Fr. Daniel Sysoev: The Concept of “Traditional Religions” is a Major Obstacle to Orthodox Christian Mission Work

Editor's Note: Fr. Daniel Sysoev became one of the best known priests in Russia, not only because he wrote many books and brought many souls to Christ, but also because he was a martyr, shot in his own church. Many faithful Orthodox Christians consider him to be a saint.

In the following article, Fr. Daniel explains how Russia's modern concept of "Traditional Religions" compromises the Gospel, and is detrimental to the spread of Orthodox Christian Faith.

Fr. Daniel Sysoev

Until recently, the preaching of Christ was perceived as something that should be brought to representatives of all other religions. But, starting from the middle of the 20th century, the idea appeared that there were, as it were, two types of creeds — "traditional" ones and new religious movements (sects). The former began to be considered “good”, and the latter “bad”. Moreover, they began to assert that the reason for the high assessment of “traditional faiths” is their antiquity, which supposedly serves as a guarantee of their humanity and high morality.

Contrary to all observed facts, they are trying to convince us that all traditional religions teach only good things and do not contain any grounds for committing crimes. All this is especially expressed in the popular but completely incorrect aphorism: “crime has no religion.” After terrorist tragedies in Russia, America, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other places, even for the most rabid popularizers of the thesis about “terrorism outside of religion,” the absurdity of this idea, which has always been obvious to any impartial person, becomes clear. 

After all, religion is not just harmless talk about something “high and spiritual”, but the real practice of communicating with certain spiritual entities, and therefore we can say the idea that there is something good in a given creed, and that the bad can be discarded with the help of a decision by some officials, is a completely absurd idea. 

The problem lies precisely in what spiritual entity a person is interacting with. If one communicates with God the Creator of the Universe, then one should expect only good from Him. But if we are talking about those spirits who, according to the Gospel word, serve the murderer from the beginning (John 8:44), then no matter what beautiful speeches the leaders of a given religion may give, its adherents will inevitably kill others and destroy themselves. After all, no man has power over the one he worships. 

And no amount of talk about “religious tolerance and mutual respect” will help here, because the demons really want to destroy humanity, and the decisions of the muftis or rabbis will not affect their determination in any way. Moreover, those who serve the father of lies have a completely utilitarian concept of truth and honesty. For example, the Koran contains a number of mutually exclusive statements regarding non-believers, which are applied depending on the political situation. 

So any negotiations about peace between religions are a deliberate bluff, because every Christian, and especially every missionary, remembers that "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spirits of wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12), which, according to Scripture, serve all those who do not honor the Son and the Father who sent Him (John 5:23) in the unity of the Holy Spirit. We have nothing in common with such people, according to the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 6:14-16), and we must fight with Satan for their souls, and not hope that with some politically correct negotiations we can “appease them”.

However, it is worth going back and looking at the origins of the concept of “traditional religions.” One should not think that the idea of ​​identifying the truth and antiquity of a religion is something new. The first Christian martyrs had to deal with this approach, who were executed for preaching unconventional religion. Here, for example, is a quote from the account of the martyrdom of St. Carpus (his memory is October 13). The Governor, admonishing the martyrs, said:

“It is not unknown to you, I think, that glory and honor have been given to the immortal gods since ancient times, and this remains so to this day, not only among us who know the Greek and Roman languages, but also among the barbarians; for through zeal for the gods, cities are governed by good laws, victories are won over enemies and peace is strengthened... Honor them too. And if, through the words of ignorant people, you were seduced by the unreasonable and recently appeared Christian faith, then come to your senses now and return to what is better. Then the gods will have mercy on you, and you will enjoy the many blessings that we have; Great mercies await you from the king".¹ 

We have here before us practically the entire set of arguments currently used by supporters of “traditional religion”, imagining that the truth of a religion is somehow demonstrated by its antiquity and widespread distribution, and presuming that a true religion should support the strength of the state and ensure material well-being for its adherents. There is, of course, nothing surprising in the fact that “traditionalist” ideas sharply intensified after the massive revival of the pagan worldview in the middle of the last century (this is the emergence of the massive “New Age” movement, and the development of "traditionalist" concepts among intellectuals², with the subsequent assimilation of geopolitical theories that grew on their basis, stating the existence of certain macrocultural formations recognized as equivalent, and the rejection of ideas about the exclusivity of European culture). 

