A Comparative Analysis on

Church-State Relations in Eastern

Orthodoxy: Concepts, Models,
and Principles
Daniela Kalkandjieva

Church-state relations in Eastern Orthodoxy have provoked many

debates among theologians, scholars, and policy-makers. Currently,
however, there is no consensus about which one of the past and
present models of church-state relations can be considered prop-
erly Orthodox. The theologians belonging to this Christian denomi-
nation often criticize and even reject the Western legal systems that
presume a certain degree of separation between church and state.
According to them, this principle contradicts the Orthodox ideal
of full harmony and unity between both institutions. The represen-
tatives of Byzantine studies, whose research has explored the role of
Byzantium as a cradle of Orthodox civilization, express similar
views. The other pole in the debate is comprised of experts in polit-
ical and social sciences who interpret Orthodox church-state rela-
tions as being characterized by a domination of state over church,
which limits the ability of these societies to develop democracy.1

DANIELA KALKANDJIEVA (MA, Sofia University; MA, PhD, Central European Uni-
versity) is a researcher at the Scientific Research Department of Sofia University,
Bulgaria. Her articles have been published in Social Compass, Religion, State and
Society, Ost-West Europäische Perspektiven, Romanian Journal of Political
Science, Bulgarian Historical Review, and Studia Universitatis Petru Maior.
Special interests include history of Eastern Orthodox Christian churches, Bul-
garian religious history, history of communism, Russian and Soviet history,
Balkan history, sociology of religion, church-state relations, and nationalism.
This article is based on the author’s research accomplished within the frame-
work of REVACERN—“Religions and Values: Central and Eastern European
Research Network” (2007– 09), a project supported by the 6th Framework Pro-
gramme of the European Union.

1. Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3

(Summer 1993): 21– 49; and his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of World Order (New York and London: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1996).

Journal of Church and State vol. 53 no. 4, pages 587 – 614; doi:10.1093/jcs/csr012
Advance Access publication May 23, 2011
# The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. Dawson
Institute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oup.com

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 Journal of Church and State

This view is often combined with accusations against Orthodox

churches of being “nationalist institutions.”2 This thesis was syn-
thesized by Vjekoslav Perica, who defines Orthodoxy as a religion
in which “the Church, ethnic community and state grow together.”3
The gap between the two groups of scholars exploring church-
state relations in Orthodox Christianity might be a result of their
different backgrounds (theological and nontheological). Meanwhile,
the end of the Cold War and the processes of eurointegration and
globalization require a clearer vision for the future of church-state
relations in the Eastern European countries that have been tradition-
ally dominated by Orthodox Christianity. This article is not
intended to give an ultimate answer to which is the proper Orthodox
model of these relations but to analyze the various concepts,
models, and principles of church-state relations in the Orthodox
world from a historical perspective in order to suggest a typology
that can assist the dialogue and mutual understanding between
the participants in this debate.

Typology of Church-State Relations in Eastern Europe

Orthodox Church-State Relations: Symphony or Caesaropapism

Generally the issue of church-state relations in the Orthodox world

splits the academic community into two camps. One defines them
as symphony, the other as caesaropapism. The first view is pre-
sented by experts in Orthodox theology and Byzantine studies,
who consider the principle of symphony the only proper basis for
Orthodox church-state relations. This view was formulated by Justi-
nian I in his famous novella of 535:
The greatest blessings of mankind are the gifts of God which have been
granted to us by the mercy on high: the priesthood and the imperial
authority. The priesthood ministers to the things divine; the imperial
authority is set over, and shows diligence, in things human; but both
proceed from the same source, and both adorn the life of man.4

It is not simply a relationship between institutions in the modern

sense of these terms, i.e., between church and state, but rather a

2. Pedro Ramet, “Autocephality and National Identity in Church-State Relations

in Eastern Christianity: An Introduction,” “Eastern Christianity and Politics in
the Twentieth Century,” Christianity under Stress, ed. Pedro Ramet (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 1988), 1: 6.
3. Vjekoslav Perica, Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7.
4. Ioannis E. Karayanopoulos, The Byzantines’ Political Theory, trans. [from
Greek to Bulgarian] Kiril Pavlikyanov (Sofia: Sofia University Publishing House,
1992), 67.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

unity between powers that the Byzantines defined as sacerdotum

and imperium.5 Their existence and relations were not subject
to civil law, but to God’s will. In fact, the concept of symphony
does not deal with the state as a political entity but rather as
God’s kingdom on earth and thus the Byzantines called it basileia.
In a similar way, it does not approach the church as a human
creation but as Christ’s body, i.e., a sacred community of believers.
Therefore, the notion of church in this concept is not identical with
that of the Patriarchate of Constantinople or with any other promi-
nent Christian church, including those of Rome, Alexandria,
Antioch, or Jerusalem, established in the first century of Christian-
ity by the holy apostles. Byzantine symphony includes relations
between the Byzantine ruler and the Patriarch of Constantinople
but is not limited to them. It presupposes mutual penetration
between the sacred and the civil, thus facilitating the cooperation
between church and state in the Orthodox lands. Its diarchal
model also differs from the one, introduced in Western Europe
after the Great Schism (1054) by the Roman pope, whose attempts
to establish his authority over the state brought about more dis-
tanced and formal church-state relations in the Catholic world.
Another peculiarity of symphony is rooted in the idea of the
Byzantine ruler as Christ’s vicar responsible for the organization
of God’s kingdom on earth (basileia) as reflected in his appellation,
“basileus.”6 This specificity was emphasized by Eusebius who
defined Constantine the Great as the “external bishop.”7 By granting
official recognition to Christianity, this emperor obtained special
rights over the church administration and transmitted them to his
successors on the throne of Constantinople. In this way, the Byzan-
tine rulers obtained the unique privilege of convening ecumenical
councils and validating their proceedings. Furthermore, for a concil-
iar decision to be incorporated into Byzantine civil legislation it had
to be promulgated as an imperial act and included in the so-called
nomocanones.8 In addition, the status of Christ’s vicar gave to the
Byzantine basileus power “to redistrict dioceses in accord with
political or ecclesiastical exigency, the right to translate bishops
from one see to another, and the authority to alter the rank or

5. Gilbert Dagron, Empereur et prêtre: Étude sur le “césaropapisme” byzantin

(Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1996), Used in Bulgarian. “Imperatorat i Sveshtenikat:
Etyud varkhu vizantiiskiya “tsezaropapizam”” [Emperor and Priest: Study on
Byzantine “caesaropapism”], trans. [from French to Bulgarian] Tsvetilena Kras-
teva (Sofia: AGATA-A, 2006) 334.
6. Deno J. Geanakoplos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire: A Reconsid-
eration of the Problem of Caesaropapism,” Church History 34 (1965): 385.
7. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre, 148– 59.
8. Geanakoplos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,” 389.

