Persecution of the Orthodox Church

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Led by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

This week, we had an opportunity to have a very impressive lecture from Father Luke Veronis from Holy Cross Seminary, dealing with a brief history of Orthodox Church, particularly focusing on the last 100 years. He especially depicts two realities of Orthodoxy during the last century. The first reality is the Orthodox diasporas leaving their homeland to the other land for seeking the better life. Because of their vulnerability, diaspora people (or immigrants) articulated the survival mentality within Orthodox Churches so that they built their own communities which are consisted of very ethnic and homogeneous groups. As a result, the Orthodox Churches are throughout the world but isolated within each ethnicity. The second reality Father Luke especially highlights is the persecution and martyrdom under the communism. What surprised us is the persecution history of Armenian Orthodox. After acknowledging us that there were 20 million martyrs under the pressure of USSR, he states that what happened during the great persecution means a lot for the Orthodox Church today. It implies to us that the more they had persecutions, the more they concentrated on the holiness and purification of their faith. Lastly, Father Luke emphasized the mission history of the Orthodox Churches by saying that the Orthodox Church has many exemplary missionary figures who reflected distinct missionary characteristics from their contemporary Western counterparts throughout her 2000 year tradition. However, he was pitiful for the fact that Orthodox Church’s missionary tradition is often unknown in Western circles.

The initial reflection came from the administrative structure of the Orthodoxy. Unlike Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy has the autocephalous structure by countries except the case of the ecumenical council under one authority. Our group agreed that Orthodox polity seems similar to that of Methodist (or Anglican) or Presbyterian. However, one of us pointed out that it looks like very “foreign” because they give an impression of being rather exclusive and inwardly-focused, but the talk dispelled some of that impression. The interesting thing for all of our group was that from Orthodox perspective they think Catholics and Protestants have much more in common than Eastern and Western churches do. Rome likes to pretend the Orthodox are the schismatics, but from their point of view they are the original.

Then, our discussion turned to the persecution issue. The pitiful story was that despite the extensive and distinctive missionary activity with translation, respect for culture, and indigenous leadership, all stopped since persecution had set in. On the other hand, one pointed out that the persecution history is the basis of Orthodox potential for the revival because it keeps the Orthodox Church alive. For instance, the number of converts is pretty amazing, especially in light of statements that they don't proselytize or seek converts. A Korean student supported this idea that one of many reasons explaining the rapid growth of Korean churches is very the persecution and martyrdom. We concluded that it doesn't actually seem possible to extinguish Christianity by directly persecuting it or suppressing it.

Lastly, we were talking about the Orthodox theology. One highlighted that theology of Orthodox is very mystic, spiritual, and holy, and the experience of persecution might have purified their faith. Another student stated that Orthodox theology is more compatible with creation care and ecological ethic. But, due to the time limit, we had to stop at this point.

Gun Cheol Kim, discussion moderator

Context of religious freedom

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Lead by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

· One group member commented that she is interested in religious freedom, because religious freedom is related to sociology, culture, prejudices, and government power.

• It is difficult to untangle religious freedom from the web of other human factors. For example, one group member has spent time with people in Palestine and Israel and feels the conflict doesn’t originate primarily from religious differences, but rather from political issues that are perpetuated by the media. For instance, the media may say that only one side is to blame and presents a very skewed picture of what is actually taking place.

• The problem is quite complex. The matter of restriction cannot simply be relegated to religion. Many other factors such as political, military, and economic agendas carry influence.

Question: In discussing religious freedom and looking at the Atlas of Global Christianity, how do we account for the fact that some regions with great religious freedom show very weak religious growth or even decline (e.g., Sweden), while areas with considerable religious restriction seem to show increased religiosity (e.g., China)? Speaking of Christianity, is it better for the church to have persecution?

• Suffering is helpful in faith.

• In North Korea, people recognize that living as a Christian is extremely demanding. It requires commitment in the face of opposition. In the United States, on the other hand, belief or unbelief has few social consequences. It seems the strength of a person’s faith (and the vitality of a religious community) might be correlated to the level of suffering a person is willing to endure.

• It’s hard to say whether it is “better” for Christians to experience persecution. Historically the number of Christians hasn’t steadily risen, but rather ebbed and flowed. It seems that the flow generally occurs in areas where persecution is present but I’m not sure that reflects a better situation. The Chinese church has grown while being persecuted; the US church is shrinking while enjoying a state of relative freedom. But does that mean that the situation is better for the church in China?

• Maybe a little persecution is good whereas too much persecution can be devastating.

Question: How can religious majority and minority groups work together? In South Korea, we don’t have a lot of points of contact between Christianity and Buddhism. One member, who has participated in interreligious dialogues, felt the time was spent on achieving harmony between religious groups, but this member was not convinced such dialogues were aiming for the right goal, nor certain that these meetings were the best means for achieving religious ends.

Daryl Ireland, discussion moderator