Orthodox churches in former Soviet republics and Eastern and Central European countries are faced with the situation and major challenge of restoring the right to educate children and young people. A March Consultation at Kykko Monastery in the mountains of Cyprus, organised by the WCC's Unit 11, Churches in Mission: Health, Education, Witness, gave Orthodox religious educators from those countries a chance to share experiences and insights....

Two problems are common to all the churches : a lack of human and material resources. After a generation or more during which religious education was banned, experienced Christian teachers are in short supply. Often there are also a shortage of priests and limited facilities for training new ones.

Moreover, suggested Inna Lisovskaya from Smolensk, Russia, "theological education is not the same as pedagogical training: priests may know what to teach without knowing how to teach it." "What needs to be done is to convince our clergy to educate and not just to preach," said Irena Ganeva of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. But persuading them to assume this responsibility is not easy, "because the educational tradition of our church is not rich", she said. "We suffer not only from 50 years of communism but from the 500 years of Turkish oppression before that with only about 50 years in-between to develop ideas about how to teach people to be Orthodox Christians." Nowhere are there more religious education teachers than in Romania, where 8,800 priests and 2,300 lay people teach in 11,000 schools, and new theological faculties are preparing some 4,000 women and men as religious educators. Even so, demand far exceeds supply, says Romanian Orthodox priest loan Sauca*, who is joining the WCC staff as executive secretary for Orthodox relations in mission later this year....

Developing curricula for religious education was a major focus of the consultation. Many participants brought along the handbooks and brochures that their churches have begun to produce. But preparing and publishing a curriculum is a long process, hampered in these countries by a lack of experienced pedagogues, little knowledge of developmental psychology (what can be taught at what age?), many other pressing demands on the churches and a dire economic situation.... Some Eastern and Central European churches are translating from Orthodox churches elsewhere. But despite a common faith and a common experience of living under communism, each church has its own history and its specific contemporary context, making it unlikely that a single unified religious education curriculum could meet the needs of all churches....

Most participants seemed to agree with a basic educational model proposed by Constance Tarasar of the Orthodox Church in America, which sees Christian education as something that happens not only in the classroom but also during the liturgy and in the home and community. "There is no better catechism than the liturgy of St Basil", said French priest Cyrille Argenti. "The problem is that almost no one understands the language of the liturgy, whether it is classical Greek or ancient Armenian or Old Church Slavonic". Argenti was one of the guiding spirits behind the French catechetical manual Dieu est vivant ("The Living God"), which presents the essential elements of the Christian faith in dialogue with sceptical questions posed by a typical youth who has received a secular education. Each chapter links an Old Testament story, an episode from the life of Christ and an event in the life of the church.

Others underscored the important educational role played by icons, hymns (though many of these are also written "in the language of the last century", noted Michael Dronov of Moscow) the sacraments, and the feasts, fasts and saints days on the church calendar. Ignorance of the faith and of the liturgy is not limited to children. In Bulgaria, said Mariela Stoyanova, church going became fashionable after the end of the communist period. "How do you deal with all these people who are in the church for the wrong reasons?" she wondered. Noting a similar problem in Slovakia, Milan Gerka spoke of the need "to receive them with love and to begin to educate them as well".

Olga Ganaba said many Russian parents who want an Orthodox education for their children are not themselves inclined to come to church. "They want the church to teach their children to be better", she said, "but they think they themselves are too old to change," making it unrealistic to expect that what is taught in the church will be reinforced in the home. Yet Anisoara Carol from Romania said a child's interest in and excitement about what is happening at the church can draw the parents to services. Although the parish community, like the family setting, may serve as a negative model, there were also stories of positive experiences. Irena Ganeva described the Orthodox Christian Movement, St Evthimia, with which she is associated, as a "staircase to the church". Many young Bulgarians "do not feel comfortable going straight into church", she said, "but they have no trouble attending our meetings and activities

loan Sauca also underlined the need to make religious education contemporary. "We are not satisfied with just repeating what the Fathers said," he insisted. "We ask, what is the meaning of what the Bible and the Fathers say for us today? So, he said today's Romanian Orthodox Christian education materials take up "topics you didn't find in the past, from caring for disabled people to sharing our food with the hungry to being a Christian not just in church but also when you're at home or watching television or playing football".

The issue of Orthodox identity - what does it mean to be an Orthodox Christian?- is a live one in Russia today, says Olga Ganaba, and discussion of Orthodox education cannot be separated from it, "Some people say we are living in apocalyptic times, so we have to concentrate on our individual salvation," she noted. "Others say, 'No, that means this is a time when we must be missionaries. Some people think Orthodoxy is the religion of the elite; others that it must be for everyone."

Alongside renewal movements within the church, she said, are those who want to go back to a mythical golden age of "Holy Orthodox Russia". Some look upon anything coming from outside as threatening; others believe everything Western is automatically preferable to the Russian way.... Now that communism is no longer a live option, "there are people who want to take Orthodoxy as the one and only teaching. They won't tolerate anyone who thinks differently." That kind of "new Orthodox fundamentalism", said Weniamin Novik, rector of the Orthodox Academy in St Petersburg, is clearly a reaction to the influx of Western religions and ideas that has come with the radical openness of the post-communist situation. Fear of "losing our identity, losing our culture" translates itself into a version of Orthodoxy that mixes up the religious and the national....

Churches in the turbulent post-communist situation face enormous expectations from many people, who look to them to solve all the problems of society. Meanwhile, most of them face an influx of religious groups from outside, especially from well-financed western Protestants laden with attractive materials in the service of what most Orthodox consider proselytism. In many quarters, that has ,served to fortify a growing suspicion of ecumenism as a movement inherently inimical to Orthodoxy.

A number of participants at the Cyprus meeting who are from outside the region posed the broader question of educating Christians for living in pluralistic societies. K M George of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in India, who teaches at the WCC's Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, put this issue more sharply. Orthodox churches in Eastern and Central Europe, he noted, have been "rooted in their culture to the point of being identified with it- an identification that can degenerate into ethnicism and extreme nationalism. What is the role of Christian education in exercising discernment vis-a-vis one's own culture?" At another level, he said, "a global culture is invading the whole earth. Whether you call it "the culture of CocaCola" or something else, there is a dominating, secularising culture that people everywhere are accepting as normal and desirable. Like it or not, the Christian church has to come to terms with this .......

Gathering the ideas shared during their five days together, participants acknowledged that, despite daunting obstacles, all their churches have considerable resources at their disposal. Although gratitude was expressed for the WCC's efforts in bringing Orthodox educators together, it was acknowledged that maximizing the available resources will demand a much higher level of co-operation and coordination among the Orthodox themselves....

(* In 2001 Rev.Dr.Ioan Souca appointed Director, Ecumenical Institute, Bossey)

7 June 2002