Die Doukhobors in Georgien und ihre traditionelle Lebensweise in Gorelovka (Dschawachetien)

Von Ralph Hälbig; Fotografie von Natela Grigalashvili

Die Doukhobors sind eine christliche-spirituelle Sekte, die im 17. Jahrhundert in Russland entstand und eine pazifistische Gemeinschaft bildete. Zwischen 1898 und 1903 wanderten die meisten nach Kanada aus - unterstützt von Tolstoi und seinen Anhängern - um dem Militärdienst in Russland zu entgehen. Sie betonen einen gewaltfreien Widerstand, lehnen den Militärdienste ab und distanzierten sich vom Staat. Viele Doukhobors emigrierten aufgrund religiöser Verfolgung nach Kanada, wo sie in British Columbia leben. In Nordamerika waren sie berüchtigt für gewalttätige Handlungen, darunter Bombenanschläge und Brandstiftungen, die von einer radikalen Gruppe namens "Söhne der Freiheit" verübt wurden. Diese kleine extremistische Gruppe repräsentierte jedoch nicht die gesamte Doukhobor-Gemeinschaft. Meist zeichnen sich die Doukhobors durch eine einfache und gemeinschaftliche Lebensweise auf Basis von harter Arbeit aus. Trotz der negativen Berichterstattung in den Medien sind die Doukhobors bekannt als eine pazifistische und gesetzestreue Gemeinschaft.

Ihr Haupterwerbszweig ist die Landwirtschaft. In ihrer Gemeinschaft legen die  Doukhobors großen Wert auf Frieden, soziale Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit. Ihre religiösen Praktiken umfassen gemeinschaftliches Gebet und das Singen. Heute engagieren sich die Doukhobors für Menschenrechte, Umweltschutz und sind als religiöse Gemeinschaft in Kanada anerkannt.

Auch in Georgien sind die Dukhobors eine orthodoxe Sekte, die an Pazifismus und Geschlechtergleichheit glaubt, die sich weigerte, zur russisch-orthodoxen Kirche überzutreten und Wehrdienst zu leisten. Von der Krim nach Georgien verbannt, gründeten sie dort mehrere Dörfer in der Region Dschawachetien. Viele leben in Gorelovka. Die Dukhobors sind bekannt für ihre gepflegten Häuser, farbenfrohe Gebäude und ihren tiefen Glauben. Diese religiöse Gemeinschaft praktiziert eine egalitäre Spiritualität und hat eine tiefe Verbindung zum Frieden. In den 1990er Jahren schrumpfte ihre Gemeinschaft aufgrund eines Exodus nach Russland - sie hegen nostalgische Gefühle für die Sowjetunion, in der sie Gleichberechtigung erfuhren.

Photobook: The Doukhobors’ Land. Photos: Natela Grigalashvili
Text: Damien Bouticourt. 

Gerade in Georgien bewahrten die Doukhobors ihre religiösen Überzeugungen und Traditionen. Sie haben auch ihren traditionellen Kleidungsstil beibehalten, der sich von der einheimischen Bevölkerung unterscheidet. Die Doukhobors in Georgien haben ihre landwirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten im Kaukasus spezifisch entwickelt und sind aktiv in sozialen und kulturellen Bereichen ihrer Gemeinschaft engagiert. Trotz der Herausforderungen und des geringen Interesses der Regierung hoffen die Dukhobors darauf, dass ihre Gruppe in Gorelovka an Stärke gewinnt und ihren vergangenen Status wiedererlangt.

Die Doukhobors in Georgien bewahren ihre traditionellen Lebensmittel- und Landwirtschaftspraktiken. Im Kaukasus gründeten sie ihre Siedlungen und konzentrierten sich auf Viehzucht, kultivierten ihren Kartoffel- und Weizenanbau und verwendeten dabei  besonders robuste Saatgutsorten. Sie pflegen enge Beziehungen zu anderen Einwohnern und tauschen Lebensmittel aus. 

Ihre traditionelle Ernährung umfasst Brot, Gerichte aus Gerstenmehl, Salamata, Kisel', kut'ia, Kulesh, lapshd, Piroggen, Kalachi und andere mit Mehl zubereitete Gerichte. Die Doukhobors verwenden Bohnenkraut zum Würzen von Suppen und zur Teezubereitung. Sie konsumieren fermentierte Getränke wie Kwas (Nussbier) und selbstgemachten Alkohol. Gemüse und Früchte wie Rüben, Radieschen, Karotten, Kohl, Gurken und Auberginen werden fermentiert oder eingelegt. Pilze wie Svinushki haben bestimmte heilende Eigenschaften. Hanf- oder Flachssamenöl wird zu Salaten hinzugefügt. Milchprodukte wie Butter, Käse, Milch und Sahne sind reichlich vorhanden. Fleischgerichte werden reichlich zubereitet und Fischgerichte mit Karpfen, Forelle und anderen Arten stehen auf dem Speiseplan. Der festliche Tisch ist während der Feiertage besonders reichhaltig und abwechslungsreich gedeckt. Die Doukhobors verstehen etwas von guter Ernährung. Auch das haben sie nicht verändert und verstehen es, an die nächste Generation weiterzugeben.

Weitere Links zu den Doukhobors in english: 

* Georgia's Dukhobors: An Orthodox Sect That Believes In Pacifism, Gender Equality. By Nadia Beard, Natela Grigalashvili

* The Doukhobors' Land - Natela Grigalashvili 

* Natela Grigalashvili: The Doukhobors’ Land 

"Natela Grigalashvili wurde im ländlichen Georgien geboren und erlangte nach ihrem Aufenthalt in der Hauptstadt ihre Meisterschaft durch harte Arbeit und Visionen. Da Natela ihr Kind großzog, war sie nicht in der Lage, Vollzeit Fotografie zu studieren. Sie besuchte Kurse, die in den damals bestehenden Fotosalons angeboten wurden, und war oft die einzige Frau im Raum. Später wurde sie die erste georgische Fotojournalistin. Auf diesem Weg ist Grigalashvili nie von ihrer künstlerischen Vision abgewichen, das darzustellen, was direkt vor ihren Augen verschwand: ein einst lebendiges und erfülltes Dorfleben und ländlicher Mikrokosmos sowie die nomadische Weltanschauung der georgischen Hochländer, die Grigalashvili vor vielen Jahren zu besuchen begann. Es ist so kraftvoll zu sehen, dass Grigalashvili endlich die internationale Anerkennung erhält, die sie verdient. Ich habe Natela kennengelernt, als ich 2017 an meinem Buch "King is Female" arbeitete, und die Gespräche, die wir in diesem einen Jahr geführt haben, dauern noch an." (Nina Mdivani)

