiation
of these horrors and atrocities by the Serb forces?
Fr. Leonid: In Yugoslavia the media did not cover the atrocities,
therefore people simple didn’t know. What they knew was that the
Serbs were at risk. They were not wrong. Did they know about atrocities?
I don’t think they knew, they couldn’t know. Therefore this
monk’s journey was revealing: once he has seen, he is horrified.
Had someone told him before this journey about atrocities, he probably
would have said that it was not possible. So when the charge is made that
the Serbs have been silent in Serbia, yes, there has not been enough reaction.
But I have to say that in the Serbian context the one figure who has always
spoken about the suffering of Serbs and Albanians has been Patriarch Pavle.
I was in Belgrade twice during the bombing, once at the beginning
of May with the group that was brought together by Jesse Jackson and once
at the end of May when Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and two Europeans
and I went. We met with Patriarch Pavle and President Milosevic on both
occasions. Milosovic denounced what he called the propaganda images of
CNN when he spoke with Jackson and the rest of us. I responded by saying
that CNN has definitely given us a constant flow of images of expelled
people, refugees, stories of Albanians fleeing from Kosovo. Granted, we
do not get stories of KLA atrocities and these certainly also occur. But
then I told him that he should not be under any illusion; religious communities
in America do not rely only on media images. Most religious communities
have humanitarian agencies in the Balkans, many religious representatives
from the United States have gone to the region and have actually met the
people we are talking about. Therefore, quite aside from the media, it
is clear to us that there are terrible things happening in Kosovo. I told
him also that Serbian friends have observed that Yugoslav television never
shows the Albanian tragedy in Kosovo.
The Patriarch of the Serbian Church has clearly denounced all atrocities.
Patriarch Pavle made a universal appeal for an end to all violence. My
experience is that the people in Yugoslavia have generally not known about
the kinds of things done in their name and therefore could not be expected
to rise up in revulsion. It seems to me that as these things become more
and more known, surely the response will exactly be like that of the monk
in The Wall Street Journal story. Now, of course, there are atrocities
taking place in Kosovo against Serbs, and the sad cycle of violence and
suffering continues.
The Serbian Orthodox voices for peace have often not been given
a lot, if any, visibility in Western media. Some people know about Fr.
Sava and the Decani monastery, but all in all not very much attention
has been given in the mass media to Decani monastery and to the fact that
the monks there have given shelter to and have embraced Albanians seeking
help and refuge. Bishop Artemije has, over the last two or three years,
criticized the regime of Milosovic as being undemocratic and, therefore,
an obstacle to any solution of the Kosovo crisis.
What is necessary, of course, is to acknowledge in revulsion the
terrible crimes committed systematically by some Serb forces against Albanians.
But definitely not to allow the identification of all Serbs with paramilitary
criminals. But I think morally there is another problem. The goal of defending
people who are vulnerable and being assaulted in an ethnic conflict is
a worthy goal - it was stated by the US and NATO as a universal cause.
However what happened is that the actual action we took as NATO seems
to have catalyzed the atrocities, unleashed them. It doesn’t mean
at all that the government or that the paramilitary thugs are or have
been innocent. Of course, they are not innocent. The evil was there and
it was tangible. But the bombing clearly unleashed great violence in Kosovo.
And the humanitarian disaster became absolutely massive as an accompaniment
to the bombing. I am troubled by that. We cannot as a society claim moral
purity here. It seems to me that we as an American society bear some moral
responsibility in terms of decisions taken by our government and other
governments - decisions unleashing huge atrocities even as we were attempting
to prevent atrocities. So we cannot claim moral purity or righteousness.
JW: There has been a great deal of controversy among the
Orthodox worldwide and especially here in America about our involvement
in the ecumenical movement and discussions. Would you say given your experiences,
particularly over the past few months, that it is not only appropriate
but even "essential" for the Orthodox to be involved at least
on certain levels?
