Religion, State and Society

ISSN: 0963-7494 (Print) 1465-3974 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crss20

Special section: Orthodox Christianity in Western

Europe

Victor Roudometof

To cite this article: Victor Roudometof (2015) Special section: Orthodox Christianity in Western
Europe, Religion, State and Society, 43:3, 209-210, DOI: 10.1080/09637494.2015.1094934

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2015.1094934

Published online: 09 Oct 2015.

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Download by: [KU Leuven Libraries] Date: 30 November 2017, At: 06:32
 Religion, State & Society, 2015
Vol. 43, No. 3, 209–210, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2015.1094934

INTRODUCTION
Special section: Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe
Victor Roudometof*

Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

In 2013, Jerry Pankhurst of Wittenberg University and I co-organised two panels on

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Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe for the biennial congress of the International
Society for the Sociology of Religion (Turku/Åbo, Finland). The planning and preparation
of the panels was an opportunity to rekindle our past collaboration (Roudometof,
Agadjanian, and Pankhurst 2005) in the field of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Unfortunately, because of health reasons, I was unable to attend the conference.
Afterwards, however, I felt that I should take the initiative in arranging for the publication
of the panel papers. Thus started a long journey that concludes with the papers presented
in this issue of Religion, State & Society.
In pursuing the topic of the presence of Orthodox Christianity in Western Europe, I was
aware that this was a new but underdeveloped area of inquiry (for an overview of Eastern
Christianity, see Leustean 2014). In my past efforts to explore the relationship between
Orthodox Christianity and transnational religiosity (Roudometof 2000, 2014), it seemed
quite appropriate to focus on North America, where Orthodoxy has a well-documented
presence. In contrast, information and scholarship on Western Europe was almost non-
existent.
Traditionally, both researchers and laypeople are accustomed to think of Eastern Europe
as predominantly (if not exclusively) Eastern Orthodox, and similarly, to think of Western
Europe as overwhelmingly Catholic and Protestant. But the world’s religious demography is
ever-changing. Over the course of the post-World War II era and even more so since the end of
communism in Eastern Europe, this traditional image has been transformed. While not
claiming to be an authoritative account, even the cursory demographic information conveyed
in the following pages suggests that the number of Eastern Orthodox Christians in Western
Europe is rapidly approaching or even surpassing the number of Eastern Orthodox Christians
in North America. The overall figures might not be high, but one should recall that Orthodox
Christianity has a history of several centuries in North America. The new immigrant
communities of Orthodox Christians in Western Europe remain an understudied group.
This special section is only the second scholarly effort to inquire into their situation (the
other one is Hämmerli and Mayer 2014). Reliable figures are hard to come by, and there are
countries – such as Spain – where there is a notable absence of researchers working on this
group.
An additional source of difficulties is the result of the shifting geopolitics in Europe.
During the Cold War era, the definitions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ were fairly clear and
coterminous with specific political regimes. In the era since 1989, however, there has
been a geopolitical shift, whereby countries that used to be part of the communist bloc

*Email: roudomet@ucy.ac.cy

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

 210 V. Roudometof

have fiercely (re-)claimed a newfound status in a revived East-Central Europe. Eastern

Europe has become increasingly identified with Russia or the territory of the former
USSR. But even that more narrowly construed definition has become contested.
Contemporary politics in Ukraine and the Baltic States offer an apt demonstration. In
particular, the Baltic States are quite eager to (re-)claim their status as Western, and hence
to situate their respective nations outside of a putative Russian sphere of influence. These
geopolitical considerations can become a source of problems. For example, is it an
appropriate scholarly practice to consider Finland or Latvia as being part of Western
Europe? Had I answered that question affirmatively, there might have been additional
articles in this special section. But the historian in me objects vehemently to such a
reclassification that transforms contemporary geopolitical objectives into scholarly classi-
fication. And the sociologist in me concurs; for the study of Orthodox Christian commu-
nities in Western Europe is an important case of transnational religion. In order for
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transnational religion to be a meaningful category, it requires the existence of specific

social conditions, which are in turn typically associated with mobility and resettlement
into new social and cultural surroundings.
These have been important considerations that have shaped the selection of suitable
cases and subsequently the inclusion of specific papers into this special section. I owe a
debt of gratitude to the authors, who persisted in working on their papers for a consider-
able period of time, as well as to the journal’s editor and the editorial board for their
willingness to explore a relatively unexplored terrain. Of course, the final selection of the
papers included in this special section has been decisively shaped by the journal’s rigorous
peer-review process. Some promising research has not been included, but nevertheless, I
am confident that in the coming years the study of Orthodox Christianity in Western
Europe will gain a greater audience, as the demographic trends almost guarantee that the
new immigrant communities are likely to survive and perhaps even thrive. There is a great
deal to learn and many more cases, issues and specialised topics to explore.
Underneath it all, this shift ultimately renders the adjective ‘Eastern’ in Eastern
Orthodox Christianity almost redundant: with important constituencies both in Western
Europe and in North America, this branch of Christianity has in fact overgrown its
traditional Eastern European homeland, and has gained a foothold into other world
regions. That has been an almost silent change but it holds great potential for the study
of Christianity in the twenty-first century and for interfaith dialogue.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References
Hämmerli, M., and J.-F. Mayer, eds. 2014. Orthodox Identities in Western Europe: Migration,
Settlement and Innovation. Farnham: Ashgate.
Leustean, L., ed. 2014. Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. London:
Routledge.
Roudometof, V. 2000. “Transnationalism and Globalization: The Greek-Orthodox Diaspora between
Orthodox Universalism and Transnational Nationalism.” Diaspora 9 (3): 361–397. doi:10.1353/
dsp.2000.0005.
Roudometof, V. 2014. Globalization and Orthodox Christianity: The Transformations of a Religious
Tradition. London: Routledge.
Roudometof, V., A. Agadjanian, and J. Pankhurst, eds. 2005. Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age:
Tradition Meets the 21st Century. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.