* Russian Doukhobors in Canada 1. The Coming of the Doukhobors 

* Russian Doukhobors in Canada. 2. The Sons of Freedom’sProtest and Violence 

* Russian Doukhobors in Canada. 3. The Forced Assimilation ofChildren 

* Last Days of the Georgian Doukhobors. By Mark Grigorian 

* Georgia: The Last Collectiv Farm. By Olesia Vartanian

* Two Kristinas: The Fate and Future of Georgia’s Doukhobors. By Elene Shengelia, Lasha Shakulashvili 

* About History- The 'Spirit Wrestlers' of Georgia  

* Armenians and Doukhobors in Gorelovka, Georgia

* Georgia: Treatment of Doukhobors (Dukhobors) and stateprotection available to them 

* The Doukhobors of Gorelovka. Spiritual Warriors 

* Gorelovka – Sorrow of the Last of Doukhobors

* The Doukhobors of Gorelovka 

* Doukhobors 

* The Doukhobors: History, Ideology and the Tolstoy-VeriginRelationship by April Bumgardner 

* The Doukhobors of Georgia: traditional food and farming 

* Dukhobors in Georgia:A Study of the Issue of Land Ownershipand Inter-Ethnic Relations in Ninotsminda rayon (Samtskhe-Javakheti). By Hedvig Lohm

VIDEO: "The Last Jew in the Village". By Rufat Asadov

"Последний еврей в деревне" (Russian version): https://youtu.be/JlBEKoFt59g



Abandoned village. This is a village founded by mountain Jews in Azerbaijan in the 19th century. There is a Jewish cemetery near the village. An old man is working at the grave. He is watering a sapling and wiping the grave-stone. This is Meyer. He is the only Jew who stays in the village. There are his father's house, a small plot of earth and a household... He knows everything about this village. He remembers the persecution of the rabbinate in Soviet time, and the troubles of the 1941-1945 wartime, and the post-War years. He is a real living history of this village, and the only nexus between the Past of this Jewish village and the Present time. His parents and his wife and his neighbours as well are buried in this cemetery. He is all time looking after the graves, for they are not to be overgrown with weed and the grave-stones are not to be destroyed... He knows the life story of every Jew buried here indeed!

INDIGENOUS OUTSIDERS: Explores the endangered architectural legacy of the Adjara region’s Muslim communities in Georgia (indigenousoutsiders.com)

(indigenousoutsiders.com) Across Adjara, over fifty mosques built between 1817 and 1926 survive today—some the center of religious revival in their communities, others abandoned. This research project showcases those wooden mosques, with the aim of broadening our understanding of Georgia’s rich and varied architectural heritage

Wooden Mosques explores the endangered architectural legacy of the Adjara region’s Muslim communities. This unique architecture flourished in the decades between the twilight of Ottoman rule and the rise of Soviet power. The Lesser Caucasus’ mountainous climate provided both architectural challenges and opportunities for craftsmen who traveled freely across the Georgian-Turkish border, rendering in wood and paint what would have been stone and tile elsewhere. Moreover, these mosques feature figurative decoration often thought to be forbidden by the faith. These remote structures are architectural testaments to multi-confessionalism in the Caucasus and represent a distinctive expression of vernacular mosque design that underscores the diversity of the Muslim experience worldwide. At the same time, these buildings in their design and decoration are unmistakably Georgian mosques built under Ottoman influence rather than Ottoman mosques imposed on Georgian territory.

Across Adjara, over fifty mosques built between 1817 and 1926 survive today—some the center of religious revival in their communities, others abandoned because of secularization, depopulation, or the appeal of newly-constructed mosques built with Turkish funding, materials, and design. This research project showcases many of these historic wooden mosques, selected for their diversity in location, design, and conservation status. Through an exploration of this architectural legacy, the project seeks to broaden our understanding of Georgia’s rich and varied architectural heritage.

PROJECT TEAM
Suzanne Harris-Brandts is a Canadian architect and PhD candidate in Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work examines the politics of architecture, particularly with regards to symbols of power and national identity in the post-Soviet South Caucasus and Occupied Palestinian Territories. Prior to her doctoral studies, she received an MArch from the University of Waterloo. Her work has been published and exhibited in various international outlets, and she has worked at design/research practices across the globe, including in Toronto, Vancouver, London, the West Bank, and Abu Dhabi.

Angela Wheeler is a PhD student in architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Her work explores heritage, national identity, and architectural history in the former Soviet Union. After working with the International Council of Monuments and Sites as a Fulbright research grantee in Tbilisi, she completed an MSc in Historic Preservation at Columbia University (2016). Her thesis, Socialist in Form, National in Content, investigated the historical turn in late Soviet architecture and attempts to reconcile historic preservation with Soviet ideology in the Brezhnev era. She recently contributed a chapter on mosques of Russia and the Caucasus to Rizzoli's Mosques: Splendors of Islam (2017) and is currently writing the Tbilisi volume for DOM's Architectural Guides series (2018).

Vladimer Shioshvili is a Georgian-American photographer who documents street art and urban transformations in Tbilisi. He enjoys setting up his tripod and exploring odd angles. Vladimer’s work has been published online and in print in Tank magazine, the Guardian, retrograd.co.uk, and the calvertjournal.com.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
There are over fifty mosque sites across the Adjara Region of Georgia, some of which are highlighted below. More informations: indigenousoutsiders.com/Locations



INDIGENOUS OUTSIDERS INDIGENOUS OUTSIDERS showcases the architectural heritage of Georgia's minority Muslim community in Adjara. #GrahamGrantee www.indigenousoutsiders.com

PROJECT EXHIBITION
22 JUNE -06 JULY 2018
We are pleased to announce the Tbilisi showing of our exhibition "Wooden Mosques: Islamic Architectural Heritage in Adjara" from 22 June - 06 July 2018. Please join us for the opening reception on Friday, June 22nd @ 18:30 at the gallery at 9 Atoneli St, Tbilisi.

We look forward to seeing you there!

INSTAGRAM: indigenous.outsiders
w: www.indigenousoutsiders.com

Caring for Georgia’s old wooden mosques. By Clément Girardot The Caucasian nation might be predominantly Christian Orthodox, but it also harbours a valuable, often forgotten, Muslim heritage. The architecture and photography project “Indigenous Outsiders” carried by Suzanne Harris-Brandts, Angela Wheeler and Vladimer Shioshvili aims to let people discover the old wooden mosques of the Adjara province and raise awareness about their preservation. Interview with Suzanne Harris-Brandts mashallahnews.com/caring for georgias old wooden mosques

BOOK: Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces. Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus. Edited by Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried, & Kevin Tuite (berghahnbooks.com)

Source: berghahnbooks.com


Reviews
“This volume shares in a rich resurgence of writing on religious activity across the former Soviet Union and particularly in areas of the Caucasus, offering sharp insight into arguably one of the most popular religious traditions, shrine pilgrimage, about which we know surprisingly little. The editors have gathered the highly qualified scholars for the task, including a number of specialists from the Caucasus proper.” • Bruce Grant, New York University

Description
Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with religious conviviality. Based on fresh ethnographies in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus. In exploring the effects of de-secularization, growing institutional control over hybrid sacred sites, and attempts to review social boundaries between the religious and the secular, these essays give way to an emergent Caucasus viewed from the ground up: dynamic, continually remaking itself, within shifting and indefinite frontiers.