What is alarming, however, is the fact that the concept of “traditional religions,” purely pagan in origin, has found a strong place both in the minds of ordinary people (which, in general, is not surprising, given the surge of neo-pagan sentiments) and among many Orthodox preachers. There are calls for adopting Orthodoxy under the pretext that this is “the faith of our ancestors,” that the Church is capable of strengthening the state, and that the proof of the truth of Orthodoxy is the rich culture created by its supporters. Of course, all such reasoning is extremely unconvincing.

The first thing that can be said about these methods of mission is that they are extremely ineffective. The reason for this is the lack of motives for accepting that faith, which is already considered ours, so to speak, “by birthright.” I have repeatedly encountered people calling themselves “Orthodox atheists.” Moreover, the word “Orthodoxy” itself is for them simply another name for patriotism.

There are also examples of neo-pagan groups that call themselves "Orthodox", even though they reject faith in Christ the Savior, or commit a radical revision of divine revelation (some of them reject the Old Testament, claiming that it is “the revelation of Satan”). Even if people converted by such sermons do not formally deviate from Orthodox dogma (which in practice is much less common than is believed, because in the minds of such believers elements of Christianity often coexist with the most extreme paganism - for example, astrology, karma, etc.), then their faith itself most often manifests itself in the form of political actions, to which saving significance is attributed. In fact, Christianity for supporters of this ideology remains only a facade for the construction of a nation, and any memory that our Fatherland is not on earth, but in Heaven, is emasculated from it. If eschatological thoughts appear in the mind of such a convert, they only cause him to panic (the clearest example of this is hysteria for the right to live without a tax identification number). And this is not surprising. After all, all such a person's thoughts are connected with the earthly fatherland, and not with the heavenly one. He associates the end of the world not with the Coming Lord, but with the Antichrist, whom he is madly afraid of.

Patriotism can be justified and useful to the state only to the extent that it protects the interests of the Orthodox Church in this state. For example, modern Russian ideologists of Islam, Heydar Jamal and Ali V. Polosin, present themselves as statesmen and ardent patriots, opponents of Russia's involvement in the Western Atlantic alliance, and fighters against the Americanization of Russian life. And there is no doubt about their patriotism and statism. But Jamal and Polosin put forward the conversion of the Russian people to Islam as a condition for such independence of Russia from the West. Will we go along with such patriots?

The second argument against this method of mission is that it is completely incapable of fulfilling the Lord’s command to preach the Gospel to other nations. Proponents of this approach to preaching, at best, say that by accepting Orthodox Christianity, other nations should become Russian, and therefore they consider representatives of other Orthodox nations (especially the Greeks) not fully Orthodox because they do not always support Russia’s national interests. I think that there is no need to prove that such an approach leads to an actual rejection of the catholicity of the Church. Back in 1872, the Church at the Great Council of Constantinople condemned this approach to Christianity as the heresy of phyletism.

The third disadvantage of this approach is the following. When Orthodox Christianity is perceived by a person only as part of his national culture, then it is not able to penetrate the depths of the heart (which is still immeasurably greater than nationality) and leaves it empty. The hunger for Truth, characteristic of any person, remains unsatisfied (after all, earthly things are not able to satisfy this hunger), and therefore, in this way, a “converted” person becomes an easy prey for heresies and schisms. I had to meet dozens of sectarians who were previously “national believers.” When confronted by their “traditional faith” and the supposed “biblical” truth (pseudo-Christian and occult sects), they chose what called itself the truth, and not folk tradition. And this is not surprising. After all, in the true words of Dietrich von Hildebrant, “with regard to religion, only one question can matter: whether it is true or not. Whether it corresponds to the mentality of the era or not cannot play any role in the choice of this or that religion, if we do not want to change its essence. Even a consistent atheist admits this. He will not say that today we cannot believe in God - he will say that God is and has always been a pure fiction. From the idea that religion should be adapted to the spirit of the times, it is only one step to the delusional idea of ​​inventing a new religion, which makes us think of Bertrand Russell and the Nazi ideologue Bergman.” ³

