While visiting the Pskovo-Pechersky
Monastery in northwestern Russia in 2000, Vladimir Putin wrote in the guest
book, “The revival of Russia and growth of its might are unthinkable without
the strengthening of society’s moral foundations. The role and significance of
the Russian Orthodox Church are huge. May God protect you.” This statement is
revealing concerning what has perhaps fueled the Russian president’s vision, at
least ideally.
First, Putin may have a historical
perspective, meaning that he did not come into office merely to gain power by
enriching his connections (i.e., the oligarchs) and make use of Soviet
authoritarian tools he had learned while working at the KGB. Rather, I suspect
he looked back at the Czars who had made Russia into an empire well before the
Soviets came on the scene.
Second, Putin’s habit of being a
road-block on the UN Security Council may extend beyond his embrace of the
absolute or unfettered national sovereignty doctrine to exercising (or
announcing) Russia’s might as one empire alongside the E.U., U.S. and China.
That is to say, using the veto can effectively demonstrate might without the
cost of a military show of force.
Third, Putin wanted to send a signal of
his support for the Russian Orthodox Church. Not unexpectedly, the New York Times reported in 2012 on the
continuance of the ascent of the Church as a political force in Russia. At the
time Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov stood “at the center of a swirling argument
about the church’s power and its possible influence on [Putin].” Shevkunov’s
claim that Putin had saved Russia from “vulgar liberals” who nearly destroyed
Russia in the 1990s must have been music
to the sitting president’s ears. Interestingly, however, when the cleric is
said to have referred to modern Russian women to “a drunk girl standing by the
bus stop,” Putin reportedly replied, “Father, you have gone too far.” Nevertheless,
to have such a traditionalist Church on such a sort of power trip in the
earthly realm can be dangerous to society in terms of what I would call moral dogmatism.
Putin’s identification of the Church
with the “strengthening of society’s moral foundations” could lead to those
foundations being narrower than simply that which is moral. In other words, a particular view of what counts as moral could
delimit the contours of the moral foundation of the society. Such an approach
would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary because equally valid moral standpoints differing from the Church’s
position would be excluded even though they are moral.
Moreover, to conflate religion and
morals as being one and the same ignores the fact that there are many immoral
acts lauded in the Bible. More abstractly still, human moral systems, unlike
theological claims, are not transcendent in that moral theories are based in
our domain. To be sure, religions such as the Abrahamic faiths include moral
strictures among the divine commands, but even here the moral commandments are
second to the theological ones (or are derived from them and stated very
broadly, as in “love your neighbor”). Put another way, were specific moral
claims or principles on the same level as the theological, the Book of Job
would not make sense. Job was morally not at all blameworthy and yet the theological point of God’s omnipotence
(all-powerful) means that the theological cannot (by definition) be limited by
what we think is moral. For us to say that Job does not deserve to suffer
cannot trump God’s power, as if God were limited by our moral judgments. Do
Russian Orthodox lay persons really believe that God likens Russian women to drunk
sluts at a bus stop just because Shevkunov happens to hold that opinion?
I doubt it. Moreover, I doubt that God would have “vulgar liberals”
inserted into the Bible. For one thing, some of the more sexually “immoral” (by
modern standards!) acts by some of the heroes in the text would have to be
expunged.
Sanctioning particular moral views by
theological claims and then using political influence such that those views become the cement walls of
society’s moral foundations unfairly excludes other moral views from being part
of the moral foundation. This is particularly relevant in the case of an empire
because it is by definition heterogeneous (i.e., diverse). Different cultures
had been brought into Russia at least by the death of Peter the Great. Unless
there are moral universals that extend to particular applications, one can
expect (as fully legitimate) there to be a bricollage of moral values interlaid
in the foundation. To identify the
foundation itself with a particular institution—and one that is not primarily oriented to the moral
dimension—is to ask for trouble, as the moral perspectives that are
dogmatically excluded must surely in their very legitimacy press their case,
either formally or as mounting pressure politically.
Source:
Sophia Kishkovsky, “Russians
See Church and State Come Closer,” The
New York Times, November 1, 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment