Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 October 5

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October 5

Why didn't adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy aim to convert huge numbers of new people like Catholics and Protestants did?

A map of the world's religions.

What I find interesting is that the population of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the 21st century lives either where their ancestors lived or where their ancestors migrated to (for instance, Siberia and the Russian Far East).

In contrast, large numbers of people whose ancestors weren't practitioners of Catholicism and Protestantism several centuries ago did become Catholics and Protestants by now. This is especially evident in Sub-Saharan Africa (with blacks--including blacks who were forced to migrate to the New World as slaves) and Latin America (with Native Americans). Heck, even East Asia appears to have a growing Christian presence nowadays--albeit not up to the point where Christians actually comprise a majority of its total population. (Of course, Catholics are a majority of the total population in the Philippines.) In contrast, to my knowledge, the only region over the last several centuries that became Eastern Orthodox as a result of mass conversions was Adjara in Georgia--and that has occurred fairly recently as a result of the association of Eastern Orthodox Christianity with the Georgian state--thus causing a huge number of Adjaran Georgian Muslims to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy--which, interestingly enough, was the faith of their ancestors several centuries ago.

Why exactly did Eastern Orthodoxy not aim to convert people on a massive scale over the last several centuries like Catholicism and Protestantism both did? Any thoughts on this? Futurist110 (talk) 20:56, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Note that Judaism has the same feature. In their case, they believe they are the "chosen people", in other words, not everybody was chosen by God to be Jewish, and it's up to God to decide who should become Jewish and who should not. There may be other's like Shinto and Hinduism, which also take the attitude that the person must seek the religion, not the opposite. Also note that in order to spread a religion worldwide, many compromises must be made. Catholicism, for example, had to incorporate local gods (merged with saints) and holidays in order to appeal to locals. See Christianization of saints and feasts. For other religions, such compromises may well be unacceptable. SinisterLefty (talk) 21:27, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

'...they are the "chosen people"'

See Eastern Orthodox Christian Evangelism is different for an inside view. Alansplodge (talk) 22:31, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

[1]. SinisterLefty (talk) 22:34, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, we know that Jews believe that they are the chosen people, Deuteronomy 14:2, the proposition I am questioning is that Orthodox Christians also believe that they are chosen. Alansplodge (talk) 23:30, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I never said that. SinisterLefty (talk) 23:37, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Apologies Lefty, but Jews don't generally proselytise, whereas Orthodox Christians do, albeit in a different way to Evangelical Christians. Pleasde try to provide references with your answers. Alansplodge (talk) 14:33, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

How do you think Slavic people such as the Bulgars and Russians became Eastern Orthodox in the first place? It was through conversion. The reason Eastern Orthodoxy did not spread to Africa and the New World is that none of the nations that practiced Orthodoxy had colonial empires (well, Russia briefly tried in Alaska, and did convert some natives). Blueboar (talk) 23:06, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

It is possible for a religion to spread without colonization. The spread of Christianity to the Roman Empire, for example. SinisterLefty (talk) 23:10, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

True, although Orthodoxy spread widely around the Mediterranean in the time of the Byzantine Empire, you can still see Orthodox church buildings (now Catholic) in Sicily for example. Two great Orthodox missionaries to the Slavs were Saints Cyril and Methodius who famously invented the Cyrillic alphabet so that the pagans could read the Bible. By the time of the Spanish colonial expansions mentioned by the OP, Greece and the Balkans were occupied by the Muslim Ottomans. The Russians however spread the word their eastern empire, FOREIGNERS, FURS and FAITH: MUSCOVY'S EXPANSION INTO WESTERN SIBERIA, 1581-1649 has some details. Alansplodge (talk) 23:25, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Russians brought the Orthodox faith all the way here to California, though there was never a large investment into converting the residents of the area, probably because that might have drawn the ire of Spain, Britain, and/or the U.S. Building on that, the general answer to the question is that no Orthodox power ever happened to obtain an empire that incorporated large numbers of non-Orthodox people in which it had a fairly easy time making them convert. Most of the converting that resulted in the map above was done by the official state churches of the colonial powers, and imposed on indigenous peoples who had inferior technology, were weakened by disease, and were relatively out of reach of aid from rival imperial powers. To contrast the Russian Empire, as noted, there were conversion efforts in places like Siberia where similar circumstances existed. In other areas, like Central Asia, forced conversions might have sparked revolts that could have been taken advantage of by rival powers. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 07:29, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

The full question did specify "over the last several centuries". --47.146.63.87 (talk) 07:29, 6 October 2019 (UTC)