Tsypylma Darieva is a senior research fellow at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin and is teaching at Humboldt University Berlin. Her research and teaching interests include anthropology of migration, diaspora and homeland, urbanity, and sacred places in Central Eurasia. She has conducted fieldwork in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Germany. Darieva is the author of Russkij Berlin: Migranten und Medien in Berlin und London (LIT, 2004), co-editor of Cosmopolitan Sociability: Locating Transnational Religious and Diasporic Networks (Routledge, 2011), Urban Spaces after Socialism: Ethnographies of Public Places in Eurasian Cities (Campus, 2011) and of the forthcoming volume Sakralität und Mobilität in Südosteuropa und im Kaukasus.

Florian Mühlfried is a social anthropologist in the Caucasus Studies Program at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and a visiting professor at UNICAMP, Brazil. He has published the monograph Being a State and States of Being in Highland Georgia (Berghahn, 2014), a book on feasting in Georgia (ibidem, 2006), and edited the volume Mistrust: Ethnographic Approximations (Transcript, 2018).

Kevin Tuite is Professor of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. He also directed the Caucasus Studies Program at the FSU-Jena from 2011 to 2014. His publications include Language, Culture and Society: Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology (co-edited with Christine Jourdan) (Cambridge, 2006).

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Tsypylma Darieva, Florian Mühlfried and Kevin Tuite

Chapter 1. Between ‘Great’ and ‘Little' Traditions? Situating Shia Saints in Contemporary Baku
Tsypylma Darieva

Chapter 2. Women as Bread-Bakers and Ritual-Makers: Gender, Visibility and Sacred Space in Upper Svaneti
Nino Tserediani, Kevin Tuite and Paata Bukhrashvili

Chapter 3. The Chain of Seven Pilgrimages in Kotaik, Armenia: Between Folk and Official Christianity
Levon Abrahamian, Zaruhi Hambardzumyan, Gayane Shagoyan and Gohar Stepanyan

Chapter 4. Sacred Sites in the Western Caucasus and the Black Sea Region: Typology, Hybridization, Functioning
Igor V. Kuznetsov

Chapter 5. The Power of the Shrine and Creative Performances in Ingiloy Sacred Rituals
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne

Chapter 6. Accompanying the Souls of the Dead: The Transformation of Sacral Time and Encounters
Hege Toje

Chapter 7. Not Sharing the Sacra
Florian Mühlfried

Chapter 8. Informal Shrines and Social Transformations: The Murids as New Religious Mediators among Yezidis in Armenia
Hamlet Melkumyan

Chapter 9. Sharing the Not-Sacred: Rabati and Displays of Multiculturalism
Silvia Serrano

Index

VIDEO: Molokan from Ulyanovka (Georgia)

PHOTOGRAPHY: The Tale of the Last Molokans. By the Georgian Levan Kherkheulidze (georgianphotographers.com)

(georgianphotographers.com) A village in Kakheti (Eastern Georgia, Caucasus), formerly called Ulianovka, and even earlier mentioned as Alexandrovka, is a distinguished place – more than a century and a half it has been a residence area of the Molokans (Russian: молокане) are sectarian Christians with centuries-long history of existence) . Decades ago the whole village was densely populated but nowadays there are only 80 of them left.

The majority of the youth has left Georgia, or moved to towns. Only the elderly are left, sticking to their protestant belief and devoted to their customs.

The Molokan liturgy is a truly distinguished, interesting and joyful process to watch: on Sundays they gather in an azure-blue chapel-house, divide into two groups.

In the main chapel hall Nikolay Presbyter (priest) reads the Bible from the Obryadnik (or the Typicon/liturgical book), he offers prayers and chants together with the congregation.

There is a kitchen next door with a heated Russian Pechka (oven) and a stove.

Under the careful eye of the cook women roll out dough, put it on longer sticks and let it dry in the oven, later to slice it into strings of dough and boil noodles. Next to it one can see huge pots of steel, fixed in the middle of the stove, with boiling meat in one and compote (stewed fruit) in the other; Samovars are lined up outside: boiling water for some tea.

As soon as 3-hour-long prayers are finished, a long table is laid in the chapel; and while Nikolay the Presbyter keeps praying, the table is laid with the Samovars, teapots, tea glasses, pieces of sugar and candies. The joyful priest orders the Molokans to keep quiet and have some tee; the tee is again followed by prayers; the next is noodles, yet another session of prayers, then the sliced, boiled meet followed by apple compote, slightly shaded red with some extra cherry marmalade. All this is followed by yet another set of prayers, of course. The liturgy is over.

Having witnessed this, you can imagine yourself in a Russian fairy tale; though you can never get rid of the disturbing idea: this might be the tale of the last Molokans.




Molokans in Georgia, Photo: Levan Kherkheulidze




Molokans in Georgia, Photo: Levan Kherkheulidze



Molokans in Georgia, Photo: Levan Kherkheulidze

More photos by Levan Kherkheulidze are here in georgianphotographers.com


Interesting link: Molokane and Pryguny in Georgia

GEORGIA: Polaroids of Rabati. By Jacopo Miglioranzi (riowang.blogspot.it)

Jacopo Miglioranzi does research in the anthropology of religion in the Southern Georgian town of Akhaltsikhe among the local Armenians and Georgians. About the Jews of the town he has earlier written in río Wang. His further essays can be read here.

Tolerance. A new word. Until some times ago, you could see it, written in great letters, on a large panel. Tolerance, this was received by the citizens and visitors who entered Rabati. The oldest neighborhood of the city of Akhaltsikhe. To enter the neighborhood, you have to cross a wide road, then take a narrow road under the bridge of the old and disused railway. Two streets. Two forms of tolerance. To the left, the fortress of Rabati, a symbol of tolerance. Tourists, travelers, backpackers, border-crossers. Young people taking photos and letting themselves be photographed. Brides dressed in white. To the right, Rabati. The neighborhood. Tourists, travelers, backpackers, border-crossers. Young people taking photos and letting themselves be photographed. Brides dressed in white, a few. Men smoke their cigarettes nervously. A yellow marshrutka, without wheels, lies dying on the railway embankment. I climb up to the dying tracks. Armenian men. Georgian men. Turkish men. Armenian taxi drivers. Georgian taxi drivers. Turkish buses. Georgian buses. Cars. Police patrol. More taxis. Shopping bags. Women with children. Armenian boys. Georgian boys. Armenian girls. Georgian girls. Russian tourists. Polish tourists. Couples on motorbikes. Cyclists.

further text here >>>

VIDEO: Die Doukhobors in Gorelovka - einem georgischen Dorf in Javakheti (newscafe.ge)

(newscafe.ge) Doukhobors kamen 1841 in das Dorf Gorelovka. Heute ist dort die größte Gemeinschaft von Doukhobors. Die leben zusammen in dem Dorf mit Armeniern und Öko-Migranten aus Adscharien.