589
 Journal of Church and State

honor . . . of the relative sees” as well as to appoint and depose

them.9 As a result of this supremacy, the Episcopal See of Constan-
tinople was able to free itself from the jurisdiction of the Metropol-
itan of Heraclea and to take the lead in the Christian East. In 381
Canon 3 of the Second Ecumenical Council placed the Bishop of
Constantinople after the Roman pope in terms of honor, while
Canon 28 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council (451) subordinated
the dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace as well as the barbarian
lands to the Great Church of Constantinople.10
Due to his extraordinary authority over ecclesiastical affairs, the
Byzantine basileus was anointed with priestly dignity that the
Holy Roman Emperor in Western Christendom never had.11
Although the former continued to be a layman, he obtained specific
“liturgical” privileges. The Byzantine rulers received communion in
the same manner as clergy, blessed the believers as bishops, censed
icons and people, and delivered sermons.12 Although many Byzan-
tine rulers were involved in debates on church dogmas, their inter-
ventions rarely had an effect on the doctrinal sphere.13 Until the
mid-tenth century, the basileus also enjoyed the privilege of enter-
ing the sanctuary of Christian temples. This practice was aban-
doned by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus with the argument that
it blurred the difference between clergy and laity.14 The view of
the basileus as God’s representative on earth, however, was pre-
served. The notion of Byzantium as “the commonwealth of the
faithful, the Oecumene, or inhabited world, at whose head was the
divinely appointed Emperor” continued to persist as well.15
The Orthodox concept of church-state relations was also influ-
enced by the proximity of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the
Roman pope to the throne of the Byzantine basileus. It resulted in
a differentiation between their roles in church-state relations in

9. Ibid., 388 – 89.

10. John Erickson, The Challenges of Our Past (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Semi-
nary Press, 1991), 96.
11. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre, 337 – 38.
12. Geanakoplos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,” 390 – 92.
13. Steven Runciman points to the First Ecumenical Council where Constantine
the Great intervened in the debate on the Nicene Creed. He proposed the word
consubstantial (ómooy´sion in Greek) and forced it on those bishops who had hes-
itations about it. Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 56. According to Geanakoplos, however,
the authority of the Byzantine basileus was limited to administrative and exter-
nal aspects of the church, but had no access to its doctrinal sphere. Geanako-
plos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,” 386 – 87.
14. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre, 243 – 44.
15. Steven Runciman, The Orthodox Churches and the Secular State
(New Zealand: Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1971),
13.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

Byzantium as God’s kingdom on earth. The Patriarch of Constanti-

nople, whose Church was elevated to the second position in the
Christian world, obtained greater influence on the Byzantine ruler
than did the Roman pope. After the Great Schism, the former
became more dependent on the basileus,16 while the latter
became an “ultimate custodian of the Christian faith” in the West.17
The ideal of Byzantine symphony was challenged many times
throughout centuries. In the beginning it was attacked by the icon-
oclast emperors who tried to establish full control over the church.
In the second half of the ninth century, Patriarch Photius made an
opposite move in an attempt to subject the Byzantine basileus to
the Church of Constantinople. He succeeded in preserving his
status as Christ’s vicar on earth, which allowed him to claim
special authority over the states that adopted Christianity from
Byzantium. Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia, for example, were per-
ceived as parts of God’s kingdom (basileia) and thus belonged to
Byzantium. In this way, symphony remained a unique privilege of
Byzantium, while the newly baptized Slavonic principalities had
two options: to follow Constantinople or to imitate it on local
grounds. The rulers of these young Christian states could obtain
the status of Christ’s vicar (basileus) only if their states were able
to replace Byzantium as the only Christian Empire on earth. In a
similar way, their local churches could become a new Constantino-
ple or new Rome only if the sees of Rome or Constantinople were no
longer able to function properly, e.g., the idea of the Third Rome was
developed by the Patriarchate of Moscow in the sixteenth century.
The relevance of the thesis of caesaropapism as the model deter-
mining the church-state relations in the Christian East is also highly
questionable. Neither the Byzantine basileus nor the rulers of the
medieval states of Bulgaria, Serbia, or Russia had achieved full
control over all spheres of the life of their local churches as had hap-
pened in the German or Scandinavian states after the Reformation.
Eastern Orthodoxy did not allow sacramental or doctrinal matters
to go to secular hands. In this respect, the Eastern European
rulers did not become heads of their domestic Orthodox churches
as had happened in the Protestant world. The medieval Orthodox
rulers were able to control their churches by exerting pressure
over their hierarchy or interfering in their administrative and eco-
nomic affairs, but the Orthodox Church zealously kept its
monopoly over the religious sphere.18 In this way, Orthodox rulers

16. Karayanopoulos, The Byzantines’ Political Theory, 80.

17. Aristides Papadakis, “Church-State Relations under Orthodoxy,” Eastern
Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Pedro Ramet (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 1988), 43.
18. Geanakoplos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,” 392 – 93.

591
 Journal of Church and State

were kept away from the mystic essence of the church as the body of
Christ and had to limit their control to its secular and profane
dimensions. Therefore, a definition of the Orthodox church-state
relations as caesaropapism can be very misleading.
The use of the term caesaropapism is also inappropriate because
of the origins of this phenomenon. Its roots go back to the Reforma-
tion, i.e., it stems from specific theological doctrines and has its
own political philosophy. The use of this term also blurs the differ-
ence between Orthodox church-state relations and those developed
in the Protestant countries. The model of caesaropapism presup-
poses that a state ruler is also the head of the main church in his
lands. In the case of Eastern Orthodoxy, however, the idea of a
state church came into being as a result of historical circumstances
but has not been canonically or dogmatically developed. The most
ancient Orthodox churches that survived to the present, e.g., the
Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, are not state
entities. On the contrary, all of them, as well as those of Rome
and Constantinople, appeared and functioned for centuries within
one political entity—the Roman Empire.19 Moreover, these early
churches were called after the name of the city where their hierarch
had his see. It was much later that Orthodox churches began to be
named after the corresponding state, e.g., Bulgarian, Serbian,
Russian. Therefore those who take into account the specificity of
Orthodox theology and the medieval models of church-state rela-
tions in Orthodox lands would prefer the term eastern caesaropap-
ism suggested by Gilbert Dagron.20 This term is especially
appropriate when we discuss the church-state relations established
in the countries that adopted Christianity from Constantinople,
mainly Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia. In their case, the term sym-
phony cannot be used due to the fact that these countries were
not able to fully adopt the Byzantine cosmogony with its political
and theological implications.21 The Slavonic rulers had neither the
priestly power of the basileus nor his authority over the one and
only Christian Empire on earth that laid the foundation of Byzantine
political philosophy and influenced Orthodox ecclesiology.
Another possible reason for confusing the Orthodox models of
church-state relations with Protestant caesaropapism seems to be
provoked by the advanced state of studies on Peter the Great and
his synodal reforms. Strongly influenced by the Anglican model,

19. Erickson, The Challenges of Our Past, 96.

20. Dagron, Empereur et prêtre, 343. Geanakoplos also considers the use of the
term caesaropapism inappropriate for defining the church-state relations in
Eastern Orthodoxy. Geanakoplos, “Church and State in the Byzantine Empire,”
388– 89.
21. Karayanopoulos, The Byzantines’ Political Theory, 11– 24.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

they determined church-state relations in the Russian Empire for

about two centuries. This synodal model, however, cannot be used
as an argument for caesaropapism for two reasons. On the one
hand, it was a serious deviation from Orthodox theology and
canon law and was condemned as such by the Great Russian
Church Council (Sobor) in 1917 – 18. On the other hand, neither
Peter the Great nor his successors became the head of the Russian
Orthodox Church to the degree of presiding over the sacraments.
Generally, the term caesaropapism has been used mostly by schol-
ars, who apply it retrospectively to cases when Eastern European
rulers interfered in the affairs of their Orthodox churches. At the
same time, they neglect many facts that contradict to the thesis of
caesaropapism as a main feature of Orthodox church-state rela-
tions. The history of Orthodoxy witnessed not only periods when
a church was dominated by the corresponding state, but also
times when Orthodox hierarchs took the leadership of their
states: the Patriarch of Constantinople Nicholas Mystikos (852 –
925) was regent of Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyroge-
nitus (905– 59), Metropolitan Alexii of Moscow (1353– 78) ruled the
Principality of Moscovy during the childhood of the Grand Prince
Dmitry II Donskoy (1350 – 89), the Metropolitans of Montenegro
(then Principality of Zeta) also acted as its secular rulers (1516–
1830), in 1886 Metropolitan Kliment of Tarnovo became prime min-
ister of Bulgaria, while Archbishop Makarios III also served as the
President of Cyprus (1960 – 77).
The gap between the Byzantine theory of symphony, perceived as
an Orthodox norm by theologians, and the concrete historical prac-
tices has created confusion not only among policy-makers and legal
experts but also among researchers dealing with church-state rela-
tions in Orthodoxy. It seems that some of them could be overcome
by a study on the compatibility between symphony and modernity.
Nowadays we have neither emperors nor patriarchs who would fit to
the original Byzantine meaning of these institutes. Although their
relationship cannot exist anymore in its original form, it has been
transferred to contemporary church and state institutions in a
rather secularized fashion. The contemporary states in the Ortho-
dox part of Europe are secular entities that have nothing in
common with the notion of Christ’s kingdom on earth as it was
understood in Byzantium. The major state bodies in the Orthodox
countries ( presidents, prime ministers, parliaments, etc.) cannot
possess or claim the priestly power of the Byzantine basileus.
Most Orthodox patriarchs are not appointed by the corresponding
state authorities; still in some cases they need government approval
in order to take their offices, e.g., the Patriarch of Constantinople
needs to receive such from the Turkish government. In this sense,

