Ecclesiastical nationalism and primacy in world Orthodoxy: the case of the Serbian Church at the pan-Orthodox Council in Crete

ABSTRACT

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (2016) was supposed to be, above all, a demonstration of Orthodox unity. However, four autocephalous Orthodox churches were absent and others were split internally over their stances towards the Council. Ethnophyletism (ecclesiastical nationalism) and disagreements between the Orthodox churches over universal primacy have often been emphasised as the factors which eventually prevented the display of full pan-Orthodox conciliarity. By analysing official documents of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and the statements of Serbian hierarchs, I assess the role of ethnophyletism and primacy in the SOC’s positioning regarding the Council. I conclude that ethnophyletism and a lack of consensus over primacy were overshadowed by the cleavage between progressive and conservative tendencies within the SOC as well as beyond autocephalous frontiers. The study may thus contribute to a better understanding of the current challenges to pan-Orthodox conciliarity in general.     

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist: a selected overview of the psychoanalytic and group analytic study of terrorism

This paper is an attempt to understand the significant increase in terrorism worldwide following the 9/11 Al-Quaida bombings which triggered the Bush Administration’s “war on terror”, leading to two wars and ultimately to the emergence of Daesh. I explore the motivation for social violence as terrorism, which can be carried out by the state or by its citizens, and look at how one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. The paper looks at why seemingly ordinary people are converted into ‘homegrown’ jihadists and how alienation and shame are the driving forces of violence. I give a selected overview of psychoanalytical ideas that try to make sense of the unconscious roots of aggression, hatred and violence. As terrorism is a social activity group analysis has an important contribution to make in understanding the violence of large groupings. The media has a crucial role to play as sensationalist coverage of violence provides terrorists with a free media platform. Both the media and terrorists need an audience and feed off each other. This paper will explore these themes.     

Reading the writing on the wall: a textual analysis of Łódź graffiti

Abstract

This article traces the history of the involvement of the American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) with Russian-language publishing from its beginnings to the end of the twentieth century. During the period between the two world wars this was the primary source of Russian Orthodox theological and philosophical literature. In addition, it served as a catalyst for ferment within Orthodoxy by providing a forum for heated debate, especially in the pages of Put’, a unique interdisciplinary journal of Christian thought. The unique role of the YMCA Press in the Russian emigration has been noted in a variety of studies. However, such evaluations usually do not pay attention to the original Protestant leadership of this remarkable Orthodox publishing house, the political impact of its avowedly non-political efforts, and the recent activities of the YMCA Press in Russia and Ukraine after the end of communism. The Press played a major role in preserving an important aspect of prerevolutionary Russian culture in Western Europe during the Soviet period until the repatriation of this culture following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this way, the Press contributed to the expansion and enrichment of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

This publishing house for all these years has been giving to Russians living in Russia the real bread of life. … I really have to testify that the hunger for books is really a much greater hunger than the hunger for food. … The greatest help that we can receive is precisely the kind of help that was given to us by Paul Anderson. (Anderson, n.d.a, preface)     

Pacifism: Equipment or Accessory of War?

It is my intention to attempt to define pacifism, in its engagement and concept, as a necessary requisite of war and military action, following a phrase used over a hundred years ago by Franz Rosenzweig when speaking of pacifism as “necessary equipment of war.” I will try to defend the importance of pacifism as an integral part of war (as such, pacifism as a requisite of war ought to shorten the period of war and mitigate destruction) and oppose this concept of pacifism to Jan Narveson’s old attempt at constructing pacifism as a position and then designating it as “untenable and unreasonable,” and then further oppose this to his later attempt to find in pacifism the cause of further (and more) violence for ever more vicious wars.     