Transkript des Videos: Doukhobors sind nicht getauft. Sie tragen kein Kreuz und gehen nur in ihren eigenen Kapellen beten. Sie sind gegen jede Art von Gewalt. Doukhobors glauben, dass Gott in jedem Geschöpf ist. Die Doukhobors kamen nach Javakheti 1841. Die Familie Kalmikov führten die Gemeinde damals. Die Kalmikovs wurden als die Nachkommen von Gott betrachtet. Luschka war der letzte Spross der Familie, dessen Grab ist jetzt ein heiliger Platz bei den Doukhobors. Zu Beginn der 80er Jahre wanderten einige Doukhobors aus nach Tula. Die zweite Stufe der Emigration fand in den späten 90er Jahren statt, als ein großer Teil der Gemeinde nach Brjansk zog. Im Jahr 2008, kurz vor dem georgisch-russischen Krieg, emigriert der dritte Strom nach Tambow. Heute gibt es noch etwa 200 Doukhobors , die in Georgien leben. Gorelovka ist das Dorf, wo sie die größte Gemeinde haben. Armenier und Öko-Migranten aus Adscharien leben gemeinsam in dem Dorf mit den Doukhobors.


Gute Website: doukhobor.org

RELIGION: The rise of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses in the Caucasus. By Tara Isabella Burton @T_I_Burton via via @AJAM (america.aljazeera.com)

(america.aljazeera.com) Armenia and Georgia were the first to adopt Christianity as their state religion; now, American evangelical sects beckon

In the Armenian town of Artashat, a grid of Soviet concrete and corrugated tin roofs an hour from the capital city of Yerevan, few buildings stand out like the meeting hall of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Unlike the crumbling towers that surround it, this building sports an impeccably white façade. On one Sunday in May, more than a hundred Armenians — most in their 40s and 50s — are sharing what Mormons call spiritual “testimony,” their words translated via earpiece to attending American missionaries.

Here in the Caucasus region, ethnicity and faith are often treated as one. Christians in Armenia and Georgia — which in the fourth century became the first two countries worldwide to adopt Christianity as their state religion — almost uniformly belong to the Armenian Apostolic and Georgian Orthodox Churches, respectively (93 percent in Armenia, 83 percent in Georgia).

But a near-century of Soviet-imposed secularism dramatically weakened the standing of state churches. Now, many ethnic Armenians and Georgians are gravitating toward American evangelical sects with an emphasis on attracting converts and a strong missionary presence in the region, such as LDS and Jehovah’s Witnesses. In Armenia, the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses here hovers around 11,000; LDS claims more than 3,000 members (also known as Mormons). These may be small numbers, but they are significant in this country of 3 million, where practitioners of other faiths tend to be members of minority ethno-religious groups, such as Jews or Muslim Kurds.

Both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons identify as Christians, although their non-Trinitarian doctrine — both deny that Jesus Christ shares a single fundamental divine essence with God the Father and the Holy Spirit — has often brought them into conflict with mainline Christian tradition.

“Ask any Armenian on the street and they’ll say, ‘Yes, I believe in God. I believe in Jesus,’ ” says Varuzhan Pogosyan, president of the LDS Mission in Armenia. “But they don’t always practice.”

Pogosyan’s journey started shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. Then an expatriate in Russia, he attended a local Armenian church, both for spiritual reasons and for the opportunity to socialize with other ethnic Armenians. But an encounter with a Mormon missionary made him realize he could do more than just attend services. “I could participate,” he says. “I could be involved in the life of the church.” In the absence of formal clergy, the LDS church offers ordinary members a greater role in church affairs, Pogosyan explains.

It is this sense of involvement that inspired his colleague, Margarit Ayvazyan, to convert. Like Pogosyan, Ayvazyan grew up nonreligious during Soviet rule, adopting atheism as a philosophically inclined teenager. Yet her encounters with LDS missionaries in the early 90's left her with a sense of spiritual fulfillment she had not found in her parents’ Armenian Apostolic services. In a traditional Armenian service, she says, “You just stand there and the priests pray.” Many Armenians cannot even understand the classical Armenian used in services. In LDS, where congregants are encouraged to share their experiences and participate in Bible-study classes, she has a role to play. Even those church members who do not become missionaries are encouraged to circulate information among family and friends, recruit curious “investigators” to visit services and keep track of lapsed members. Pogosyan says most converts here grew up like Ayvazyan: secular under the Soviet regime, but now seeking something more.

In some ways, he says, their history makes his mission easier, as “Armenians have always been religious.” Soviet-era secularism was a temporary aberration, and organizations such as LDS are ideally situated to reach those whose religious needs have not been met elsewhere or who feel that the Armenian Apostolic Church has failed them. After all, in all the years since he left the Church, he’s never once been contacted by any priests trying to win him back or find out why he left: a striking contrast with the LDS church, whose members actively identify and reach out to those whose attendance has lapsed.

Of course, there are challenges. Smoking, drinking and abortion were all permissible under the Soviet regime, Pogosyan says, and encouraging new converts to maintain what he calls a “healthier” way of life is a struggle. The American missionaries at Artashat tell stories of priests who attacked their brethren in neighboring towns, boys who throw rocks at them as they walk down Yerevan streets (“I think [the boys] thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” one laughs. “They can’t tell the difference”).

But the biggest challenge for those seeking to convert others may be reconciling converts’ faith with their ethnic identity. Many of Pogosyan’s countrymen see those who leave the Apostolic Church as less Armenian. He takes pains to emphasize the long-standing relationship between Armenia and the LDS church, which first took hold in the Armenian diaspora in 19th-century Constantinople, as well as the increasing number of foreign missionaries of Armenian descent who have come to their ancestral homeland to serve. He is also careful to stress the cultural similarities between Armenia and the LDS church. “We’re very big on family values in Armenia,” he says, making the LDS church here a perfect fit. Ultimately, his faith has made him more Armenian, not less. It has strengthened his relationship with his family, his local community. “It has made me a better citizen.”

