Thousand Years Old Bias: Pravoslavophobia
Reading the Signs
Few years before 9/11— a brutal attack on American civilians that some analysts believe was a direct consequence of deeply flawed U.S. foreign policies — the writing on the wall was both read and correctly interpreted by those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
James George Jatras, a former policy analyst at the United States Senate and a Director of American Council for Kosovo belongs to those few and far-between capable of properly interpreting the ominous signs. In February 1999, before the U.S.-led NATO bombarded Serbia for three months, demanding that Serbian troops relinquish control of their southern province of Kosovo and Metohija in favor of the rampaging Albanian Muslim terrorists, James Jatras wrote Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration — a painfully straightforward, damning analysis showing that something as tragic as September 11 was bound to happen.
Western part of “Christendom” losing its identity is one piece of the puzzle. A thousand-year old bias against Eastern Orthodox Church is another. James Jatras dubbed it very aptly:
Pravoslavophobia
[...] It is hardly a surprise that business executives who would sell their grandmothers to Abdul Abulbul Amir for oil drilling rights would see the world as a reflection of their balance sheets, nor is it a surprise that secular, socially progressive opinion is viscerally anti-Christian.
What is not expected is that so many Western Christians, Americans in particular, are willing to believe the worst about their Eastern Christian cousins, who, only lately freed from Islamic (and later, in most cases, communist) servitude, are desperately attempting to avoid a repeat of the experience.
Today, when all of the Russian North Caucasus is subject to plunder and hostage-taking raids staged from Shari’a-ruled Chechnya, when not just Nagorno-Karabakh but Armenia proper is in danger of a repeat of 1915, when Cyprus and Greece receive unvarnished threats to their territorial integrity on a weekly basis for the offense of purchasing defensive weapons, and when the borders of Serbia are rapidly approaching those of the pashaluk of Belgrade in order to appease America’s new friends in Bosnia and Kosovo, organized Roman Catholic and Protestant sentiment in America overwhelmingly sides with non- and anti-Christian elite opinion in its pro-Muslim, anti-Orthodox tendency.
Western Christians Urging Military Intervention on Behalf of Islamic Regime in Sarajevo
For example, in 1993, statements were issued by a number of Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican spokesmen in the United States urging military intervention on behalf of the Islamic regime in Sarajevo. “We are convinced that there is just cause to use force to defend largely helpless people in Bosnia against aggression and barbarism that are destroying the very foundations of society and threaten large numbers of people,” wrote the chairman of the U.S. [Roman] Catholic Conference, at a time when the Muslim beneficiaries of the intervention were not only impaling Serb POWs on spits but also were slaughtering Roman Catholic Croats by the hundreds in an offensive in central Bosnia. “What is going on in Bosnia is genocide by any other name,” observed a prominent Baptist spokesman. “The ghosts of Auschwitz and Dachau have come back to haunt us. If we do nothing we are morally culpable.” “Those of us who opposed the Gulf War believed that war was not the answer,” opined the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, “but today we find ourselves confronted with an evil war, the sure elimination of which may be possible only by means of armed intervention.” Thus did the high-minded guardians of the West’s Christian integrity give their blessing for NATO to aid the resumption of jihad in Europe. Granted, they were to some extent victims of the melodramatic media coverage that has characterized the Balkan war, but that is not much of an excuse: Who told them to believe everything dished up by CNN?
In a previous article in Chronicles, I have noted that Western anti-Orthodox bias, which I have dubbed Pravoslavophobia, rarely means antipathy for Orthodoxy as such. Most serious Protestants and Roman Catholics often have a fairly positive attitude toward Orthodox Christianity as a morally conservative and liturgically traditional bulwark within the spectrum of Christian opinion. Perhaps it has been so long since Western Christians have had to defend themselves physically as Christians (as opposed to Americans, Englishmen, Germans, etc.) that they just do not understand those for whom it is a current concern.
Renounce Orthodoxy or We’ll Throw You to the Wolves — Again
On the other hand, there are Westerners for whom antipathy is based on the traditional Orthodox character of the front-line states bordering on Islam. Indeed, from this viewpoint, the desire of these countries to avoid not only islamicization but Westernization as well is a major count against them. Though differing in the specifics, the overall attitude toward Orthodox nations today is strongly reminiscent of that of the West toward the East as the dying Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serbian states faced Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. The West then was explicit: We will help you only if you renounce Orthodoxy and adopt Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox East is being told today that unless they unquestioningly submit to the West’s tutelage in political, social, moral, and economic matters—the collective “religion” of the Enlightenment heritage—they again will be thrown to the wolves. In fact, the West will even help the wolves to devour them.
West’s Own Fate Depends on the Survival of Orthodox Christian Civilization
The immorality, not to mention the stupidity, of this should be obvious. Maybe Christians will never come to agreement on doctrinal matters; maybe the East will insist on retaining its distinctive religious and cultural heritage. Whatever happens, the survival of Orthodox Christian civilization in the East should be hardly less important to the West than to the Orthodox themselves, and indeed over the long term, the West’s own fate may depend on it. The fact that the West cannot recognize this reality is evident in the forest of minarets going up mainly in Western Europe but also now in North America.
Some Christians see the Muslim influx primarily as an opportunity for evangelization, and indeed we should never neglect to share the Gospel, the only real liberation, with Muslims, who should not, as individuals, be held responsible for the violent system into which they were born and of which they are—perhaps more than anyone else—victims. At the same time, in light of the growing volume of Muslim immigration, Western Christians will soon find out—maybe sooner than they think, given Western birthrates—that confronting the Islamic advance has become, as it has always been for Eastern Christians, a simple matter of physical survival. But by that time, it may be too late for the West as well.