But now let's look at what objections to the idea of ​​“traditional religions” can be raised based not simply on missionary considerations, but on divine revelation from God. Let us first return to the answer of St. Carpus to the “traditionalistic” argumentation of the ruler Valerius:

“We do not consider your faith respectable just because the faith is ancient, for not everything that is ancient is necessarily honest: after all, anger is ancient, but it is not yet worthy of respect for its antiquity. Whether or not it should be accepted is not something that should be discussed. We decided to evade it, and as far as possible, to expel it from our midst, as one who prepares the terrible fire of Gehenna for those who love it.” ⁴ 

From these words it becomes clear that all the rantings of those who claim that we should cooperate with representatives of “traditional faiths” are a manifestation of the greatest inhumanity and cruelty. After all, according to the words of St. John Chrysostom: “if it happens, which God forbid, that an unexpected death befalls us, and we leave here without enlightenment (i.e. Baptism), then, even if we had thousands of blessings here, nothing awaits us except Gehenna, a poisonous worm, unquenchable fire and unbreakable bonds.” ⁵ 

So are we really going to allow our imaginary politeness, notorious “political correctness”, and “tolerance” — which actually covers up lack of faith and indifference — lead to the fact that we will not save our fellow man from eternal, cruel death? This is exactly what we are being led to do, if we accept the concept of refusing to preach among supporters of “traditional religions”. Yet this is what the followers of these “traditional” errors are calling for, when they intimidate us because of Orthodox proselytism.

The first thing that Scripture tells us, both the Old and New Testaments, is that our God is One, and there are no others besides Him. All other gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord created the heavens (Ps. 95:5) and He will never reconcile with the fact that man departs from Him. As the prophet Elijah said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him." (1 Kings 18:21). It is obvious that with this formulation of the question, antiquity is not a guarantee of truth, and even moreso, cooperation between representatives of different religions, even “traditional” ones, is impossible. 

Here, a choice is necessary between Truth and lies. And super-ecumenical statements will not help us, such as “the question of which religious path leads to the eternity of God is resolved only in this eternity, beyond the boundaries of temporary existence.” ⁶ They ignore the obvious fact that the Son is the only Path to the Father (John 14:6), and those who do not believe in the Son will not see eternal life, but the wrath of God remains on them (John 3:36). In fact, for reasons of religious tolerance, the authors of such statements are committing a radical revision of the Orthodox faith.

Some accept the concept of “traditional religions”, fearing the reproach of pride. In fact, there is nothing to be afraid of here. We truly know that we are from God and that the whole world lies in evil (1 John 5:19). Pride is usually associated with a feeling of one’s own merits, but there are none, for we did not create faith for ourselves, but only pass on what we received from God. Orthodox Christians should not be embarrassed or afraid of anything in this world; we do not need any allies other than the Holy Trinity. And only by having such a Patron we will defeat all our enemies (both traditional and new) so that from enemies they will become our brothers. And may God help us in this!

1. Lives of Saints St. Demetrius of Rostov. October. M., 1904. P. 315.

2. It is worth noting here that traditionalism itself is closely connected with both Crowley’s Satanism and Islamic fundamentalism. Let us just remember that the guru of traditionalism, the former Catholic Rene Guenon, converted to Sufi Islam, and his adherents in Russia, such as Heydar Dzhemal, are actually propagandists of Wahhabi Islam.

3. Dietrich von Hildebrant . Teilhard de Chardin: on the way to a new religion // Dietrich von Hildebrant. New Tower of Babel. St. Petersburg, 1998. P. 115.

4. Lives of Saints St. Demetrius of Rostov. October. M., 1904. P. 316.

5. John Chrysostom, saint . Conversations on the Gospel of John the Theologian T. 1. M., 1993. P. 166.

6. Vladimir, Metropolitan of Bishkek and Central Asia. The land of the descendants of the Turkic patriarch. M. 2002. P. 67.