593
 Journal of Church and State

any reference to the Byzantine symphony cannot be absolute but

only partial. This is an essential feature of the Orthodox churches
that should be kept in mind in the debates concerning church-state
separation and cooperation in the contemporary world.
There are also cases when the so-called national Orthodox
churches misuse the notion of symphony in order to achieve
special status in the countries where Orthodoxy is the traditional
religion of the majority of the population. This is especially true
for the postcommunist politicians whose lack of theological knowl-
edge and experience in democratic/nonatheist type of church-state
relations often produces contradictory decisions that in turn gener-
ate new problems in this sphere. As a result, Orthodox theologians
as well as many secular scholars limit the idea of symphony to a
kind of secular interinstitutional relationship. The new Romanian
Patriarch Daniel refers to symphony as harmony. According to his
definition, it is “understanding and cooperation between two dis-
tinct institutions: a spiritual one and a political one, which were
united by the common social life of Church faithful and the
State’s citizens.”22 In a similar way, Greek sociologist Kokosalakis
explains that under the conditions of symphony “the Church pro-
vides the State with moral values and the State grants material
support to the Church.”23
At the same time, it seems that it is quite difficult for all tradition-
ally Orthodox states to overcome the nineteenth-century model of
the confessional state where the domination of Orthodoxy over
the other confessions was constitutionally guaranteed. This
system was abandoned only in those states that adopted the princi-
ple of separation of church and state while under communist rule.
Even in this case, however, Orthodox societies remain ignorant
about the true aims of the separation of church and state as it has
happened in the West. Their peoples continue to perceive this prin-
ciple as a means of destroying religion and imposing the monopoly
of atheism on society. As a result, the collapse of communism and
the process of eurointegration raised many questions concerning
the proper Orthodox model of church-state relations.

22. Daniel Ciobotea [Patriarch of Romania], “State-Church Relations in

Romania: Tradition and Present-Day Experience. Past and Present Tradition
and Current Context,” Religion zwischen Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft—Reli-
gion between Church, State and Society, ed. Irimie Marga, Gerald G. Sander,
and Dan Sandu (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2007), 117.
23. Nikos Kokosalakis, “Orthodoxy and Modern Life,” Religioni e Societa 98
(1996): 110. Source used: Silvio Ferrari, “Nationalism, Patriotism, and Religious
Belief in Europe,” Law Review 83, Issue 5 (Summer 2006): 633, fn. 23.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

Orthodox Church and Nation

The debate about Orthodox church-state relations also concerns the

issue of nationalism. There is a widespread view of Orthodox
churches as national, and nationalism is regarded as an inherited
feature of this Christian denomination. The arguments for this
thesis, however, are limited in many aspects. They concern mostly
Eastern European countries and the last two centuries of their
development. It is impossible to turn a blind eye to the temporal
asymmetry between the two phenomena: nationalism is a modern
one, while Orthodoxy has a much longer history. In theological
terms, Orthodox Christianity is open to all human beings without
regard to their ethnicity, nationality, social status, or gender. From
an ecclesial point of view, Orthodox canon law does not link the
establishment of an Orthodox Church with a concrete ethnic
group or nation but with a certain Episcopal see and the boundaries
of its territorial jurisdiction.24
In the course of history, however, the bishops of Rome, Constan-
tinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem obtained administra-
tive authority over the other bishoprics and set up a kind of
ecumenical government of the Christian Church, also known as
the Pentarchy. Although this development did not infringe upon
the sacramental authority of the individual bishops, it changed
the organization of the Christian Church from a confederation of
equal rank bishoprics to a network of ecclesiastical federations.
Each federation united a certain number of bishops into a body
that had the right to appoint one of these bishops the head of
their church “without any obligatory expression of dependence on
another church.”25 Therefore these ecclesiastical structures are
often defined as autocephalous. Their federative organization
served as a model for the churches established in Eastern Europe
by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, e.g., the Bulgarian one in
870 or the Russian one in 988.
This second generation of churches, however, linked their juris-
diction with the borders of their states. In the age of nationalism,
such territorial overlapping assisted the spread of phylethism, the
concept that promulgated the right of each nation to establish its

24. “Territorial Jurisdiction according to Orthodox Canon Law: The Phenom-

enon of Ethnophyletism in Recent Years,” paper presented at the International
Congress of Canon Law, Budapest, September 2– 7, 2001, available online at:
http://www.ec-patr.org/docdisplay.php?lang=en&id=287&tla=en. See also
Daniel P. Payne, “Nationalism and the Local Church: The Source of Ecclesiastical
Conflict in the Orthodox Commonwealth,” Nationalities Papers 35, no. 5
(November 2007): 834– 35.
25. Erickson, The Challenges of Our Past, 91– 92.

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 Journal of Church and State

own Orthodox church. It also provoked a series of conflicts between

the Orthodox churches and facilitated their transformation into
nationalist bodies.26 Although condemned in 1872 by the Great
Local Synod in Constantinople as a deviation from Orthodox
canon law and ecclesiology, phylethism has continued to influence
the changes in the ecclesiological map of Eastern European Ortho-
doxy from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the present.
Orthodoxy does not require an autocephalous church to keep its
borders in concurrence with the political ones. Historically, the
first Christian churches were established within the Roman Empire,
and their structure was not determined by political borders. Even
today the pillars of Orthodox Christianity—the patriarchates of Con-
stantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—have their jurisdic-
tion spread beyond the territory of the states where their sees are
situated. Meanwhile some Orthodox churches came to be perceived
as national or state after the end of the Cold War, e.g., the Russian,
the Serbian, and the Czechoslovakian ones. In this regard, it is impor-
tant to notice that originally canon law did not require any correla-
tion between state and church territories. According to Canon 17
of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the organization of church par-
ishes must follow that of civil administration.27 Its interpretation,
however, changed in the course of time and in the twentieth
century a new reading of this rule was suggested. In 1924, the Patri-
arch of Constantinople and his synod granted autocephaly to the
Polish Orthodox Church, with the allegation based on Patriarch
Photius’ vision that “laws which relate to church affairs, . . . , should
correspond with political and administrative changes.”28
Another argument in favor of the idea of Orthodoxy as a faith pro-
moting nationalism concerns the liturgical languages used in Ortho-
doxy. According to this argument, conducting liturgy in the local
languages strengthens the believers’ bonds with both their church
and state, and this situation can bring about religious nationalism.
At the same time, the number of Orthodox churches and countries
at times exceeds the number of liturgical languages. The so-called
biblical Greek, used in Byzantium, was not the native language of
many Orthodox believers living in that empire. In the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, it ceased to be understandable even for
native Greeks. The gap between the liturgical language and the