Minority evangelical Christian sects face similar challenges in Armenia’s northern neighbor, Georgia, where religion and nationalism are even more closely intertwined. Between 1999 and 2003, Jehovah's Witnesses lodged almost 800 complaints of religiously-motivated incidents of conflict, many violent, says Manuchar Tsimintia, a lawyer and practicing Jehovah's Witness who frequently defends the church in human rights cases. Following Georgia's bloodless Rose Revolution in 2008 and the subsequent installation of Western-leaning Mikhail Saakashvili as president, things drastically improved, but tensions remain. This situation isn’t ameliorated by the fiercely Orthodox, nationalist stance of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, which has succeeded Saakashvili's United National Movement. In early May, a group of teenagers destroyed a cart of pamphlets Jehovah’s Witnesses were using to proselytize in Tbilisi’s city center, although, Tsimintia is pleased to report, the police charged and fined the culprits responsible.

Still, he estimates that there are about 20,000 baptized converts; another 20,000 or so attend meetings and worship: such figures, if accurate, would comprise nearly 1 percent of Georgia's population. Like the Mormons in Armenia, adherents say they converted because of disillusionment with Soviet-style anti-clericalism and existing ecclesiastical institutions and a desire to participate more fully in the activities of their church.

“It was the end of the communist regime,” Tsimintia says of his joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses. “All people were seeking God.” But Tsimintia, then enrolled in college, felt dissatisfied by the Georgian Orthodox Church, which stirred him emotionally, but could not provide him with the answers he sought. “Who is God? Who are we? Where do we come from?” It was through independent Bible study, Tsimintia says, that he came to the conclusion the Jehovah’s Witnesses had access to spiritual truth.

Increasingly, he says, those who came of age after the collapse of the Soviet Union are also finding themselves disillusioned with what they see as hypocrisy and corruption within the current hierarchy of the Georgian Orthodox Church, whose vast wealth and close financial relationship with the country’s ruling classes have often attracted scrutiny. In 2009, for example, each of Georgia’s 10 archbishops received a luxury SUV from the Georgian government. And the disenchantment has only grown more common in recent years as the church has attempted to wield greater political influence through its alliance with the Georgian Dream party ruling coalition. Many youths are also critical of the church’s tacit approval of violence; in May 2013, local Tbilisi priests, leading a mob of 20,000, attacked a small group of unarmed anti-homophobia protesters, injuring at least 12.

“They are not living according to Bible standards,” Tsimintia says. “[That is what] young people see.”

His colleague Tamaz Khutsishvili recalls a friend who sought spiritual guidance from an Orthodox priest, only to have the priest turn up at his home “so drunk he could not stand up.” One potential convert became disillusioned with his own church after a local priest with whom he had entrusted some money for temporary safekeeping informed him he had spent the funds on the construction of a new church. And both Khutsishvili and Tsimintia condemn the Orthodox church-sanctioned anti-gay violence last year as an example of church hypocrisy. The Bible, they say, condemns aggression. “Even if [people] are doing something we see as against the Bible,” Khutsishvili says, “we must never talk of violence.”

Yet here, too, converts struggle with reconciling their cultural and religious identities. “You are not Christian. You are not Orthodox. You are not Georgian. I must have heard that 10 times a day,” says Tsimintia.

Still, as with the Mormons in Armenia, Tsimintia and Khutsishvili choose to appeal to history to defend the essential Georgianness of their choice. “Once our ancestors were pagans,” Khutsishvili says. “Then they found the truth and became Orthodox. Now we’re finding truth again — and converting. We are following our ancestors.”

EDITION: Vaterland, Sprache, Glaube: Orthodoxie und Nationenbildung am Beispiel Georgiens: 95. Von Eva Fuchslocher

Dieses Buch [pdf] zeigt am Beispiel Georgiens und der Georgisch Orthodoxen Kirche, wie Religion und Kirche Ein? uss auf Nationenbildung nehmen. Anhand prägnanter Beispiele aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart wird unter Einbeziehung von Theorien des "nation building" die Herausbildung der georgischen Nation als eine "imaginierte Gemeinschaft" nachvollzogen. Dem in der Forschung vernachlässigten Einfluss von Religion und Kirche räumt die Autorin dabei besonderen Stellenwert ein. Hiermit liegt erstmals eine Gesamtschau zur engen Verbindung von Nationenbildung und Orthodoxie in Georgien vor. Neben Theorien zur Nationenbildung in Hinblick auf den Zusammenhang von Nation, Sprache, Religion und Moderne, den Besonderheiten der christlichen Orthodoxie und den Grundzügen der sowjetischen Nationalitätenpolitik, werden in diesem Buch die Geschichte und Kirchengeschichte Georgiens dargestellt. Georgien wurde schon im 4. Jahrhundert christianisiert, zeitgleich bildete sich eine eigene Alphabetschrift heraus. So war schon früh der Grundstein für die Einheit von Sprache, Land und Glaube gelegt. Allerdings war die weitere georgische Geschichte geprägt von Fremdherrschaft. In dieser historischen Konstellation wurde die Orthodoxe Kirche zur Bewahrerin der Sprache und nationalen Identität Georgiens. Den Zusammenhang von Sprache, Religion und georgischer Nation zeigt die Autorin anhand christlicher Literatur, Märtyrerlegenden und Mythen zur Entstehung des Landes auf. Am Beispiel politischer Ereignisse seit der Unabhängigkeit Georgiens von der Sowjetunion wird die Verbindung von Religion und Nation in der jüngsten Vergangenheit veranschaulicht.

Taschenbuch: 254 Seiten
Verlag: ibidem-Verlag; Auflage: 1., Erstauflage (2. Januar 2010)
Sprache: Deutsch
ISBN-10: 3898218848
ISBN-13: 978-3898218849
Größe und/oder Gewicht: 20,8 x 14,6 x 1,6 cm

Die Autorin: Eva Fuchslocher studierte bis 2006 Kulturwissenschaft, Europäische Ethnologie und Soziologie an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Sie promoviert derzeit über den Zusammenhang von Religion und Nation. Neben den wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeiten arbeitet sie im Museumsbereich. Aufsätze u.a. in Hochschulen im Wettbewerb (Dietz 2009), Berliner Blätter und Freischüßler. Die Vorwortautorin: Dr. Christina von Braun ist Professorin für Kulturwissenschaft an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

AmazonShop: Books, Maps, Videos, Music & Gifts About The Caucasus

VIDEO: Georgien: Mtskheta - Die Wunder der Nino (swr.de)

(swr.de) Der Film führt nach Mtskheta, der alten Hauptstadt Georgiens. Sie gilt als heiligster und geschichtsträchtigster Ort des Landes.

