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THE CHURCH IN GEORGIA TODAY
Ivlian KHAINDRAVA
Ivlian Khaindrava, Director, South Caucasian Studies Program, Development and Cooperation Center—the Center of Pluralism (Tbilisi, Georgia)
I have not set myself a task of covering all possible aspects related to the place of the Church in Georgia in the early 21st century. The situation in the confessional sphere is probably even more contradictory than in other spheres of the republic’s social life. Georgia is brimming with contradictions to the extent that it can be likened to a train the passengers of which are going to opposite destinations: this train will never go far.
To offer you an idea about the place and role of the Christian Orthodox Church in the Georgian state I invite you to two walks along Tbilisi streets.
Visiting Not So Distant Past
Late in the 1980s a wave of national-liberation movement, rallies, hunger strikes and demonstrations swept Georgia. Together with the tricolor (and other historical banners), portraits of outstanding Georgian public and political figures the cross figured prominently at mass gatherings. The Fatherland, Language, and the Faith, the national slogan formulated in the 19th century by Ilya Chavchavadze, posters and slogans of the “Long Live Free, Democratic, and Christian Georgia!” type were readily embraced by the national-liberation movement.
Under Soviet power religion as part of dissident thinking was always present in the republic: even highly placed party functionaries baptized their children to follow the tradition or being unwilling to break from God in case He existed. The dissidents spoke about the freedom of conscience and religion; students and the boldest part of intelligentsia raised their voice in protection of historical monuments (in Georgia all churches and monasteries were such monuments). On the whole, the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) together with the Tbilisi Dynamo football team and the Folk Dance Ensemble of Sukhishvili-Ramishvili was perceived as one of the few surviving national institutions.
Collapse of the communist ideology, the fact officially recognized in the post-perestroika period, left a vacuum to be filled to help people recover their identity. It was at that time that the slogans moved from one opposite to another: from totalitarianism to democracy; from communism to freedom; from lack of faith to religion. In short, the image of a Soviet robot without God in his soul and without any ethnic roots who used the “language of inter-national communication” (by which the Russian language was meant) was opposed to an image of a Christian Orthodox Georgian with a glorious past. The Soviet people who belonged to various nationalities and………….
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