26. Payne, “Nationalism and the Local Church,” 834.

27. An English translation of the canon is available online at http://www.
holytrinitymission.org/books/english/councils_ecumenical_rudder.
htm#_Toc34001970.
28. Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on Polish Autoce-
phaly, issued in 1924. Its English translation is available online at http://www.
ukrainianorthodoxchurchinexile.org/1924_tomos_of_autocephaly.html.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

vernacular became so big that the Greek state and the church had to
undertake a series of language reforms to make the Gospel more
comprehensible to ordinary believers. In the nineteenth century,
the use of Greek liturgy in the churches of the Patriarchates of Con-
stantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem provoked non-
Greek believers such as Arabs and Bulgarians to fight against it as
dangerous for their national identity.
Quite similar is the Slavonic case. The invention of the Cyrillic
alphabet and Slavonic liturgy by St. Cyril and St. Methodius in the
ninth century enhanced the links between the Slavonic peoples’
states and churches.29 The Ottoman conquest of the medieval Bul-
garian and Serbian states did not break their religious and linguistic
unity with Orthodox Russia thanks to the import of liturgical books.
On the contrary, written in Church-Slavonic, this literature contrib-
uted to the development of a lingua franca uniting all Orthodox
believers of Slavonic origin without regard to whether they were
subjects of the Ottoman sultans or of the Russian tsars. This situa-
tion catered to the Russian policy in the Balkans until the nine-
teenth century when it was undermined by the struggles of
Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, and Bulgarians for national liberation.
The rise of nationalism also contributed to the introduction of
modern unified grammatical standards among the Balkan
peoples, thus breaking the previous Orthodox unity promoted by
the Russian Holy Synod in St. Petersburg. The new Serbian and Bul-
garian literary languages distanced these nations from Russia.
Meanwhile, the promotion of the modern Romanian and its intro-
duction as a language of liturgy by the Romanian Orthodox
Church in the nineteenth century was a further step in this direc-
tion. It took Romanians away from Russia’s orbit, consolidated
them around their Orthodox church and state, and opened a ten-
dency for reforming Orthodox liturgy along the lines of the vernac-
ulars used by Orthodox believers in the contemporary world.
On the basis of these and other observations, this author consid-
ers the present-day symbiosis between Orthodoxy and nationalism
to be a product of the nineteenth-century rise of nation-states.
Moreover, this phenomenon did not stem from Orthodox theology
or liturgy but from institutional structures established in Eastern
Europe by Orthodox churches that have owed their existence
mostly to their specific nation-states.30 On the one hand, these

29. Maria Shnitter and Daniela Kalkandjieva, “Religion and European Integra-
tion in Bulgaria,” in Religion and European Integration, ed. Silvio Devetak,
Liana Kalcina, and Miroslav Polzer (Ljubljana, Maribor, and Vienna: Edition
Weimar, 2007), 353.
30. In this regard it is necessary to mention that the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church, which was abolished after the conquest of Medieval Bulgaria at the

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 Journal of Church and State

churches were created during the dissolution of the Ottoman

Empire and the establishment of the modern Balkan nation-states.
On the other hand, they came into being at the expense of the Patri-
archate of Constantinople. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, its territorial jurisdiction covered all European provinces
of the Ottoman Empire, but by the period 1833 – 1945, it was
reduced dramatically.31 Meanwhile the young national churches of
Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania redrew the map of
Balkan Orthodoxy in accordance with the borders of their inde-
pendent states.
Similar processes took place in the interwar period, when new
nation-states and new national Orthodox churches were established
in the western areas of the former Russian Empire as autonomous
branches of the Patriarchate of Moscow, i.e., the Georgian (1917),
Estonian (1920), Finnish (1921), Latvian (1921), Polish (1922), and
Lithuanian (1922). Several years later, pressed by their govern-
ments, some of these churches unilaterally declared their independ-
ence from the See of Moscow and moved under that of
Constantinople, i.e., the Finnish (1923), Estonian (1923), Polish
(1924), and Latvian (1936). The Orthodox people in Soviet Ukraine
and Byelorussia also tried to establish their independent churches
by proclaiming autocephaly, the first in 1918 and the second in
1922. The lack of their own nation-states, however, doomed these
attempts to failure.32 Similar developments can also be observed
after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Tito’s Yugoslavia, e.g.,
in Ukraine and the FYR of Macedonia.
The correlation between the rise of nation-states and the birth of
the contemporary national Orthodox churches has changed in the
course of time. The dissolution of the Ottoman and the Russian
empires provoked many of the newly established national govern-
ments to declare unilaterally their domestic Orthodox structures
as autocephalous churches or to disavow their dependence on the
mother-churches and to move them under another jurisdiction,
e.g., from that of Moscow to that of Constantinople. Until World

end of the fourteenth century, was established anew in 1870. Moreover, this act
was not realized by a nation-state as Bulgaria appeared on the political map of
Europe after the Russian-Turkish war (1877– 78), but by a Sultan’s decree, i.e., by
an act of non-Christian ruler.
31. The period starts with the declaration of the Greek autocephaly in 1833 and
ends with the abolishment of the Bulgarian schism in 1945, when the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church fixed its territorial jurisdiction within the Bulgarian state
borders.
32. Daniela Kalkandjieva, Ecclesio-Political Aspects of the International Activities
of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1917 –1948 (Ph.D. diss., CEU, 2004).

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War II, these acts were justified by the political sovereignty of the
corresponding states. In 1833, after the international recognition
of its sovereignty, the kingdom of Greece proclaimed the autoce-
phaly of its local Orthodox church.33 In 1885 this example was fol-
lowed by Romania, whose Orthodox Church declared its
independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. After the
Bolshevik Revolution, there were also cases when an Orthodox
church obtained autocephaly not directly from its own mother-
church but from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. In
1924 the latter granted such status to the Polish Orthodox Church
despite the resistance of its mother-church, the Patriarchate of
Moscow.
During World War II the political arguments for the establishment
of new Orthodox churches, i.e., state sovereignty, remained in
second place while the emphasis was put on the canonical ones.
In these cases the initiative belonged to the Patriarchate of
Moscow. On November 19, 1943, it recognized the 1917 act of
Orthodox Georgians who restored their ancient patriarchate and
its autocephaly. This act was justified by Canon 17 of the Fourth
Ecumenical Council. According to the decree of the Russian Ortho-
dox Church, when the Caesar sets up a new city as an administrative
center, the church administration has to be accommodated to this
change. The Patriarchate of Moscow, however, interpreted this text
in a new way, namely that church borders should follow the state
ones.

Now [November 1943], the judicial status of Georgia is radically changed.

Now this country is a free member of the Soviet Union. Although it is an
inseparable part of our [Soviet] State, it is equal to the other national
republics and has, as they have, its own state territory and government.
Therefore, our [Russian] Orthodox Church has left in the past [the above-
mentioned] legal considerations and contradictions and with readiness
and joy embraces its sister the Autocephalous Georgian Orthodox
Church, looking for communion with us in prayer and in sacraments.34

In reality, however, the Russian Orthodox Church did not limit the
borders of the Georgian Orthodox Church to those of the Georgian
state. The Orthodox communities in Soviet Armenia were also sub-
ordinated to the territorial jurisdiction of the Georgian Church, i.e.,

33. Charalambos K. Papastathis, “The Hellenic Republic and the Prevailing Reli-
gion,” The Brigham Young University Law Review 4 (1996): 815 –52. Used via
EBSCO database.
34. GARF [State Archives of the Russian Federation], f. [fund] 6991c, op. [inven-
tory] 2, d. [file] 51, 12– 14. Proceedings of the Russian Holy Synod meeting and
decision for the restoration of the liturgical and canonical relations between the
Russian and Georgian Orthodox churches of November 19, 1943.

599
 Journal of Church and State

none of the ethnic, state, or canonical principles was observed.

