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The significant life and death of Patriarch Ilia II of the insignificant country of Georgia
The Head of the Georgian Orthodox Church just passed away, leading the officially secular government to institute five days of national mourning. According to surveys, Ilia was the most trusted man in the Caucasus. The public’s trust in his “patriarchy” peaked at 94% in 2010, at a time when trust in the parliament stood at a pitiful 34%. Ilia presided over the most interesting rise of religiosity ever recorded. In 1977, when he entered his position, Geogia was in possession of only a few dozen churches. Youth church attendance sat at 7%, and the perceived importance of religion was somewhere below 50% (likely quite far below, but there is little data before 1993). By the end of his life, 2500 orthodox churches were built, youth attendance rose to 60% by 2010, perceived importance of religion rose to 85% in 2014, and general weekly attendance jumped from 27% in 1996 to 44% in 2014. Even well past the end of Soviet atheism, religiosity continued to rose, with monthly prayer increasing from 57% in 2007 to 75% in 2020. Much of this data is explored in the interesting paper, “A counterexample to secularization theory? Assessing the Georgian religious revival”.
Serendipitously, I was exploring Georgian Orthodox music at the time of patriarch’s passing. The god of the algorithm and the God of the gods rewarded my search for good music and led me to the mass held in honor of the Patriarch. If you like choral music, or the aesthetics of Game of Thrones, you might like it. I personally think the aesthetics are peak. The godchildren of the Patriarch led his procession throughout the capital city, though it’s hard to know how many gathered for the occasion because he had 50,000 godchildren. Why so many? In an effort to increase the Georgian TFR, the patriarch promised to be the Godfather of every third child born to an Orthodox Christian family. The result was an enormous religiously inspired baby boom:
The speaker of the Georgian parliament honored him as follows: “Georgia has lost a spiritual father, our most Holy Patriarch, who dedicated every minute and second of his life to serving Christ, defending the homeland, and caring for his flock.”
One of the direr likely consequences of the war in Ukraine that often gets sidelined in Western discourse is the Moscow-Constantinople split in Orthodoxy, which I understand to be historically unusual. Deeply unclear how it'll ultimately pan out, but I doubt it's likely that it'll be truly resolved by the outcome of the war. Georgia seems to be closer to Moscow's orbit here than Constantinople's; it's the only preexisting Orthodox Church, as I understand it, that's recognized the UOC (as opposed to the OCU). The Russian state disapproves of both the UOC and the OCU, as they're both attempts to split off from the ROC in Ukraine; however, the UOC is the one that's politically closer to Russia, and so also faces the disapproval of the Ukrainian state. A lot of nuance here that I don't really understand, seeing as this is all quite foreign to me.
I’m of the opinion that the more “competition” between traditional churches the better. I would even like the Catholic Church to split into different denominations so that the one with the best spirit and art can triumph. There should be factions among Christendom so that we can measure who produces the greatest fruit somewhat-empirically, and which produces the greatest art and spiritual change according to the opinion of Sensitive Young Men (and I wonder if this explains some of the rise of the Church in Georgia). I think, also, that Israel is a fair example of how you can have national and religio-political unity without having any semblance of organizational unity among the competing strains of the religion. I mean there’s controversy with the Haredi, but otherwise no one can claim that they are socially or politically disorganized. And it does not appear that each of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence are “organized” in any way that aids their defense or prosperity despite having so many precise areas of agreement.
Orthodoxy in America may be one of the few denominations which have a genuine rise in attendance (1, 2), and while the converts might claim it is due to the history and liturgy and theology, I think instead it is an aesthetic-spiritual-vibe-feel sort of thing. (Would they attend if it was in a strip mall, there was no incense, the robes were a fugly purple, and the priest sang in gay voice? I don’t think so). However, they are starting from such low numbers that I don’t think it will really matters for a number of decades.
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The Ukrainian state is politically closer to the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, which runs the other successful post-Soviet revival of Christianity and would like to suppress all Eastern Orthodox groups for heresy, but for realpolitik reasons settles for aiming the state against the more Russia-leaning ones while it slowly outbreeds the rest of Ukraine.
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On the same day as Chuck Norris. Let's hope St Peter doesn't mix who's who.
If he does, a roundhouse kick to the face should convince him to straighten things out.
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Hmmm... have they ever been seen in the same room together? Allegedly theres a 7 year age gap, but I feel living a double life as a famous kung-fu actor is exactly the sort of thing Papa Illia would do.
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