European integration and Russian Orthodoxy: Two multiple modernities perspectives

Abstract

This article introduces a distinction in the paradigm of multiple modernities between a comparative-civilizational and a post-secular perspective. It argues that the former perspective helps us to understand modernization processes in large cultural-civilizational units, whereas the latter viewpoint focuses on actors and cultural domains within civilizational units and on inter-civilizational crossovers. The two perspectives are complementary. What we gain from this distinction is greater precision in the use of multiple modernities to explain the place of religion in modern societies. The example of Russian Orthodoxy is used to clarify the difference between these two perspectives: whereas from a comparative-civilizational viewpoint, Russian Orthodoxy may appear as Europe’s ‘other’; from a post-secular viewpoint, Orthodox religion is part of Europe’s religious pluralist landscape and partakes in an ongoing process of defining the meaning of European political and cultural integration.

The Heart of the Matter

“…One possibility is to propose that Christianity is compatible with different styles or models of modernity, as discussed above. Kristina Stöckl has followed up her argument that the ROC is ontologically modern when perceived through the prism of its Heideggerian theologians with an article in which she engages with the "multiple modernities" debates in historical sociology (Eisenstadt 2002;Stöckl 2011). While the ROC is not quite in the same boat as the others, she argues that it is best viewed as a distinct vessel in the same ontological sea of modernity.…”

“…After the 1917 revolution, Orthodox elites continued to develop a range of religious and secular discourses in the diaspora, some of which have been resumed within Russia in the postsocialist decades. In a stimulating analysis of these contributions, the philosopher and historian of ideas Kristina Stöckl (2006) has highlighted the revival of neopatristic theology. She argues that this recourse to a distant Christian past has more to offer than the embellishing of more recent, specifically Russian intellectual currents.…”

The Romanian Orthodox Church, the European Union and the Contention on Human Rights

“…In this regard, a research project has referred to this paradigm in order to analyse the issues of religious freedom and religious pluralism in Greece within European integration, stressing the socio-cultural and religious specificities of the Greek Orthodox landscape (Prodromou 2004a). Moreover, Stoeckl proposed a similar approach to investigate the plurality of processes that develop within the manifold relations occurring between Russian Orthodoxy and the European Union (Stoeckl 2011(Stoeckl , 2012. The latter researcher also examined the subject of the Russian Orthodox Church and human rights, adopting the theory of post-secular society, and in this sense her prediction of a selfreformation of the ROC seems optimistic (Stoeckl 2014).…”

On the relevance ofsmall nations. Religion and politics in S.N. Eisenstadt's multiple modernities paradigm

“…‘Religion represents one, if not the most important element among the cultural fundamentals that shape the modernisation patterns of different societies. For Eisenstadt, religion does indeed constitute the main factor in the emergence of multiple modernities, since he sees multiple modernities rooted in earlier patterns of Axial Age civilisations, which, in turn, crystallise around religion' (Stoeckl : 222). Eisenstadt himself is more nuanced: ‘although in the history of humankind civilisations and religions were very closely interwoven – at the same time many religions have been only a part of the component or not necessarily the most central component of civilisations.'…”

“…This might have avoided some of the weaker criticisms of the multiple modernities paradigm, notably its overly theoretical aspect (Mota and Delanty ), as well as the too little importance assigned to inter‐civilisational and infra‐civilisational encounters and their diversity (Carreira da Silva and Brito Vieira : 68; Stoeckl : 224). In this sense, we do not seek to offer another revision of the multiple modernities paradigm by offering our own concept as a necessary correction.…”