Meanwhile, the Patriarchate of Moscow has not applied this reason-
ing to either Soviet Ukraine after World War II or the New Independ-
ent States after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The presently existing close bonds between most Eastern Euro-
pean churches and their nations are not only an outcome of specific
historical developments but are also rooted in the ecclesiastical
structure of Orthodox Christianity. In his analysis of the role of
the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Yugoslav wars, Silvio Ferrari
points to “the weakness of a supranational center in the Orthodox
world” as a major factor stimulating the identification of this partic-
ular church with Serbian nationalism.35 My other research empha-
sizes the phenomenon of autocephaly in Orthodoxy as a major
reason for its past and contemporary international decentralization
and as a condition for the establishment of closer relations between
the church and the state as well as between the church and the
nation in the areas dominated by Orthodoxy. At the international
level, the decentralization of the Orthodox Church prevented the
development of a unanimous stand on various issues, including
those of world peace and war. In particular cases, however, it
allowed for more democratic behavior by individual Orthodox
churches, e.g., the role of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in the
rescue of local Jews during World War II.36 Meanwhile, at the state
level, an Orthodox church could play quite conservative and even
oppressive roles with regard to the local religious minorities, e.g.,
the “reunion” of Ukrainian Greek Catholics by the Patriarchate of
Moscow in 1946.

Western European Approaches to Church-State

Relations
The modern models of church-state relations were established in the
West in the last two centuries. They have been strongly influenced by
two main ideas: the freedom of religion and the separation of
powers. According to Rik Torfs, the European Union’s model of
church-state relations embraces both levels. The first covers religious
freedom, while the second “deals with the superstructure of the
system.”37 In this way, the implementation of agreements pertaining

35. Ferrari, “Nationalism, Patriotism, and Religious Belief in Europe,” 633.

36. Albena Taneva and Ivanka Gizenko, eds., The Power of Civil Society in a Time
of Genocide: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on
the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria, 1940– 1944, trans. Alex Tanev (Sofia: Sofia
University Press St. Kliment Ohridski, 2005).
37. Rik Torfs, “Experiences of Western Democracies in Dealing with the Legal
Position of Churches and Religious Communities,” in Legal Position of Churches

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

to church-state relations depends upon the full protection of reli-

gious freedom. On the one hand, the weakening of the political
importance of religion has strengthened the freedom of religion,
but on the other hand, “the ongoing horizontal application of funda-
mental rights” brings about a stricter examination of religions.38

Freedom of Religion

Initially the idea of freedom of religion was articulated by John

Locke in his Letter on Toleration. It laid the groundwork for the
modern religious policy as an alternative to the religious wars expe-
rienced by western societies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries. Locke regarded the recognition of religious diversity as the first
step to religious peace and tolerance in the modern state.39 In his
view, any religious conversion that is forced from outside, i.e., by
the state authorities, is formal, while true conversion springs
from the internal persuasion of a person in his/her faith. Therefore,
God did not grant any rights to the state or its ruler concerning the
salvation of the souls of its subjects.40 All people are equal in God’s
eyes, despite the fact that rulers were born with more power than
their subjects. This means that Locke regarded the ruler’s power
as a purely secular phenomenon, while in the Byzantine tradition
the power of basileus was both secular and priestly.
Locke’s understanding of the freedom of religion, however, was
more limited than the contemporary one. Today’s individual reli-
gious freedom is conceived as a fundamental right,41 but in
Locke’s view it is only a political right.42 To some degree these
views have been influenced by Western Christianity’s belief that
man is deeply sinful and unable to restrain himself from doing
wrong. This belief is not shared by Orthodox Christians whose
reading of the Bible is more optimistic. According to them, the act
of baptism liberates everybody from original sin. They assume

and Religious Communities in South-Eastern Europe, ed. Silvio Devetak, Liana

Kalcina, and Miroslav Polzer (Ljubljana, Maribor, Vienna: ISCOMET, 2004), 19.
38. Ibid., 22.
39. John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, trans. S. Malinov (Sofia:
“GAL-IKO,” 1997), 29.
40. Ibid., 36.
41. Silvio Ferrari, “Conclusion: Church and State in Post-Communist Europe,”
Law and Religion in Post-Communist Europe (Leuven, Paris, and Dudley:
Peeters, 2003), 411.
42. Svetoslav Malinov, “Introduction to the Bulgarian Edition of John Locke’s
Letter on Toleration,” in John Locke A Letter concerning Toleration, trans. S.
Malinov (Sofia: “GAL-IKO,” 1997), 19.

601
 Journal of Church and State

that even the most sinful human being can be saved, if he/she sin-
cerely repents in the last moment of his/her life. Finally, it is
believed that man can achieve real freedom only as an Orthodox
Church member. Maybe this is one reason for the lack of great inter-
est in the freedom of religion in traditionally Orthodox societies.
Locke’s notion of the freedom of religion also included restric-
tions on the members of some religious denominations such as
Catholicism, whose loyalty to the Roman pope was considered
stronger than that to their own states, or on specific groups, includ-
ing religious dissidents and atheists.43 In the last century, however,
the notion of freedom of religion expanded, and today it is consid-
ered an inalienable human right rather than one granted by the
state.44 This development introduced new duties of the state to
protect the religious rights of its citizens and to justify any restric-
tion on them. According to Article 9 of the European Convention of
Human Rights, the latter is allowed mostly “for the protection of
public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights
and freedoms of others.” The implementation of this principle in
concrete cases is not so easy.

Separation between Church and State

Locke distinguished between the state and the church and regarded
them as societies of a different nature. According to him, the
former is based on the interests of citizens, while the latter is
based on the free will of its members.45 If in the beginning the sepa-
ration between church and state was aimed at strengthening the
peace in a given society and the stability in a concrete state, today
its importance stems from “the security concerns and the emerging
multicultural society.”46 The principle “a free church in a free state,”
formulated by Camillo Benso di Cavour in the mid-nineteenth
century, became the next step in the development of the modern
concept of church-state relations. These new relations were no
longer linked with their different natures as societies but with their
institutional aspects, i.e., it dealt with power relations. As a result, a
system of concordats was established to secure just relations

43. Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, 84.

44. Marat Shterin, “Church-State Relationships and Religious Legislation in
Russia in the 1990s,” Religious Transition in Russia (Helsinki: Kikimora Publica-
tions, 2000), 219.
45. Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration, 35– 39.
46. Torfs, “Responsibility—A Guiding Principle of Church-State Relations,” Reli-
gion and European Integration, Book series of European Academy of Sciences
and Arts, 6, ed. Silvio Devetak, Liana Kalcina, and Miroslav Polzer (Ljubljana,
Maribor, Vienna: Edition Weimar, 2007), 107.

602
 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

between the Catholic Church and the modern nation-states in

Europe. This change also meant that freedom of religion was guaran-
teed not on an individual basis but on a collective one. The members
of a church that had a concordat signed with a concrete state enjoyed
certain rights not so much because of being equal as citizens but
because of the privileged position of their church. Meanwhile, the
Orthodox majorities in Eastern Europe did not need concordats to
enjoy similar privileges because their states considered it their
duty to protect their traditional local churches. The establishment
of communist regimes also did not bring about any concordat
system in the Orthodox countries. Instead they made use of the
domestic character of Eastern European Orthodox churches, which
facilitated the state’s control over them. At the same time, the com-
munist ruling parties concentrated their efforts on fighting those
religious organizations whose headquarters were beyond Soviet
control, such as the Catholic Church and the Vatican.
If western societies used the principle of separation for “reducing
interactions between the State and religious communities to a
minimum,”47 the Bolsheviks regarded it as a means of demolishing
the Russian Orthodox Church as a major pillar of the tsarist societal
system.48 In the course of World War II, however, Stalin changed his
attitude toward the Russian Orthodox Church and began to treat it
as a potential ally in the fight against Hitler. In fact, this modified
church-state separation was the model implemented in the
so-called people’s democracies, established after 1945. It was not
aimed at ceasing the efforts to uproot religion from Eastern Euro-
pean societies but at transforming their churches into an append-
age of the state apparatus.49 The local Orthodox churches were
also preserved as identity markers that distinguished Eastern Euro-
pean peoples from their Western contemporaries. Therefore, almost
everywhere “the communists found churches especially useful
when they could be co-opted for patriotic and national causes.”50
In the case of Orthodoxy, “the close alliance between the dominant
church and the communist regime meant that the church as an insti-
tution could not participate as actively in the opposition move-
ments as the Catholic Church in Poland.”51

47. Ferrari, “Conclusion: Church and State in Post-Communist Europe,” 417.

48. Shterin, “Church-State Relationships and Religious Legislation in Russia in
the 1990s,” 224.
49. Kalkandjieva, Ecclesio-Political Aspects of the International Activities of the
Moscow Patriarchate, 1917– 1948.
50. Zoe Knox, “Church, State and Society in Eastern Europe,” Religion zwischen
Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft—Religion between Church, State and Society
(Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač, 2007), 82.
51. Ibid., 86.