Helping Enemies Communicate

Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina has historically been home to people of different religions, cultures, and languages. Over the past century, the region experienced three wars and tremendous demographic change, which led to inter-group conflict. Projection and projective identification are dominant mechanisms in these social groups; distrust is prevalent, stemming from a series of transgenerational events and memory transmissions. A large group was formed from members of different ethnic groups with the intention of enabling the participants to gain awareness of their own role in these national/religious conflicts. This article discusses the formation and outcome of this experiment.     

The impact of the American War on Terror on Malaysian Islam

This essay provides an introductory discussion of the impact of the American war on terrorism on Malaysia, a Muslim country with a long record of parliamentary democracy and one of the most developed in the Muslim world. With a discussion of a possible decades-long US military and political engagement with the Muslim world as a background, the essay presents a detailed account of the impact of the US wars in Afghanistan, the Philippines and Iraq on Malaysian national politics, particularly on its political Islam. It is argued that the war on terrorism has benefited Mahathir Mohamad, helping to reverse his declining political fortunes following his sacking of Anwar Ibrahim as his deputy, which influenced his retirement from politics. The essay explains the reasons, external and domestic, for Malaysia's participation in the global war on terrorism and the extent of its involvement, including its leadership role in anti-terrorism in the Muslim world. It also discusses the views of Mahathir and Anwar on the roots of Muslim terrorism and what it will take to overcome this problem. Both believe the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is crucial to the defeat of terrorism in the Muslim world. The essay concludes with an examination of the possibility of Malaysia entering a new phase in its war on terrorism as Abdullah Badawi, Mahathir's successor, and Anwar appear to have convergent views on political Islam and on the importance of democracy as a tool to fight terrorism.     

Religion and the crisis in Ukraine

This article investigates religious nationalism in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, which has appeared in political and popular rhetoric and has been expressed through violence. From the Tsarist era, Kyiv and Crimea have featured centrally in Russian national mythology as the cradle(s) of Russian Christianity. This nationalist conception of space persisted after political borders changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as has the Russian Orthodox Church's historic jurisdiction in Ukraine. As a result, Russian Orthodox believers retain a special affinity for Kyiv and Crimea, and many Ukrainian citizens have looked to Moscow for matters of faith. Subjects of inquiry include religious nationalism, the baptism of Slavic Prince Vladimir (Volodymyr), Orthodox holy places in Crimea and Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill's Russian World concept, and religious violence in Ukraine and Crimea.     

AUGUSTINE AND THE LIMITS OF PREEMPTIVE AND PREVENTIVE WAR

While Michael Walzer's distinction between preemptive and preventive wars offers important categories for current reflection upon the Bush Doctrine and the invasion of Iraq, it is often treated as a modern distinction without antecedent in the classical Christian just war tradition. This paper argues to the contrary that within Augustine's corpus there are passages in which he speaks about the use of violence in situations that we would classify today as preemptive and preventive military action. While I do not claim that Augustine makes an explicit distinction between the two types of war (such would be anachronistic), I will argue that based on examinations of De libero arbitrio I.v.11–12 and De civitate Dei I.30 Augustine's discussions of hypothetical cases or actual wars in history provide insights helpful for contemporary reflection on preemptive and preventive wars.     

Pacifism—Fifty Years Later

I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones. Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position is contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest. In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war. Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run.     

从动作模仿到社会认知：自我-他人控制的作用

在社会互动中, 人们具有自动模仿他人动作的倾向。尽管这种自动模仿有利于个体理解他人动作的感受, 但有时也会与自身的动作意图产生冲突。因此我们需要将自身动作意图与他人动作进行区分并调控二者之间的冲突。这种能力被称为自我-他人控制(self-other control, SOC)。与动作模仿控制相同, 心理理论、观点采择和共情等更高级的社会认知同样涉及对自我和他人信息的加工。很多证据表明, SOC可能是一种领域普遍的(domain-general)加工机制, 即在动作模仿控制和其他社会认知中, 大脑对自我和他人双方信息的区分和冲突调控共用同一套SOC系统。最近一些研究发现, 相比于抑制自身优势反应的抑制控制(inhibitory control), SOC是社会认知中一个更为关键的影响因素, 抑制控制对社会认知的作用受到SOC的调节。此外, SOC的领域普遍性提示我们, 未来可以通过简单的动作模仿控制训练, 来为社会认知受损个体(如孤独症和述情障碍者)进行康复训练。     