Fr. Leonid: I have found it interesting that most people
who have contacted me over the past months have done so because they welcome
my participation in the mission to Belgrade led by Jesse Jackson and Joan
Campbell of the National Council of Churches. It is our presence at the
"ecumenical table" which enables our credible participation
at times of crisis. So how can we not be at the table? We need to be there
to make our voice heard and our views known. And how can we bear witness
to the fulness of the Tradition, speaking in even missionary and theological
terms, if our stance will be fundamentally a stance that leads to invisibility.
I don’t think that can possibly work.
To be at the "ecumenical table" must not mean silence
on issues where we are painfully divided, where we as Orthodox may be
in a painful and challenging conflict with the views of others. Of course,
we not only need to, but we do state and articulate what our critiques
are of some developments in the Christian world, within Christian bodies,
and within ecumenism. There are negative things that are occurring and
we have the right and the responsibility to criticize and to challenge.
Now, having said that we also then are in a situation where others have
some need to challenge us as well, and they are not always wrong. There
are issues that are painfully important to us, where we empirically fall
short of our theological vision. So when we speak of the Orthodoxy and
the Catholicity of the Church, when we speak about unity which we see
as unity simply in the One Church - and we do so correctly - this is our
commitment, our vision, our Tradition. But empirically other Christians
see us as divided within the Orthodox context, sundered along ethnic and
jurisdictional lines. When they see that we indeed confess one and the
same faith, adhere to one and the same Tradition, and yet do not have
the capacity, it seems, to bring the Orthodox Church in America together
into one body - when people challenge us on that, they are right! The
insistence and demand we make ecumenically about what is the nature of
unity is the correct demand, the correct challenge. The sadness is that
within our own life we have not brought energy into structuring our own
Church in a way that fully manifests the very thing we believe in most.
And maybe we need to be challenged, otherwise perhaps we would be prone
to a complacency and not see as sharply as we need to some of the internal
contradictions within our own life.
JW: Finally, as we get ready to approach our next All American
Council, would there be one wish that you would have for Orthodoxy in
America as we approach the Millennium?
Fr. Leonid: I’m going to make a humble wish, a very
humble one, but I think that it could be dramatic in its effect. We do
have some dynamic realities within American Orthodoxy which are very much
alive, but which need more understanding and support from hierarchs, parish
clergy, and laity in order to build a more engaged and more missionary-minded
Orthodox presence into the next century. International Orthodox Christian
Charities (IOCC)) and the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC) represent
a kind of miracle of ministry. Churches jurisdictionally divided have
nevertheless come together to authorize and encourage something which
is working, operating, and moving forward. More energy, more commitment,
more involvement from the whole Church with regard to IOCC and OCMS would
literally move mountains. The movement towards ecclessial unity, the overcoming
of jurisdictional divisions, would be advanced because the strength of
the work of IOCC in humanitarian terms and of OCMC in missionary terms
would be such that the witness of the Orthodox Church would be persuasive
and credible. And promoting credible Orthodox witness in America is the
fundamental commitment of the Orthodox Church in America.
******************************************************************
[Fr.
Leonid Kishkovsky is the Assistant to the Chancellor of the Orthodox Church
in America for Inter-Church Relations and Ecumenical Witness, Editor of
The Orthodox Church newspaper, and pastor of Our Lady of Kazan Church,
Sea Cliff, NY.]
His
"Commencement Address to St. Vladimir's Seminary Theological Graduates,"
delivered on May 22, 1999, is available at:
http://www.svots.edu/Events/Commencement/1999-Keynote-FrLeonid.html
Several
of his Editiorials written this year for The Orthodox Church specifically
relate to issues discussed in this interview:
"A
Moment of Ecumenical Challenge -- and Opportunity" (January, 1999)
http://oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/Ecumenical-Challenge.html
"Witness
to the Gospel in the Face of Evil, Hatred, and Violence" (March-April,
1999) available at:
http://oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/Witness-in-the-Face-of-Evil.html
"Relating
our Public Witness to Spiritual and Moral Vision" (May, 1999)
http://www.oca.org/Publications/TOC/1999/Relating-Public-Witness-to-Vision.html
From Jacob's
Well
Newspaper of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey
Orthodox Church in America
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