603
 Journal of Church and State

Meanwhile in the West, freedom of religion gained priority over

the separation of church and state as a factor for democracy.
After the collapse of communism this process has spread in
Eastern Europe as well. The events of 9/11 in the United States,
however, provoked a new shift in the sphere of church-state rela-
tions. They brought about a growing emphasis on “national secur-
ity” as a justification for some limitations on the freedom of
religion.52 This tendency could bring more advantages to the Ortho-
dox Church than to the other religious organizations in states where
it represents the majority of the population. This process is also
facilitated by the lack of an international center of Orthodoxy and
by the strong bonds of the Eastern European Orthodox churches
with their nations.
Another novelty in the sphere of church-state relations concerns
the cooperation between both institutions. According to Silvio
Ferrari,

Today separation substantially means a distinction between one area of

relations belonging to the state and another pertaining to the church,
and consequently, respect of their mutual autonomy. It is thus possible
to derive from the separatist principle the right of the religious commun-
ities to self-government without State interference and their duty to
abstain from directly conducting political activities. But separation no
longer means (as it did in the past) the State obligation to abstain from
placing its own resources at the service of religious communities.53

This new reading of the church-state separation does not exclude

cooperation between the two organizations, e.g., state support for
religious teaching or classes about religion in public schools.
Many former communist countries have developed a system of
public financing of their churches in order to compensate them
for the property confiscated by the communist regimes.54 Such
processes raise questions about “the criteria by which the state
resources are to be shared among various religious groups.”55 As
a rule, the postcommunist models of church-state relations in
Eastern Europe reflect the western principles of “substantial
respect of individual religious freedom, guarantee of the autonomy
and, in particular, the self-administration of the religious denomi-
nations, and selective collaboration of the states with the
churches.”56
52. Torfs, “Responsibility—A Guiding Principle of Church-State Relations,” 107.
53. Ferrari, “Conclusion: Church and State in Post-Communist Europe,” 418.
54. Ibid., 419 –20.
55. Ibid., 420.
56. Ibid., 421.

604
 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

Church-State Relations in Post –Cold War Eastern

Europe
The Soviet Modification of the Principle of Separation

In the course of the twentieth century church-state relations in

Eastern European countries, where the majority of the population
is affiliated with Orthodox Christianity, experienced a series of
transformations. Until World War I this Christian denomination
enjoyed the status of the dominant religion in all Orthodox states.
Its monopoly, however, was challenged by the Bolshevik Revolution
in Soviet Russia and Lenin’s decree on the separation of school from
church and of church from state. Moreover, the victory of the Red
Army over Nazi Germany brought about a new expansion of this
model over almost all European countries under Stalin’s control. It
was adopted by Catholic Poland and Hungary as well as by Ortho-
dox Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. In all of them, the Soviet type of
church-state separation aimed at annihilating religion and religious
institutions by isolating them from society. It seems that the
replacement of the conjunction and (used by France and many
western democracies in their legislation on church-state relations)
with the preposition from, which is often combined with a genitive
case (used by Lenin in his famous decree on the separation of the
school from the church and of the church from the state), is not
simply a matter of translation but of politics.57 The model of dom-
inant Orthodoxy was preserved only in the Orthodox countries that
remained outside the Iron Curtain, i.e., in Greece and Cyprus. Mean-
while, Romania became the only exception in the Soviet camp by
developing a mixed model of church-state relations that allowed
the local Orthodox Church some degree of internal autonomy.
Neither the Romanian Constitution (1946), nor the Romanian Law
of Religious Confessions (1948) referred to the principle of separa-
tion, but both clearly guaranteed the state control over the local
Orthodox Church as well as over the other recognized faith
communities.58
In legal terms, today we distinguish two main types of Orthodox
church-state relationships, presented by the model of separation
and that of dominant Orthodoxy. Still there are considerable
differences in their implementation. On the one hand, the

57. Schnitter and Kalkandjieva, “Religion and European Integration in Bulga-

ria,” 358 – 59.
58. Lucian N. Leustean, Orthodoxy and the Cold War: Religion and Political Power
in Romania, 1947 – 63 (Basingstoke, Hants, United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan,
2009), 70– 87.

605
 Journal of Church and State

postcommunist governments became less strict in observing the

principle of church-state separation, especially in the lands previ-
ously exposed to militant atheism. Very often they issue bylaws or
other administrative acts that give considerable advantages to the
local Orthodox Church, while restricting the other religious com-
munities. On the other hand, the dominant status of Orthodoxy
and its churches in states like Greece that did not experience mili-
tant atheism has been seriously challenged by European Union
legislation and the activities of human rights organizations. As a
result, the non-Orthodox communities there have expanded their
freedom of religion and receive better protection of their rights as
citizens belonging to religious minorities.
Meanwhile, the principle of separation of the church from the
state imposed by the former communist regimes in most East Euro-
pean countries is questioned nowadays by the Orthodox churches.
According to them, such separation is incompatible with its canon
law and particularly with the principle of symphony. They consider
both models of church-state separation, the one invented by the
West and the other by the militant atheists, as a break of symphony,
regarded as an inherited feature of Orthodox Christianity. After the
end of the Cold War, however, many Orthodox leaders began to dis-
tinguish between the concept of symphony as an ideal and its real
functioning throughout the centuries. According to Patriarch
Daniel of Romania,

the Church-State symphony was never symmetrical in terms of real power,

but rather most often asymmetric and irregular. The Church constantly
prayed for the State, and often it also pleaded to the State for help. The
State, in its turn, supported the Church, yet it often tended to subjugate
the Church.. . . In this perspective, throughout its history, the Church-State
symphony was characterized by the tension between ideal and insuffi-
ciency and between the tradition of continuity and the renewal trend.59

The traditional approach to symphony as harmony between an

Orthodox Church and its state is also challenged by the post –
Cold War changes in the political map of Eastern Europe. The disso-
lution of the Soviet Union and Tito’s Yugoslavia brought about
many new independent states, while the Russian and the Serbian
Orthodox Churches preserved their canonical jurisdiction, which
today include territories beyond the borders of the states where
their headquarters are situated.60 In such cases the previous
59. Ciobotea, “Church-State Relations in Romania: Tradition and Present Day
Experience,” 107.
60. This issue is analyzed in my REVACERN research paper on Geo-Politics of
Contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy: Does Church Independence Matter in Interna-
tional Affairs? See: http://www.revacern.eu.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

understanding of symphony could be applied only to the relations

between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Russian State, but its
implementation in the Near Abroad countries can become very
problematic, e.g., the dispute on the canonical territorial jurisdic-
tion of the Moscow Patriarchate over Ukraine. The Serbian Patriarch-
ate also faces complications in its relations with the former
Yugoslav republics, and particularly with the FYR of Macedonia.
In such young states either a larger or a smaller part of the Ortho-
dox clergy and laity often take the initiative to declare their local
Orthodox organization as an autocephalous church, e.g., in
Ukraine and Macedonia. Although such churches do not get canon-
ical recognition by the Orthodox world and remain in isolation, they
are usually recognized as the main religious organization by their
national legislation, thus playing a major role in church-state rela-
tions there. The analysis of such cases also reveals the growing
effect of the national factor on the church-state relations in coun-
tries where the majority of the population is affiliated with Ortho-
dox Christianity. It is extremely strong in the Ukrainian and
Macedonian cases but can also be observed in the other new inde-
pendent states with Orthodox believers who are ethnically different
from the historic mother-church, e.g., Orthodox Byelorussians and
the Russian Orthodox Church or Orthodox Montenegrians and the
Serbian Patriarchate. When an autocephalous Orthodox Church rep-
resents a religious minority, however, it does not develop national-
ist behavior. Today this development can be observed in Orthodox
churches that experienced the communist terror such as in
Albania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, as well as in the ancient patri-
archates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It
is also significant that in both cases the Orthodox churches are
not able to observe the principle of symphony by the mere fact
that the states in which their headquarters are located or where
they have dioceses are not Orthodox.