Pondering “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World”: A Protestant Missiological Reflection

The article explores “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World” (MOCT), one of the six official documents issued by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that took place on the island of Crete in 2016. It is the first official Orthodox statement on mission ever published. The aim of the present article is to offer a reflection of MOCT from a Protestant missiological perspective. The article argues that MOCT interprets mission as the service of the church to the world, motivated by love. It goes on to discuss six major thematic areas of the statement, namely, the dignity of the human person; freedom and responsibility; peace and justice; peace and the aversion of war; the attitude of the church toward discrimination; and the mission of the Orthodox Church as a witness of love through service. The article seeks to provide a constructive critique of MOCT, assessing both its weaknesses and its assets. It concludes by saying that despite certain theological question marks, the new Orthodox mission document represents an invaluable contribution to the ecumenical discussion on mission and evangelism.     

Violence and “Hyperbologic”: Lawlor on Time’s Relation to Metaphysics

In his recent work, Leonard Lawlor draws attention to the problem of “violence,” which is the “problem that provides the most food for thought.” This emphasis on the problem of violence and its connections to metaphysics understood as philosophy has been remarkably consistent over his career, and thinking through responses to “violence” has sustained Lawlor’s continued effort to think about what he calls “violent” relations between event and repeatability and ground these upon a critical phenomenology. This contribution to the discussion of Lawlor’s work focuses on his most recent book, From Violence to Speaking Out (2016), so as to suggest three important directions for this project and for philosophy’s response to violence. I first briefly trace the theme of violence in From Violence to Speaking Out , contextualizing it against the rest of his work, so as to draw out what he means by violence and its provocation to philosophy, with special attention to the way that the violence in question is figured as disrupting the transcendental and confronting philosophy with what Lawlor calls the “ultratranscendental.” Second, I link it to the theme of time by tracing Lawlor’s point about violence in relation to the breaking up of the transcendental subject from Kant into Heidegger. Third, I link these points to the negative movement of the dissolution of modes of repeatability. This dissolution is captured in a kind of “speaking‐out” that Lawlor detects in Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze and Guattari, involving an excess over and above expression, which Deleuze calls “hyperbologic.”     

Does remembering past ingroup harmdoing promote postwar cross‐group contact? Insights from a field‐experiment in Liberia

In the aftermath of the Liberian civil wars, we investigated whether it is possible to systematically influence how people construe their group's role during the conflict and how this affects intergroup emotions and behavioral intentions. In a field experiment, 146 participants were randomly assigned to think about incidents of violence during the war that were either committed by fellow ingroup members (perpetrator‐focus) or against fellow ingroup members (victim‐focus). Adopting a perpetrator‐focus led to greater willingness to engage in cross‐group contact, greater need for acceptance, and greater intergroup empathy. The focus manipulation did not affect participants' need for empowerment. Key message: Appraising the ingroup as “victim” or “perpetrator” after conflicts with reciprocal harmdoing is largely a matter of psychological construction. A promising avenue for promoting positive cross‐group contact consists in widening the ingroup's victim role by also remembering the harm that the ingroup inflicted upon others. This amplifies the need of acceptance, which leads to greater intergroup empathy and greater willingness to engage in cross‐group contact. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From a Static to a Dynamic Approach to the Study of Partner Violence

Feminist and family violence scholars disagree over how partner violence should be studied and understood. One may expect that the use of different observation units would serve as a backdrop to the controversy, yet most studies in the field are based on single individual behavioral units of observation that are context-free. The present article attempts to propose a complementary or alternative observational unit. This unit of observation focuses on the aggressive interactions between the intimate partners, and enables researchers not only to explore the causes and consequences of the aggressive behavior but also to capture and analyze the dynamics of the partners’ conflicts that escalate to violence. The interactional observation unit can serve to advance the accumulating knowledge in the field as well as the discussion on the role of gender in partner violence.     

