Peculiarities of Social Work at the Russian Orthodox Church Parishes: an Issue of Conceptualization

Abstract

The Orthodox Church in Russia is increasingly in recent times being mobilised for political and state purposes. An increasing number of social activities are being attributed to the good grace of the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. One aspect of this growth of the church’s role is in its provision of social work to the community, a phenomenon that may soon attain legal status in Russia. This paper explores the specifics of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parish-based social work and looks to characterise the nature of its activities in society. This includes an overview of what this social work consists of and an attempt to gauge the views of the orthodox community on this question. This is done through the use of in-depth interviews in over 14 parishes. On the one hand, the Russian government encourages Church participation in welfare provision and to emphasize on social work in church life. On the other hand, the Patriarchy looks for the formalisation of the practices of the parish-based social practices. In analysing the quantitative and qualitative data on parish-based social work in Russia, the authors reveal three levels of the ROC’s social work scope in the country. These are characterised as the professional level of specialists (Orthodox NGO’s), social work from related experts and more spontaneous unspecialised social work. The article comes to the conclusion that the bulk of parish-based social work in Russia is performed in the form of informal practices of daily mutual aid by non-professionals and that such work does not fit into the narrow framework of the professional charity to the needy. This, as such, reflects the limited resources of the Orthodox Church in such matters. The authors suggest, that the attempts of the church towards social work professionalization, such as formal reports and quantitative indicators, may actually result in a significant decrease in informal, non-professional social work, to the detriment of the general population, who are in such need of this vital social support.