The possibility of a significant change has been in the air for quite
some time now in Orthodox countries. The dragging on of the economic crisis along with political pressure from national and international institutions and local public opinion is pushing towards the definitive abrogation of state churches and to the withdrawal of public funding from ecclesiastical institutions that have been benefiting from it for some time. Georgia is no exception.
Today, 82% of the country’s inhabitants are members of the Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia.
The former Soviet Republic is in the middle of a regime change which has not been completed yet. After the accusations made against representatives of the former centre-right government, last October, Georgian Dream coalition led by millionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili won the elections.
The promises made by Ivanishvili during the electoral campaign in relation to the State “breaking” with the Church, included the continuation of investigations into the last government (accused of the forced sale of companies, torture in prisons, unjustified sentences, etc.) and the abrogation of public funding to the Orthodox Church.
The promise was not kept by one section of Georgian public opinion: the draft budget presented by the government for 2013, mentions an increase in Church funding compared to 2012, from 22,8 to 25 million Georgian lari.
David Berdzenishvili, a renowned representative of the government’s leading party, told NetGazeti that “the Georgian Orthodox Church must be reimbursed as it is a victim of Soviet repression. It is not a waste of money; the Church has a right to that money.”
However, in future, the Georgian MP said, the State should interrupt public funding and think of other solutions. This of course opens up another debate topic in modern-time Orthodoxy, in countries with a communist past.
The rebirth of these churches over the last decades took place in the context of a consistent though problematic and sometimes debatable religious revival among the populations of said countries; from an ideological point of view, it was made possible thanks to presumed and more or less accentuated national identities and from a material point of view, thanks to the various types of funding and concessions which these Orthodox Churches receive from the State as compensation for previous political persecutions by national communist regimes.
Georgia’s draft budget has been criticised particularly because the Church is the only institution that will be receiving increased funding: while the Patriarchal Office expects to see its funding boosted, other public institutions face cuts: from the Head of State to the Council for National Security (whose funding has been cut from 24,8 million to 1,8 million lari)
For now, it looks as though the Georgian Orthodox Church will still benefit from the State’s financial support.
The memory of the recent persecution is too fresh. Instead, all eyes should be on Greece: The Greek people have been pushing for years for a separation between Church and State and many European representatives seem to share this opinion.