Tamara Grdzelidze
A Blog of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University
It will not surprise any student of religion of the post-Soviet space that from the mid 1980s, Georgia entered a process of gradual saturation with Orthodoxy. After announcing independence on April 14, 1991, it was considered a key to accommodating/adapting to many things in the newly established sovereign state of the Georgian Republic. The Orthodox Church became a source for the transmission of the Soviet era national sentiments into the national identity, and, at the same time, its abode. It is true that independent Georgia set an integration into the Euro-Atlantic alliances as its goal from the early on of its independence, and, these two trends have been developed as parallel processes feeding, as well as contradicting, each other.
Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first President of Georgia (April 1991 – January 6, 1992) in his inaugural speech said: “In Georgia, the Orthodox Christian country, always existed a traditional bond between state and church, and lively faith of the Georgian people determined the survival of the Georgian statehood. And the state, on its part, supported the apostolic activity of the Church. Restoration of Georgian independence cannot take place without restoration of its lively faith, its ethical teaching; the Georgian national movement has been closely related with the Orthodox faith, with the bosom of the Church; by its content this is a national-religious movement; it does not aim at realization of national goals without restoration of ethical and religious consciousness. …State and church must not interfere into each other’s affairs but provide the united effort for the unity of social and ecclesial life….. Restoration of state independence must be followed by establishing Orthodoxy as the state religion…”
The first President carried out his duties for less than one year; however, political climate of his spiritual legacy expressed in the inaugural speech continued. This legacy exposed tendency to keep two challenging trends in one: creation of an independent state in eastern Europe in the last decade of the twentieth century, a republic with democratic institutions, including multiparty elections and establishing Orthodoxy as the state religion. The blurred distinction between secular state and Orthodox superiority has become a truly challenging legacy in independent Georgia.