Hier entstanden die ersten Kirchen und von hier aus begann im 4. Jahrhundert die Christianisierung, um die sich - typisch georgisch - wundersame Geschichten ranken. Oft ist dabei von der kräuterkundigen Heilerin "Nino" die Rede, der auch eine Beteiligung am Bau der Kirchen nachgesagt wird.

In der Ortsmitte liegt die über 1000 Jahre alte Sweti-Zchoweli-Kathedrale, bis heute Sitz des georgischen Patriarchen. Von der Dschwari-Kirche, der ältesten Kreuzkuppelkirche Georgiens, erschließt sich eine unglaubliche Aussicht auf die Stadt, auf die sanften Bergketten ringsherum sowie auf die zerklüfteten Gebirgszüge des Kaukasus am Horizont.

Mtskheta - ein Ort, an dem die Geschichte der Christianisierung, georgische Baukunst und die Wunder der Nino zusammenfallen.

POLITIC: Mit Georgiens Gott gegen Schwule. Von Markus Bey (derstandard.at)

(derstandard.at) Beim Thema sexuelle Minderheiten beißt sich die EU in Georgien die Zähne aus. Todesstrafe für Schwule oder zumindest verpflichtende psychologische Beratung findet ein Teil der Georgier gut. Vor den Präsidentenwahlen zeigt sich die neue Macht der orthodoxen Kirche im Land.

Beim Thema Homosexualität geht der Mehrheit der Georgier ganz schnell das Geimpfte auf. Elf Prozent befürworten ernsthaft die Todesstrafe für Schwule laut einer neuen Umfrage von Gorbi, dem Georgian Opinion Research Business International (sechs Prozent der Befragten in der Hauptstadt Tiflis, 16 Prozent auf dem Land). 19 Prozent der Georgier sind für Gefängnisstrafe und satte 69 Prozent halten bei Homosexualität eine gesetzlich vorgeschriebene psychologische Beratung für gut. Denn wie sagte Patriarch Ilia II., das Oberhaupt der georgischen Kirche, doch noch vor dem weltweiten Tag gegen die Homophobie in diesem Jahr: Homosexualität ist eine "Anomalie und Krankheit".

Ilias Erklärung nahmen im Frühjahr einige Tausend Georgier – ein paar Popen inklusive – als Freibrief für den Angriff auf LGBTs auf dem Rustaveli Boulevard in Tiflis. Mindestens 28 Demonstranten wurden verletzt. Die Polizei rettet einige Demonstranten und fuhr sie mit Bussen weg, tat aber wenig, um die pogromartige Hatz auf Homosexuelle in den Seitenstraßen zu stoppen.

Der 17. Mai 2013 war eine der wenigen Fehlleistungen im Bereich der Bürgerrechte, die Nino Tsagareischwili, Ko-Direktorin des Human Rights Center in Tiflis, nach dem ersten Regierungsjahr der Partei "Georgischer Traum" sieht. Es hätte am Tag der LGBT-Demonstration erheblich mehr Polizei ins Zentrum von Tiflis verlegt werden müssen, sagt sie. Die Beamten öffneten unter dem Ansturm der Homophoben die Absperrgitter und machten damit Angriffe auf die Demonstranten möglich. "Das hat mit der Nicht-Akzeptanz von LGBTs in der traditionellen Kultur Georgiens zu tun", erklärt Nino Tsagareischwili, "aber Gesetz ist Gesetz. Schwule und Lesben haben ein Recht auf freie Rede und Versammlung".

foto: ap photo/misha japaridze

Thomas Hammarberg, EU-Berater 
der georgischen Regierung für Verfassungsfragen

Oder doch nicht. Das wurde Thomas Hammarberg, dem früheren Menschenrechtskommissar des Europarats und jetzigen EU-Berater der georgischen Regierung für Verfassungsfragen, jüngst erklärt. In einem offenen Brief, der in der Wochenzeitung Kviris Palitra veröffentlicht wurde, griffen georgische Künstler und Intellektuelle Hammarberg scharf an. Leute „mit sexuellen Perversionen“ mit religiösen oder ethnischen Minderheiten zu vergleichen, sei unmöglich. „Dieser neue ideologische Trick ist für uns völlig inakzeptabel, gleichgültig, wie sehr man versucht, ihn im Westen anzuwenden“, heißt es in dem Brief. Hammarberg hatte im September in einem Bericht zur Menschenrechtslage in Georgien die Situation der „sexuellen Minderheiten“ in einem Kapitel mit Fragen anderer Minderheiten im Land erörtert. Unter anderem heißt es dort:

"Trials against the suspected homophobia activists should be accompanied by attempts to explain to the wider public the need for a more respectful attitude towards sexual minorities. It should be made clear that while views may differ, violence is never acceptable."

Gegen vier Personen wurde nach den Angriffen am 17. Mai zumindest ein Verfahren eröffnet. Die Schwulen-Demonstration vor der Schule Nr. 51 am Rustaveli Boulevard sei eine „Propaganda der Perversion vor Kindern“ gewesen, erklärten dagegen die Unterstützer des öffentlichen Briefs an Hammarberg. Der Brief wurde unter anderem vom Dichter Rezo Amashukeli unterzeichnet, dem Filmemacher und früheren Saakaschwili-Minister Goga Khaindrava und dem Schachspieler Nona Gaprindaschwili.

Der Feldzug gegen Homosexuelle hat natürlich auch Eingang in den Wahlkampf für die Präsidentenwahlen am Sonntag gefunden. Giorgi Targamadse, Kandidat und Führer der Christdemokraten, einer kleinen zeitweiligen Oppositionspartei im georgischen Parlament in den letzten Jahren der Saakaschwili-Regierung, schlug einen Zusatz in der georgischen Verfassung vor, der festschreibt, dass eine Ehe nur zwischen Mann und Frau eingegangen werden kann. Giorgi Margwelaschwili, der Kandidat der nun regierenden "Träumer" und Favorit der Wahlen, ging auf diese Forderung während einer TV-Debatte nicht ein. Es sei sowieso für jeden klar, was eine Ehe und eine Familie seien, sagte er – eine Institution von Mann und Frau, in der Kinder aufwachsen. "Diejenigen, die das nicht verstehen, sollen die Frage nur weiter studieren", meinte Margwelaschwili ironisch.

Die Meinungsforscher von Gorbi haben in ihrer jüngsten Quartalstudie auch das Verhältnis der Georgier zu ihrer orthodoxen Kirche beleuchtet: 68 Prozent sind der Meinung, dass Politiker, die nicht an Gott glauben, ungeeignet für öffentliche Ämter sind; 61 Prozent hielten es für sinnvoll, dass die georgische Kirche offizielle Vertreter in der Regierung und im Parlament hätte.

