Not so long ago, a post about the problems of church life in Kazakhstan was published on the Orthodoxy of Kazakhstan telegram channel. One of them, according to the author of the material, priest Alexander Suvorov, is that “Moscow as a whole is indifferent to what is happening in the church life of Kazakhstan.” “Bishops are appointed to the cathedra who have never been to Kazakhstan before, do not know the peculiarities of the country and the mentality of the local population,” the author writes, lamenting that the dioceses are ruled by archpastors, “having real estate in a neighboring country, but most importantly – having a heart there, secretly waiting that you can somehow “sit out” somewhere and go further to the promotion. ” The consequence of this about. Alexander names significant gaps in the activities of the Orthodox Church: the lack of translations into the Kazakh language of prayer books and the Holy Scriptures, the inability to lead a mission among the Kazakhs, the weak authority of the Church among the indigenous population, the confinement of the Church to “serve” the Russian-speaking diaspora, etc.
The author proposes one way out of this situation – raising the status of the Orthodox Church to at least self-governing (now the dioceses of Kazakhstan are united into the Metropolitan District), which will “give the opportunity to convene their own Councils, independently resolve personnel and territorial issues about the boundaries of dioceses … will contribute to the development of publishing, preaching, missionary activity in the country and more effective development of dioceses. ”
In truth, we got an ambiguous impression after reading Fr. Alexandra. The problems he described are really serious (how could it happen that over the past 30 years not a single prayer book has been published in the Kazakh language ?!). However, the autonomy of church life in Kazakhstan from Moscow is unlikely to be a panacea, especially taking into account local political peculiarities, in particular in the sphere of church-state relations. It is no secret that the Kazakhstani state quite tightly controls the activities of religious organizations and is very wary of the mission on the part of religious minorities. We all remember how in 2017 the Kazakh authorities tried to bring an Orthodox priest to justice for “extremism” for going on a hike to the mountains with Sunday school students and their parents and holding “prayer meetings” there. So, in the conditions of strict state control of the religious field, the fact that dioceses are headed by bishops with Russian passports rather serves as a deterrent against the arbitrariness of the authorities.
The problem of “temporary workers” in the cathedra (does Father Alexander consider all the current Kazakh bishops “temporary workers”? And the head of the district, Metropolitan Alexander?), Alas, affects not only Kazakhstan. This sometimes happens in Russia, Ukraine, as well as in other Local Churches. And we are not sure that if the Church in Kazakhstan becomes self-governing, the problem will be automatically solved.
There is another interesting question. Fr. Alexander voiced his personal opinion, or are the interests of Metropolitan Alexander and / or the government behind him? The state, which is pursuing a policy of assimilation of the Russian-speaking population, has an interest in weakening the ties between the Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan and the Russian Orthodox Church. Therefore, to assert unequivocally what prevails in the statements expressed by Fr. Alexander’s proposals – church or political motivation – are still very difficult.