The Secular and the Religious in Orthodoxy: From Atheist State

to Secular State

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe brought not only a

religious revival, but also a transition from the rule of militant
atheism to the rule of law, which in the case of Europe has strong
secular roots. It was especially challenging for the Orthodox
churches and communities that find it difficult for various reasons
to distinguish the previous atheist state from the postcommunist
secular one. In historical terms, Orthodox societies have never expe-
rienced a true separation between state and church, i.e., a separation

607
 Journal of Church and State

that truly respects the freedom of religion. It would be misleading,

however, to neglect the difference between the French laicité and
the militant atheism imposed in the Soviet Union, Tito’s Yugoslavia,
Bulgaria, and the other former communist countries. Although the
1948 Romanian Law of Religious Confessions did not use the term
separation, it subjected church-state relations to an atheist upbring-
ing of society. The post-1989 Romanian law also avoids any reference
to church-state separation and speaks about “a judicial autonomy of
religious denominations,” and the major task is to find the right
balance between this autonomy and the social partnership of reli-
gious entities with the state.61 At the same time, the two other coun-
tries with Orthodox majorities, Greece and Cyprus, have never been
in touch with any church-state separation.
The balance between the religious and the secular is especially
challenging for those Orthodox societies that experienced commu-
nism and who look for continuity with their past and a revitaliza-
tion of their suppressed faith traditions. On the one hand, this
balance had no meaning during the rule of militant atheism. On
the other hand, the principle of Orthodoxy as a dominant state reli-
gion was never abandoned in Greece or Cyprus, which remained
beyond Stalin’s grasp. Therefore the post – Cold War religious
revival in traditionally Orthodox countries often came with calls
for a return of the dominant status of Orthodoxy or its churches
in Eastern Europe. Such developments are also facilitated by the
lack of uniform laws on church-state relations in the different Euro-
pean countries as well as by the vague international legislation on
religious rights. As a result, most postcommunist constitutions
and laws on religious affairs emphasize the traditional nature and
historical role of their Orthodox churches. Such texts often create
conditions for restrictions on the freedom of religion or unequal
treatment of all existing religions in a given country. The presence
of Orthodox clerics or the conducting of religious rites during
state activities in many postcommunist Eastern European countries
provoke debates about the boundary between the secular and the
religious, as well as about the rights of religious minorities there.
At the same time, the processes of democratization of the former
communist states imply an adaption of their religious legislation to
the internationally recognized legal norms in the field of human
and religious rights. In this regard, it seems that the postcommunist
governments in most Orthodox countries have developed a formal

61. Daniel Ciobotea, “Opening Address at the Symposium: Church and State in
Post-Communist Eastern Europe,” Religion zwischen Kirche, Staat und Gesell-
schaft—Religion between Church, State and Society (Hamburg: Verlag
Dr. Kovač, 2007), 9– 10.

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attitude to the principle of separation. They often omit its function as

a means of protecting religious minorities from the majority.62 The
dominant or traditional status of the Orthodox Church, as well as
some privileges granted to it, increases its influence on “the
public’s attitudes towards religious minorities and understandings
of national identity.”63 In this regard, many Eastern European policy-
makers tend to forget that church-state separation has a double func-
tion. On the one hand, it is important for the health of religion itself,
while on the other hand, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s words, it can
reduce “the danger of a dominant church aligning itself with political
forces.”64 Such an approach to the principle of separation, however,
seems to be more understandable to the Catholic and Protestant soci-
eties in Europe than to their eastern neighbors.
The collapse of communism did not solve all problems in the
sphere of church-state separation in Orthodox parts of Europe.
Although the Soviet successor-states, Tito’s Yugoslavia, and Bulga-
ria preserved Lenin’s formula of a “separation of the church from
the state,” they did not bring church-state relations closer to the
western model. In fact, postcommunist legislation has weakened
the principle of separation in the case of the local Orthodox
churches by emphasizing their traditional nature or historical
roles. According to Zoe Knox, Orthodox churches in the postcom-
munist countries have concentrated their efforts in three major
directions: “to foster links with the post-communist political
elites,” to “reduce the influence (and sometimes the actions) of reli-
gious minorities,” and to “promote the symphony between religious
and national identity.”65 On the one hand, the cooperation between
the local political elites and the corresponding Orthodox churches
is mutually beneficial, but on the other hand, it threatens religious
minorities with alienation.66
Meanwhile, the Orthodox churches do not see anything problem-
atic in their post – Cold War rapprochement with the state. Accord-
ing to their hierarchs, by representing the majority of the
population, these churches can contribute to the development of
liberal democracy in their countries in two ways: by reinvigorating
spiritual life and reestablishing unity within these churches,
among bishops, priests, and laity.67 These arguments, however,

62. Knox, “Church, State and Society in Eastern Europe,” 92.

63. Ibid., 79.
64. Ibid., 92.
65. Ibid., 79– 81.
66. Ibid., 90.
67. Ion Bria, “Evangelism, Proselytism, and Religious Freedom in Romania: An
Orthodox Point of View,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 36, no. 1 – 2 (Winter–
Spring 1999): 179 – 81.

609
 Journal of Church and State

do not take into account many other aspects. One of them concerns
the cooperation of the Orthodox churches with the communist state
security agencies, whose files are still closed to public access. The
restitution of church property confiscated by the communist
regimes is an issue that clashes various economic and political
interests in the religious field, as revealed by the split of the Bulgar-
ian Orthodox Church into two synods in 1992.68 Not less important
is the issue of challenged loyalty of clerics and believers whose cit-
izenship differ from their ecclesiastical belonging, e.g., the impris-
onment of Bishop Jovan, the Serbian Patriarchate’s administrator
in charge of its flock in the FYR of Macedonia, by the Macedonian
authorities in 2005.69

Equality of Religious Denominations and Freedom of Religion

The contemporary concepts of church-state relations are not

limited to the issue of separation with its various aspects, but
also pay special attention to the freedom of religion. Historically,
this concept came to life as a result of the religious wars between
Catholics and Protestants; therefore it appears to be an intra-
Christian and Western phenomenon. The question about the appli-
cation of this principle at the level of interreligious relations
(Christian-Muslim-Jewish) in the public sphere of a nonconfessional
or secular state has surfaced quite recently, e.g., the issue of Muslim
headscarves in Europe. In contrast, the combination of strong
church-state alliances and the scarcity of wars between Christians
of different denominations in the Orthodox countries postponed
the debate on religious freedom there. In comparison with
Western Europeans, the Orthodox people had a much richer experi-
ence of living together with non-Christians, especially with
Muslims. At the same time, the policy of Eastern European rulers
or governments toward the non-Orthodox Christians in their coun-
tries was often more restrictive than that toward the non-Christian
population. The differences in the religious demography and
history of the Christian East and the Christian West have influenced
the present perception of religious freedom in both areas of Europe.
The West has approached this issue from the point of view of
interdenominational tolerance between different Christian

68. Kalkandjieva, “The New Denominations Act and the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church (2002– 2005),” Religion zwischen Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft—Reli-
gion between Church, State and Society (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2007),
108– 10.
69. This case is analyzed by Payne, “Nationalism and the Local Church,”
837– 40.