"Was wir jetzt sehen, ist das Aufkommen einer post-sowjetischen Ideologie“, räsonnierte dieser Tage ein junger Georgier in einer Kneipe in Tiflis: "Die Kirche hat die Kommunisten ersetzt und verhält sich so autoritär, wie die Roten gewesen sind."

VIDEO: We are from The Caucasus- The Mountain - Jews (youtube.com)

(youtube.com) Documental film, We are from The Caucasus- The Mountain - Jews 1993-1999

CULTURE: Sacred chants make a comeback as Georgia's cultural history resurfaces. By Caitlan Carroll (globalpost.com)

(globalpost.com) A movement is underway to reintroduce traditional religious chants to Georgian youth.



TBILISI, Georgia — With her gray hair tucked into a black knit cap and a grin stretched from ear to ear, Lia Salakaia stands with a group of children inside the entrance of a Tbilisi church. As the Georgian Orthodox service finishes, Salakaia raises her hands and the children begin to sing slow, mournful chants, their eyes closely following Salakaia's every direction. The harmonies these children struggle to sing are notable both for their complexity and their rarity.

Georgian sacred chants, with their unusual three-part harmonies and minimal vibrato, date back to the 10th century. But the sounds are relatively new to modern Georgia. Georgian religious traditions like sacred chant were suppressed under Soviet rule. Only since Georgia regained its independence in 1991 have the old songs been resurrected.

Now a movement is underway to reintroduce traditional religious chants to Georgian youth, hungry for a deeper connection to their country's cultural past.


Salakaia is the first stop for many children eager to learn the music. The petite 66-year-old earned the title “godmother of Georgian chant," for her passionate teaching and the gentle way she coaxes children to learn these difficult, often dissonant-sounding harmonies.

“I say to them, 'No one taught you how to speak. You just listened to your parents, and you started to speak. So you can listen to me sing, and step by step you will learn how to sing,'” she says. “And most of them do.”

Salakaia travels constantly, bringing these chants almost single-handedly back to Georgia's network of small towns and rural villages. “I don't want to miss any child,” she says.

After graduating from Salakaia's introductory choirs, some students continue their studies with Malkhaz Erkvanidze, director of the Sakhioba Ensemble and one of the chief scholars of the sacred music movement.

Following Georgia's independence from Soviet rule in the 1990s, Erkvanidze was one of the music scholars who pushed to bring sacred chant from obscurity back to church services. He and others unearthed a small cache of sacred chant recordings from the state archive. It was an important find, given most of the chants had only been passed down orally.

He says the last recordings were made in 1966 by an 80-year-old master chanter who sang all three parts by himself to demonstrate how the voices work together. “He was the last master who was still alive,” Erkvanidze says, adding that the man died a few months after the 1966 recordings were made.

Erkvanidze transcribed the chants into songbooks and opened Tbilisi's first chant school where young men, most sporting trim dark beards, attend classes Monday through Friday. Only a few students have completed the new program, but those who have already plan to teach.

“It's become a debt that we've studied, and now it's important for us to teach the next generation,” says recent chant school graduate Giga Jalaghonia.

Since Erkvanidze's chant school only allows men to enroll, the young women like Baia Zhuzhunadze who want to pursue sacred music head to Tbilisi's conservatory. Zhuzhunadze is studying cultural musicology at the conservatory. She says that at first, European classical music was easier for her ears. But when she and her friends began listening to Georgian traditional music, they felt as though they rediscovered their identity.

“We think European music is great,” Zhuzhunadze says. “But Germans and French can research their own culture's music. We Georgians, we are too few, we must do something to preserve this music.”

This hunger to connect with their country's roots is common among young Georgians, says Timothy Blauvelt, country director for American Councils in Georgia and a professor of Soviet studies at Ilia State University. He says Zhuzhunadze's generation has the time and opportunity to explore their Georgian identity because, although the unemployment rate is high, times are better than during her parents' or grandparents' youth.

“You have the parents who grew up at the tail end of the Soviet period or the bad years of the 1990s, when there was a civil war and no electricity. That generation wanted very material things—food on the table and a car in the garage," says Blauvelt. “This generation has grown up with more stability. They have less materialistic values, and their interests are expanding beyond basic survival.”

Zhuzhunadze says the communism and atheism of Soviet times prevented many elder Georgians from passing on cultural traditions to the younger generation. “Now the younger generation, my generation, are discovering it on our own. And we are getting our parents interested in it too,” she says.

At least one elder Georgian is sharing her knowledge of old traditions. The gray-haired Lia Salakaia continues to make her rounds through Georgia's small towns, with no cell phone, just “a pair of iron shoes,” she says.

“It's like if Georgians couldn't speak the Georgian language without going to classes. I want to help children understand their country's music,” she says. “My job is to unfreeze their ears.”

Research for this report was supported by a 2012 Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion. The fellowship is a program of the University 
of Southern California's Knight Chair in Media and Religion.

RELIGION: Mönch in Georgien lebt seit 20 Jahren einsam auf einer Säule (welt.de)

(welt.de) Er lebt zwischen Himmel und Erde, auf 40 Meter Höhe – und das seit 20 Jahren: In Georgien hat sich ein Mönch auf eine Säule zurückgezogen. Jetzt hat er zum ersten Mal seit Langem Besuch empfangen.

Maxime Qavtaradze, 59, georgischer Mönch, hat sich vor zwanzig Jahren auf die 40 Meter hohe Katskhi-Säule zurückgezogen - Foto: Amos Chapple

Maxime Qavtaradze, 59, georgischer Mönch, hat sich vor 20 Jahren auf die 40 Meter hohe Katskhi-Säule zurückgezogen. Dort lebt er allein, bis auf seltene Besuche von Mönchen aus dem Kloster unterhalb seines Wohnsitzes. Lebensmittel und Wasser erhält er über einen Seilzug von Gläubigen im Tal.

Schon früher war die Säule von besonders frommen Einsiedlern genutzt worden, sogenannten Styliten – den Säulenheiligen. Qavtaradze hatte sich seinerzeit entschieden, sein Leben zu ändern. "Als ich jung war, habe ich mit Freunden getrunken, Drogen genommen." Erst ein Gefängnisaufenthalt habe ihn zur Umkehr gebracht. "Hier in der Stille fühle ich mich Gott nahe", sagt er der britischen "Daily Mail". Außerdem hatte er noch nie ein Problem mit großen Höhen: In seinem früheren Leben war er einmal Kranfahrer.

Mitten in der Nacht kommt die Erlaubnis

Maxime empfängt eigentlich nie Besuch – einzig die Priesterkollegen dürfen ihn hin und wieder besuchen. Einmal hat er einigen jungen Männern erlaubt, am Fuße seines Monolithen zu campieren. Nach oben durften sie nicht.

