Topic: ‘Self-Loathing Orthodox Christians’ Emerge As Force To Be Reckoned With...

[Mor Ephrem]

For many years, Western sociologists have talked about “self-loathing Jews,” people who by their origins are Jews but base their identity on denying and opposing everything Jewish. Now a St. Petersburg sociologist is suggesting that an analogous group has emerged in Russia, “the self-loathing Orthodox Christians.”

Elena Ryigas, a scholar at the Sociological Institute in the northern capital, says this term refers not to those who call themselves Orthodox but don’t take part in the life of the church but rather to those who are fully “churched” as far as practice is concerned but who dissent from what they see Orthodoxy having become (echo.msk.ru/blog/elena_ryg/2039968-echo/).

Up to now, these people form an insignificant minority, she writes; but because they are middle class and display a high level of social activity, they are worrying the church hierarchy by their constant raising of “inconvenient questions” about church financing, the election of hierarchs or “simply by citing too often the holy word.”

http://www.eurasiareview.com/21082017-self-loathing-orthodox-christians-emerge-as-force-to-be-reckoned-with-in-russia-oped/

[Asteriktos]

...those who are fully “churched” as far as practice is concerned but who dissent from what they see Orthodoxy having become ... they are worrying the church hierarchy by their constant raising of “inconvenient questions” about church financing, the election of hierarchs or “simply by citing too often the holy word.”

And this is not originally from the Onion Dome, correct?

[Velsigne]

Ah ha ha!  There must be a new subtitle in there for OC.net

[William T]

aren't those the people you're supposed to try and ship off to a monastery in the middle of Siberia?

[Iconodule]

Rather strange and amorphous categorizing. Ryigas and Fr Deacon Kuraev seem to be talking about different groups of people. It sounds like Saints Nil Sorsky or Philaret of Moscow could be classed as "self-loathing Orthodox".

[Porter ODoran]

Rather strange and amorphous categorizing. Ryigas and Fr Deacon Kuraev seem to be talking about different groups of people. It sounds like Saints Nil Sorsky or Philaret of Moscow could be classed as "self-loathing Orthodox".

In your self-aggrandizing dreams perhaps.

[Iconodule]

Rather strange and amorphous categorizing. Ryigas and Fr Deacon Kuraev seem to be talking about different groups of people. It sounds like Saints Nil Sorsky or Philaret of Moscow could be classed as "self-loathing Orthodox".

In your self-aggrandizing dreams perhaps.

Likewise your constant attacks on the Church of Russia would likely land you in the same category.

[Porter ODoran]

Rather strange and amorphous categorizing. Ryigas and Fr Deacon Kuraev seem to be talking about different groups of people. It sounds like Saints Nil Sorsky or Philaret of Moscow could be classed as "self-loathing Orthodox".

In your self-aggrandizing dreams perhaps.

Likewise your constant attacks on the Church of Russia would likely land you in the same category.

You're thinking of someone else.

[Alpha60]

Perhaps the basis for Porter's objection, Iconodule, this this:

Indeed, in some ways, they are like many who say “’I don’t need the church; God is in my soul.’”

As the number of churches have grown, there has been observed a trend toward “self-organization of those believers” who are not prepared simply to obey the priest in all things. They use the church as a kind of base, but in fact have “emigrated” into a kind of Kitezh in which they are on their own.

If such an anti-ecclesiology reigns supreme among these people, they are the ones attacking the holy Russian church.  What that sounds like is ecclesiastical disobedience, and not some kind of neo non-Posessor movement.  Indeed they seem a bit like neo-Pomortsy.

I say this as someone who loves the Russian Orthodox Church, the MP, ROCOR, the canonical UOC, the Church of Japan, and all of the other canonical autonomous subdivisions thereof, including the legitimate Estonian Orthodox Church, and who regards the OCA as autocephalous because the Moscow Patriarch, as an autocephalous primate, has the power to grant autocephaly (and I reject the claim of the EP hat anyone has the power to revoke autocephaly except for the Holy Synod of a jurisdiction that no longer desires it).

[The young fogey]

These church naysayers sound like new Russian bourgeoisie. I don't know enough to say: they could be innocuous wanting more say for the laity in running the parish or they could be trying to turn Russian Orthodoxy into mainline Protestantism, as unlikely as that sounds.

[Iconodule]

Again, the article seems to be putting different types of people in the same basket. Is someone who criticizes hierarchs for embezzling money or driving around in Ferraris and schmoozing with politicians while ignoring the poor- is such a person a "self-loathing Orthodox"? That seems to be what Fr Deacon Kuraev is talking about.

[xOrthodox4Christx]

Sociologists trying to agitate and uproot the moral authority of the Church, is essentially all it is.

[Alpo]

Sociologists trying to agitate and uproot the moral authority of the Church, is essentially all it is.

How many courses you've taken on Sociology?

[augustin717]

It's a general phenomenon. Orthodoxy is trying to become a purity cult in many places , purging awAy the lukewarm . Its backbone historically.

[Alpha60]

Sociologists trying to agitate and uproot the moral authority of the Church, is essentially all it is.

What does any of this have to do with sociology? 

I am somewhat of an enthusiast of the field despite the overrated status of Max Weber and the idiocy of the Protestant Work Ethic, which failed as a model to predict industrial activity in the 20th century, as the religious assumptions it was based on did not hold.  I suppose nowadays he would have to be writing about an Armenian Work Ethic...

[Porter ODoran]

Sociologists trying to agitate and uproot the moral authority of the Church, is essentially all it is.

How many courses you've taken on Sociology?

Are you suggesting you've taken many, and still refuse to admit his implicit point? That's bad.