Holy Rus': The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia by John P. Burgess (review)

Holy Rus': the Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia offers a refreshing counterpoint to the current fixation on political aspects of church-state relations in Putin's Russia. The author, Presbyterian theologian John Burgess, spent two years in Russia with his family in 2004–5 and 2011–12 and returned on numerous shorter trips through 2016. While there, he regularly attended services at parish churches in St. Petersburg and Moscow and spoke to lay and clerical members of the religious community across Russia about the current "re-Christianization" (13) of post-Soviet Russia, and the role of the Church in the lives of Russians today. Seeking to understand "the religious vision that guides Russia and the Orthodoxy Church today" (2), Burgess explores the Church's efforts to bring more Russians into active participation in the church, its educational programs, social work, parish life, and ongoing canonization efforts. As the author claims, the book discusses not the proclamations of the patriarch, but the "'lived theology' of the parishes and monasteries, priests and laypeople, professors and pilgrims" within Russia from the far north to the Black Sea (5).

Every chapter refers back to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church as a point of comparison to the current situation, but also as a reference to long-term continuities in belief and practice. Though not a historian, Burgess's treatment of the history is sound. Particularly important is his description of the traumatic experience of the Church under Communist rule, when it was nearly wiped out and survived in complicity with the Soviet regime. By the end of Stalin's terror in the 1930s, the toll of persecution was "unprecedented in Church history": at least 85 percent of clerics and monastics had been arrested and some 200,000 to 350,000 people had died for their association with the Church (32). Likewise the "re-Christianization" of Russia also breaks all precedents, with staggering numbers of revival. From barely 7,000 parishes in 1988, the Church now has some 35,000—half of which are in Russia (the rest mostly in Belarus and Ukraine)—with 300 parishes being added each year (38, 88). Monasteries have multiplied from fewer than twenty in 1991 to more than 800 (9). While not shying away from addressing critiques of the Church's cozy relationship with Putin's authoritarian regime, or of its focus on cultural over spiritual values, Burgess maintains a steady focus on how the components of "re-Christianization" have affected the spiritual lives of ordinary Russians.

Burgess brings his on-the-ground experiences to life in chapters on religious education, social ministry, new canonization efforts, and parish life. He attended Bible study classes and Sunday school for children in various parishes, finding that after seventy years of not being able to provide formal religious education, the Church's current efforts are uneven and often promote cultural identity over spiritual values. Nevertheless, Church publications of Bibles and religious literature continue to be bestsellers, and Orthodox TV shows are popular. The Seretenskii Monastery in Moscow had three monks working full-time online to answer questions about the faith, yielding, in 2009, a 900-page book, One Thousand Questions to a Priest, which covers issues on the liturgy, rite, doctrine, and proper behaviour (66–67). Reopened women's and men's monasteries have taken the lead in the Orthodox Church's ministry to the poor and needy, working to help drug addicts, homebound patients, orphans, juvenile delinquents, and the elderly. Burgess ventured far afield to report on such efforts. The longest chapter in the book discusses the meaning of the remarkable number of newly canonized martyrs and confessors who suffered in the Communist period—some 2000 persons since 1991, including members of the royal family executed in 1918 (compared to only 400 canonized in the first 1000 years of the Church's existence). Predominantly ordinary people...