‘Though he slay me,yet will I trust in him’: a critical reconstruction of Winnicott's theory of value

This paper extrapolates an outline for a theory of value from Winnicott's reflections on war in ‘Discussion of war aims’ (1940). The author treats Winnicott's discussion as an occasion for a critical reconstruction of his theory of life‐values. He discerns an implicit set of distinctions in Winnicott's reflections on war, including different orders of value (existential, ethical, and psychosocial); a distinction between maturity and necessity; and a yet more fundamental distinction between violence and brutality. The paper argues, on the basis of these distinctions, that Winnicott allows for an understanding of one's encounter with the enemy as an ethical relation. The main argument of the paper is that the ethical attitude underpins recognition of the enemy's humanity. On a more critical note, the author argues that Winnicott doesn't adhere consistently to the ethical attitude he presupposes, that in certain passages he privileges the maturity of combatants over the humanity of the enemy.     

Morally Heterogeneous Wars

According to “epistemic-based contingent pacifism” a) there are virtually no wars which we know to be just, and b) it is morally impermissible to wage a war unless we know that the war is just. Thus it follows that there is no war which we are morally permitted to wage. The first claim (a) seems to follow from widespread disagreement among just war theorists over which wars, historically, have been just. I will argue, however, that a source of our inability to confidently distinguish just from unjust wars lies in how we evaluate “morally heterogeneous” wars—i.e., wars with just and unjust aims. Specifically, the practice of reaching a univocal evaluation of a morally heterogeneous war as a whole by aggregating the evaluations of that war’s just and unjust aims is wrongheaded, because it undermines the action-guiding character of jus ad bellum. We ought instead to adopt what I call the “disaggregate approach” to jus ad bellum, according to which we evaluate the various aims of a war individually, without aggregating them into an evaluation of the war as a whole. Adopting this approach will eliminate a source of our disagreement over which wars have been just, and will ipso fact eliminate a basis for epistemic-based contingent pacifism.     

GRATIAN AND MENGZI

In this essay, I compare two pioneer thinkers of the “just war” tradition across cultures: Gratian in the Christian tradition, and Mengzi (Mencius) in the Confucian tradition. I examine their historical-cultural contexts and the need for both to discuss just war, introduce the nature of their treatises and the rudimentary theories of just war therein, and trace the influence both thinkers’ theories have had on subsequent just war ethics. Both deemed just cause, proper authority, and right intention to be necessary conditions for initiating a just war. However, Gratian’s theory has a presumption against injustice whereas Mengzi’s theory has a presumption against war. As a jurist of the Church, Gratian sought to discriminate just from unjust wars, while Mengzi, a moral-political advisor to rulers, was more concerned with avoiding bloodshed and building lasting peace. In addition to examining these thinkers’ respective historical influences, I submit that Gratian’s Decretum and the Mengzi are pioneering in two more senses. First, they offer important clues to understanding how just war ideas were developed very differently in medieval Europe and in premodern China. Second, both embodied features that helped shape their subsequent intellectual tradition, which in turn molded the different legacies of these two works.     

The Russian Orthodox Church as moral norm entrepreneur

Conflicts over religious symbols in the public sphere, gay marriage, abortion or gender equality have shown their disruptive potential across many societies in the world. They have also become the subject of political and legal debates in international institutions. These conflicts emerge out of different worldviews and normative conceptions of the good, and they are frequently framed in terms of competing interpretations of human rights. One newcomer voice in conflicts over rights and values in the international sphere is the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which in recent years has become an active promoter of ‘traditional values’ both inside Russia and internationally. This article studies the ideational prerequisites and dynamics of Russian Orthodox ‘norm protagonism’ in the international arena.