Often thought of as a stalwart pillar of the status quo, Orthodox Christianity has also served as a vehicle for oppositional politics and theologies in a variety of historical and social contexts. This session features three papers analyzing historical and present-day examples of Orthodox Christian thought and practice manifesting as principled opposition, and the ethics of this opposition.
This paper seeks to broaden and problematize the theme of "Orthodox Dissent" by examing the case of "Orthodox Survival Courses" as a particular mode of "dissent" within U.S. Orthodoxy. Utilizing textual and narrative analysis, the paper will argue that the transmission and revival of OSC's is part of a broader epistemological framework within which U.S. Orthodox participation in conspiracy theorizing becomes more understandable. This suggests that invocations of "dissent" in the context of U.S. Orthodoxy in particular sits at the intersection of a number of historic and present tensions, many of which are demonstrably deployable towards antimodern and antidemocratic ends. This reality does not mean that "dissent" should be abandoned as an ethical framework for Orthodox striving for democratic and egalitarian realities; however, it does suggest that the context and content of how such dissent is narrativized requires intentionality and care.
After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of parishes within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate transferred to the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In Ukraine and in Moscow Patriarchate jurisdictions around the world, many believers expressed grave suspicion of Moscow, calling to cease liturgical commemoration of the pro-war Patriarch Kirill and weighing their own ecclesiastical reaffiliations. This paper analyzes this transnational discourse alongside similar developments in the United States a century before when beginning in 1912, disagreement over hierarchical administration and financial transparency within the Russian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America manifested new parishes independent from any ecclesiastical affiliation. In both contexts, Orthodox laity and local clergy alike valued, even desired hierarchical governance. Amidst scandal and existential crisis, however, each turned to a similar, bottom-up Orthodox ecclesiology, asserting that modernity, globalization, and lived experience have transformed liturgical commemoration and ecclesiastical affiliation into powerful and useful instruments of Orthodox dissent.
This paper will examine the evolution of Patriarch Tikhon’s relationship to the Soviet government in the early years after the Revolution. In his capacity as head of the Church, the patriarch’s decisions and instructions put not only his own life, but also the life of those obligated to obey him, on the line. For a regime determined to destroy the Church, like the Soviets were in the early years, open resistance—even if non-violent—only gave them justification for more brutal repression. Patriarch Tikhon therefore continually sought to chart a course that would not compromise essential principles while, at the same time, trying to avoid the unnecessary suffering of the innocent.