Religion in Eastern Europe November 2007 [antikvár]

INTER-CHURCH AND INTER-RELIGIOUS TENSIONS IN POST COMMUNIST EASTERN EUROPE: CAN AMERICANS SERVE AS RECONCILERS? (CAREE CONFERENCE PART H) Introduction by Editors The non-violent revolutions of 1989 captured the attention and imagination of the world. The way in which a diverse group of human rights activists met in the basement of the Magic Lantern in downtown Prague to plot strategy for further nonviolent demonstrations and negotiations with the Communist authorities, till the latter resigned their offices, has been dubbed the violet revolution. Between then early winter of 1989 and the beginning of 1992, all the East European socialist governments had been replaced without violence except in Romania, and the stages of democratic development in the USSR had moved from a failed coup to replace Gorbachev, to an agreement to dissolve the USSR, replacing it with the much weaker Commonwealth of Independent States, the former Baltic republics by then had declared their national sovereignty. The new themes everywhere were the development of a new form of civil society, to be characterized by moral concerns for openness, truth telling, autonomy of action and nonviolence. After the long years of communists pushing the churches to the margins of insignificance, in so many cases believers and their churches were now looked to for guidance in building the good civitas. We have reviewed these developments in the pages of Religion in Eastern Europe frequently, helping give voice to those seeking to articulate the needed understanding toward a responsible public theology. That included pondering the dynamics of a process of truth telling and social reconciliation, which proceeded rather unevenly across the region we still have as our purview under the rubric of eastern Europe. Soon however, it became evident that there were also many unresolved tensions and conflicts between churches and between religions, which in south eastern Europe in particular played themselves out in violence that was labeled ethnic cleansing and even genocide. With CAREE having been involved in numerous efforts over the past 16 years where religious leaders sought to foster peace and reconciliation, it seemed appropriate to revisit the issue of inter-church and inter-religious tensions, by asking the provocative international question - "can Americans serve as reconcilers?" That became a way to draw attention to the quite different mentalities that had been developing, to seek to analyse the issues from multiple perspectives and to differentiate more deliberately among the quite conflicting appeals to Christian faith. The meaning of 'velvet' revolution can serve as illustration for the contrasting meanings. When first applied to the Czech transformation of 1989, the German meaning of the word velvet as soft (e.g. the velvet glove), had been the quality most noted, in contrast to the violence and harshness of the famed revolution of 1917. When compared to the Green and Orange revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine more recently, it seemed as if these now revolved around color - velvet, green and orange - all seeking political change by nonviolent democratic means still but where the colors were evoking symbols of nationhood. Having started with three papers in the August issue (James R Payton, Luka and Angela Hie) we decided to devote this entire issue to most of the presentations that followed, including some of the discussion questions, so that it conveys the sense of an extended discussion we experienced. The vantage points varied, speakers commented on each other's arguments while adding a richness of experience and research that we hope the readers will recognize. RELIGION IN EASTERN EUROPE XXVII, 4 (November 2007) page 1