Lutheran and Russian Orthodox Church Buildings as Symbols of Cultural Identity in the Estonian Parliamentary Elections of 2011¹

Abstract

In the 2011 parliamentary election campaign in Estonia, two church buildings fulfilled the function of inclusion by integrating the sentiments and identity of the members of cultural constituencies, and the function of exclusion by drawing symbolic boundaries between the current national government and the opposition and between the Estonian cultural mainstream and the Russophone minority, which cannot be drawn legally. For the parties of the national government St John’s Lutheran Church in St Petersburg was a symbol of Estonian nationalism. For their main political opponents the Orthodox church in the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn symbolised the cultural identity of Estonian Russian-speaking residents and electorate. While this development exemplifies ‘desecularisation’ in the dimension of collective cultural identities, I argue against a too simplistic interpretation of ‘desecularisation’ and for a more nuanced understanding of how religion may play a role even in a very secularised society and polity like Estonia. I theorise ‘desecularisation’ in Estonian politics by distinguishing the types of religion and nationalism that were involved and critically analysing the relationship between religion and nationalism in this process. I argue that the electoral campaign of 2011 testifies to a small shift towards a more religious definition of social identities, which may not re-occur with the same passions and intensity in future. After the accession to the European Union in 2004, the pre-electoral symbolic sacralisation of ethnic identities, however, has become an established practice during the Estonian parliamentary elections.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Jerry Pankhurst for excellent comments that greatly contributed to improvement of the final version of article. Many thanks are due also to Livio Nimmer, Martin Mölder and Rein Toomla for helpful comments on earlier versions.

Notes

¹ This paper was first presented at the international workshop ‘Religion, Politics and Policy-Making in Russia: Domestic and International Dimensions’ organised by the Centre for EU–Russia Studies (CEURUS) at the University of Tartu, Estonia, 6–7 June 2012.

² The Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (Estonskaya Pravoslavnaya Tserkov' Moskovskogo Patriarkhata/Moskva Patriarhaadi Eesti Õigeusu Kirik) is a semi-autonomous church under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate and has about 170,000 faithful. The other Orthodox Church in Estonia, the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (Eesti Apostlik-Õigeusu Kirik), belongs to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and has about 18,000 members (Vogelaar, 2008, pp. 195–96). As the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church plays no significant role in Estonian politics, most of the statements in this paper with regard to the role of Orthodox Christianity in Estonian public discourse relate only to the EOCMP.

³ In chapter XVIII of The Prince Machiavelli advises rulers to make good use of public religious rituals. He suggests that there is nothing more necessary for the prince than to seem to possess religion, ‘for ordinary people are always deceived by appearances’ (Machiavelli, 1998, p. 60).

⁴ In autumn 2011 Savisaar asked for financial support for the construction of Sunday school premises at the church complex in Lasnamäe from the Estonian Ministry of Culture, which rejected his request. In June 2012, after an official meeting with the heads of the St Andrew Foundation in Moscow, Savisaar confirmed that the construction of the church complex would be completed in 2013.

⁵ According to articles 78 and 89 of the Constitution the president designates a candidate for prime minister to whom the president assigns the task of forming a new government.

⁶ Particularly from the eleventh century, secular rulers often paid tribute to the pope who had legitimised their military conquests and right to earthly rule (Eckhardt, 1937, p. 6).

⁷ For ‘national atheists’ and ‘national traditionalists’ national religious traditions, rites and rituals are means for being connected to the national community (Barker, 1999, pp. 62–3).

⁸ 13.6 per cent of the population identified themselves as Lutherans and 12.8 per cent as Orthodox. Among the ethnic Estonians, 24.3 per cent had religious affiliation; of these 80.5 per cent were Lutherans and 10.2 per cent Orthodox (Känd et al., 2002, pp. 292, 328).

⁹ Andrew Hart has observed that Lutheranism in Estonia is stronger as a latent church, which connects Estonians symbolically with western culture, nationalism and national history, than it is as a manifest church (represented by organisational characteristics such as collective beliefs, rituals and norms, but also church properties and the official number of members) (Hart, 1993, pp. 10–12). The same observation applies also for Russian Orthodoxy among the Russophone minority in Estonia.

¹⁰ In May 2007 Patriarch Aleksi II commented on the relocation of the Bronze Statue by the Estonian government and admonished Estonians to respect ‘those who defended our one motherland’ (Vogelaar, 2008, p. 215). His comment demonstrated his support of the official Russian Federation interpretation of Estonian history during the Second World War.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alar Kilp

Alar Kilp is a lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Tartu, Estonia. In 2012 he defended his doctoral thesis Church Authority in Society, Culture and Politics after Communism at the University of Tartu. His academic research deals with religion and politics, secularisation and church–state relations in postcommunist Europe. He has co-edited the volumes Extremism Within and Around Us (Tartu University Press, 2011) and Religion and Politics in Multicultural Europe (Tartu University Press, 2009). He has published articles in Kultura i Polityka, Forschungen zur Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte (Ugarit Verlag), Studies in Church History (Annuals of the Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Science) and Proceedings of the Estonian National Defence College.