According to Desnitsky, one of Father Pavel Adelgeim's chief sorrows was that church governance had developed its own vertical of power, similar to the state's, and that an ordinary cleric and his parish could at any moment be treated however one pleased in accordance with the new parish statute. The author notes: even if a cleric manages to vindicate himself in a church court and secure the reversal of a biased decision, he will still remain in the same diocese, and for every one decision reversed ten new ones will follow.
Desnitsky agrees that this is indeed so and that it is bad. Beyond personal tragedies, in his estimation, church structures spontaneously breed lack of initiative, opportunism, and flattery, and many young people who could become good pastors prefer to take a different path. Moreover, adequate feedback is lost, as the information wars have shown: entering the public space proved a shock for those accustomed to hearing only officially enthusiastic speeches.
Sobornost and Democracy
The author recalls that democracy in the state was introduced by decree of an autocratic president, and soon the right democrats shot the wrong ones from tanks. In his view, democracy cannot be imposed on a people that is not ready for it and lacks the skills of self-government. Sobornost, Desnitsky asserts, is arranged even more complexly and hardly occurs anywhere in pure form—rather it is a principle and an ideal to be striven toward through trial and error. This ideal was spoken of by the Council of 1917–18, but precisely in those days, when the council members were discussing and voting on a new statute, a colossal experiment in building an atheist state was beginning across the country.
Desnitsky asks whether those decisions were viable in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, where formally Orthodox people, in the words of one Red Army soldier, did not read the Gospel but only kissed its cover. He is not sure they are feasible in contemporary Russia either, where, according to all statistical surveys, among the formally Orthodox only a minority regularly attends church and reads the Gospel, and many do not believe in God at all.
Why the Author Voted for the Current Statute
Desnitsky admits that he does not much like the current statute, which grants full power to the bishop and does not recognize an independent role for the parish assembly. But he voted for it—unlike Father Pavel—at that very assembly, and everyone in his parish voted without amendments or discussion, as throughout the country, with the rarest exceptions. The author explains this not by intimidation or inattention, but by the fact that the statute reflects the reality of life in 99.99% of parishes, and he is not prepared to propose another reality even for his own parish.
By his observation, parishioners find it convenient that nothing depends on them: there is no need to answer for anything, and one can always cite someone's ill will or unfortunate circumstances. Spiritual children, he writes, usually are in no hurry to grow up and want to remain longer in the age when decisions are made by someone big, wise, and strong.
What to Do
Desnitsky proposes a thought experiment: if the main questions of church life were decided in each parish by a general vote of all Orthodox living in its territory, as the 1917–18 statute defined parish membership, and delegates to a local council were elected by the same vote, then, in his opinion, it would all end approximately as it did with the democracy introduced by decree, but the church along the way would fall apart into hundreds of clubs of special interests.
The author sees the way out in giving free breathing space and room to develop to that 0.01% of parishes where communities have truly taken shape. This, he says, is the most important growth zone and territory of the future, though also a zone of risk. At the same time, Desnitsky notes, it is precisely such islands that the administrative vertical strikes first, sometimes even before a community has had time to form. For the managerial vertical it is simpler when everything is uniform and predictable, but for the Church as a whole such an attitude is catastrophic, especially in the modern information society where thousands of ideologies compete. Mission, in his conviction, consists in telling people what answers we have, not in convincing them how mighty and monolithic we are.
The task of enlightening the already baptized Rus remains relevant as well—by word, and above all by deed, to reveal to people the fullness of Orthodoxy and to give them the experience of conscious life in Christ, which must not be confined to the framework of parishes, especially in the age of network technologies. The author concludes with the phrase: There will be council members, and there will be sobornost.
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