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communities, and today it is expanding it into the interreligious

sphere, where the major challenge seems to be the Christian-Muslim
dialogue. Meanwhile, the East has started from its experience in
interreligious tolerance or coexistence but finds it difficult to
proceed with the interdenominational dialogue. In both cases,
however, it seems easier to guarantee the freedom of religion to
faiths that have well-developed institutions than to those that are
mostly community-based, e.g., Muslims and NRMs. Another
common peculiarity is that religious freedom in most traditionally
Christian states embraces the freedom of belief and association,
while the demonstration of religiosity in the public sphere can be
restricted on various grounds.
Compared with western states, the former communist ones tend to
grant special status to their traditional religions and churches in
order to secure their monopoly in society. In the case of Orthodoxy,
however, this behavior follows different logic. It is rooted in the close
cooperation between the Orthodox Church and the state, established
under communism in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, and Tito’s
Yugoslavia.70 In this respect, the lack of changes among the leader-
ship of most dominant churches after 1989 seems to be of crucial
importance. Orthodox hierarchs can rely on the former communist
elites who have played a decisive role in their promotion and who
are still quite influential despite the fall of the totalitarian regimes
in Eastern Europe. As a result, the postcommunist legislation tends
to grant a privilege status to the local Orthodox churches. In most
cases they benefit from the restitution of church property confis-
cated by the communists and a restoration of religious instruction
in public schools.71
The drive of the Orthodox churches in former communist lands for
a special status can be also seen in their “campaigns for restrictions
on religious freedom, particularly targeting the Protestant
churches.”72 At the same time, the clash between these churches
and the new religious movements that flooded the former commu-
nist countries after the end of the Cold War was provoked by the
claims of the former that they should not be challenged by nontradi-
tional faiths. The ignorance of Western evangelists about the Eastern
European religious traditions provoked negative reactions not only

70. The mentioned cooperation between the Orthodox churches and the com-
munist regimes was not a result of the docile nature of Orthodox Christianity
but of the grave repressions over the Orthodox clergy and believers and the pro-
motion of loyal persons into Orthodox hierarchs by the communist govern-
ments. See Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945– 91, ed. Lucian
N. Leustean (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).
71. Knox, “Church, State and Society in Eastern Europe,” 89.
72. Ibid., 96.

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among the Orthodox majority, but also among traditional religious

minorities, including Protestant churches.73 Finally, the state of
freedom of religion in traditionally Orthodox countries is also influ-
enced by the historically established link between the majority
Church and national identity. Eileen Barker warns that the attempts
of the dominant churches, including the Orthodox ones, to margin-
alize religious minorities can lead to an exclusive understanding of
religious traditions. She finds the fusion of nation and church in
many Eastern European countries dangerous, especially the rhetoric
claiming that only “a member, or at least a supporter, of the national
church” can be a real Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, or Serbian.74 As
a result, religious minorities in Eastern Europe were often perceived
and treated as enemies of their states. Nowadays such an attitude
“might obstruct the participation of religious and ethnic minorities
in civil society.”75 In addition to the historical and social factors
that facilitated this development, some scholars pay attention to
the lack of a definition of proselytism in the national legislation of
most Orthodox countries. On the one hand, the local Orthodox
churches regularly accuse religious minorities of proselytism, and
ecumenical agencies frequently agree with these charges. On the
other hand, there is a question that still remains without answer:
Who will have the courage to tell the majority churches with all their polit-
ical and social power that they also engage in forms of proselytism by
claiming to possess the absolute truth and demeaning other perspectives,
by creating and communicating caricatures of other religious commun-
ities or demonizing them, by demanding restrictions on the religious
freedom of other groups because of their love of power, by instilling
false fears regarding the subversion of the nation that they maintain
they alone can defend against, and by encouraging discriminatory
actions or even outright violence against those who would challenge
their religious monopoly?”76

Conclusions
The presented analysis of church-state relations in Orthodoxy
reveals that neither the theological concept of symphony nor the
73. Ibid., 97.
74. Eileen Barker, “The Protection of Minority Religions in Eastern Europe,” in
Protecting Human Rights of Religious Minorities in Eastern Europe, ed. Peter
G. Dancin and Elizabeth A. Cole (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002),
14.
75. Knox, “Church, State and Society in Eastern Europe,” 100 –101.
76. Earl Pope, “Ecumenism, Religious Freedom, and National Church Contro-
versy in Romania,” Romania, Culture and Nationalism: A Tribute to Radu Flor-
escu, ed. Anthony R. DeLuca and Paul D. Quinlan (Berkeley: University Presses
of California, 1999), 179.

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 A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations

Cold War thesis defining them as caesaropapism can offer adequate

explanation for their dynamics throughout history. Although sym-
phony exerted a great influence on the development of church-state
relations in the Eastern European societies that adopted Christian-
ity from Byzantium, they were not able to absorb its essence deriv-
ing from the Byzantine cosmogony but followed mostly its external
aspects. In this sense, the archetype of symphony did not outlive
Byzantium but remained locked within its historical space and
time. The thesis of caesaropapism is much weaker than that of sym-
phony because it tends to convey ideas and notions born in a reli-
gious, political, and cultural milieu other than Eastern European
Orthodox society. Moreover, it neglects the practices of Orthodox
hierarchs to act as state rulers when the corresponding civil author-
ities are not able to fulfill these duties.
This article also explores the popular thesis of Orthodoxy as a
triad of church, state, and nation. It reveals that it is applicable
only to those Eastern European states where the majority of the
population belongs to this Christian denomination but is not rele-
vant to Orthodox churches that present religious minorities, e.g.,
the Patriarchate of Alexandria or the Polish Orthodox Church.
Therefore, the triad cannot be regarded as an inherited feature of
Eastern Orthodoxy but as a modern development provoked by the
advent of nationalism. Since the nineteenth century, however, this
triad has become an important factor in determining the church-
state relationship in states where the majority of population is affili-
ated with Orthodoxy such as Russia, Greece, and Romania. More-
over, despite their aim to build fully atheist societies, the
communist regimes also made use of the close links between the
Orthodox churches, their nations, and states. It seems that this
experience continues to influence church-state relations in Eastern
Europe after the end of the Cold War and thus needs additional
research.
The historical overview of church-state relations in Orthodox
lands also indicates that local governments and churches have
tended to adopt the western principles of freedom of religion and
separation of church and state to a lesser or greater degree. Still
their application not only takes into account the historical experi-
ence of the Orthodox people but is also influenced by the concrete
political circumstances in their states, e.g., the adoption of Lenin’s
formula for the separation of church from state. Being imposed
by force after World War II, the principle of separation provokes con-
fusion in Eastern European societies after the fall of communism.
Many people find it difficult to distinguish the previous atheist
state from the new secular state. As a result, not only do the Ortho-
dox churches claim a restoration of their interwar status as

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dominant religious institutions in their countries, but also the local

governments in the former communist states tend to grant a privi-
leged status to traditional churches at the expense of religious
minorities. At the same time, the governments of Orthodox
Greece and Cyprus that have never experienced any separation of
church and state also reveal a hesitation to introduce it in their
countries.
Although the introduction of separation between church and state
is often regarded as a main condition for the democratization of
the Orthodox countries in Eastern Europe, it seems that the attitude
toward the freedom of religion is much more problematic. On the
one hand, the Orthodox churches reveal immense flexibility in
the past to accommodate their existence to a non-Christian rule,
as that of the Ottomans and communism. On the other hand,
today they face difficulty with respecting the freedom of religion
that requires equal treatment of all religious traditions. It seems
that Orthodox churches are more open to make compromises in
their relations with the state than in those with the other religious
bodies. Most probably this difference is rooted in a differentiation
between the kingdom of God on earth and the contemporary
secular state made by the Orthodox Church. The former is part of
its sacred realm, while the latter is associated with the profane
and thus a separation from it is permissible. The principle of
freedom of religion, however, questions the heart of Orthodoxy as
bearer of the absolute truth and salvation by treating it on equal
footing with the other religions. Therefore, this principle seems to
be the main source of tensions and conflicts in the relations
between the contemporary Orthodox churches and the correspond-
ing states and other political and public entities that support
freedom of religion.

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