Auch der Fotograf Amos Chapple musste zunächst unten bleiben. Vier Tage lang hat er ausgehalten – bis schließlich mitten in der Nacht die Erlaubnis von oben kam: Chapple durfte auf die Leiter steigen und nach oben klettern. Vier Stunden gewährte ihm Maxime auf seiner Säule – bei Sonnenaufgang musste der Fotograf das steinerne Kloster verlassen und runterklettern.

Maximes winzige Kapelle geht auf das neunte und zehnte Jahrhundert nach Christus zurück. Damals zogen sich Christen auf die Spitze des Monolithen zurück – um den weltlichen Versuchungen zu entgehen.

PHOTOREPORTAGE: Georgian Monk Builds Stairway to Heaven. By Temo Bardzimashvili (eurasianet.org)

(eurasianet.org) Come summertime, getting away from it all is the dream that haunts everyone. One Georgian Orthodox monk, though, has come up with a plan for a lifetime of escape atop a 40-meter-high rock column in central Georgia’s Imereti region.

In pagan times, the towering Katskhi Pillar, located about 10 kilometers from the mining town of Chiatura, was thought to represent a local god of fertility. With the arrival of Christianity in Georgia in the 4th century, it came to represent seclusion from the hurly-burly of ordinary life.

A church was first built atop the rock between the 6th and 8th centuries -- no one knows exactly how or why. Stylites, early Christian ascetics who prayed and fasted on top of pillars, used Katskhi for their devotions until some time in the 15th century, when Georgia was struck by domestic upheaval and invasions by Ottoman Turkey. The remains of one unknown practitioner today lay buried beneath the church.

Father Maxim, a 55-year-old native of Chiatura, says that he has dreamed of living atop the Pillar, like the Stylites, since he was young. “When my friends and I used to come up here to drink outdoors, I always envied that monk who used to live there when I looked at the pillar,” he recalled.

In 1993, Father Maxim took monastic vows, and two years later decided to move to Katskhi. After spending one winter in a grotto beneath the rock column, he received money from a “friend from Tbilisi” to build a new church on its top. The Georgian Orthodox Church’s local eparchy, or regional administration, allegedly granted Father Maxim permission to erect the structure on the site.

Amidst an ongoing religious revival in Georgia, Father Maxim’s mission easily found supporters. More and more people now come to Katskhi to donate money or building materials for the church’s construction -- a generosity that makes the overall cost of the project difficult to estimate, he claims. Many local villagers also volunteer to work on the site for free.

The labor involved, though, can require a head for heights, as well as for matters spiritual. Scaffolding runs halfway up the column; an iron ladder reaches to the top. Builders use ropes to lift heavy construction materials from the ground.

Following the example of the first Stylite, Simeon, Father Maxim does not allow women on the site -- a ban also practiced at pagan shrines in Georgia’s mountain regions of Tusheti and Khevsureti.

Work on the project should be largely finished by the summer of 2011.

Before that date, Father Maxim hopes to secure a blessing from Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II that would allow the monk to live on top of Katskhi alongside his newly built church. “They told me they allowed me to come here, but not to live up there,” he recounted, laughing. “They told me I was too young then. Now they’ll probably tell me I’m too old.”

The Patriarch’s office could not be reached for comment.

But if the blessing ever comes, Father Maxim knows what he will do -- climb up Katskhi, pull the ladder up after him and live apart from the world’s tumult, once and for all. Editor's Note: Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi. 

Photos are here >>>

PHOTO: Monk takes devotion to new heights. By Amos Chapple & Lauren Russell (cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com)

 

Photography by Amos Chapple

Amos Chapple is a freelance photographer from New Zealand whose work is represented by Lonely Planet Images and Rex Features.

(cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com) Maxime the monk lives on a pillar. When he wants to step down out of the clouds, the 59-year-old scales a 131-foot ladder, which takes him about 20 minutes.

After living on Katskhi pillar for 20 years, Maxime’s climbs have slowed, but having worked as a crane operator in a past life, he’s never feared heights.

Photographer Amos Chapple heard about Maxime while working in the country of Georgia, and when he first arrived and asked to go up, he was told no. Only priests and some of the troubled young men learning from Maxime and living in a monastery underneath the pillar were allowed to go up.

Chapple stayed with the men at the base for four days before he was told he could ascend the pillar. He participated in prayers seven hours a day, including four-hour night prayers from 2 a.m. to sunrise. When he was finally going up to Maxime’s home, rain clouds rolled in and the sun was setting. The iron ladder was “very dicey,” Chapple said.

“I put so much time into getting permission that I said it was too late to be scared,” he said.

While with Maxime at the top, Chapple said he was worried he would run out of light for the climb down and that it would start raining, but as he looked out at the clouds at eye level and the distance between he and the ground, he appreciated the quiet of the elevated home.

“You could feel one with the weather,” he said.

Maxime said he needs the silence of the top of the pillar.

“It is up here in the silence that you can feel God's presence," he told Chapple in Russian.

Stylites, or pillar saints, began after Simeon Stylites the elder in Syria first moved atop a pillar in 423 to cut himself off from worldly temptations. Stylites were most common in eastern Europe during the latter part of the fifth century, but the practice has since been abandoned.

Katskhi pillar had sat idly since the 15th century when the Islamic Ottomans invaded Georgia. No one had even been to the top for centuries until an alpinist climbed it and found the remains of a chapel and the skeleton of a Stylite in 1944.

Maxime told Chapple he “drank, sold drugs, everything” as a young man. After serving time in prison, he decided he needed a change.

“I used to drink with friends in the hills around here and look up at this place, where the land met the sky,” Maxime told Chapple. “We knew the monks had lived up there before, and I had great respect for them.”

Maxime took monastic vows in 1993 and climbed the tower to start a new life. For the first two years, he slept in a fridge to protect himself from the elements. He now has a bed inside a cottage where he sleeps.

“It’s more about the isolation than suffering,” Chapple said.

Followers send supplies up to Maxime with a winch, and the monk comes down once or twice a week for night prayers with the men staying at the monastery.

His climbs have slowed, and once Maxime is no longer able to move up and down the ladder, he will stay at the top until he dies.

A crypt holding the bones of a Stylite who lived and died at the Katskhi pillar lies under the chapel.

When Chapple asked Maxime if his bones would be stored in the same crypt, Chapple said the monk stretched out his arms in his charismatic way and said, “Of course!”

– Lauren Russell, CNN 

Amos Chapple | Maxime The Pillar Saint [thetravelphotographer.blogspot.de]

I have no chance of being a Stylite saint...(or being a saint for that matter) since I feel uncomfortable with heights. Not to the extent of being acrophobic, but enough that I think twice before looking out of a skyscraper balcony or even floor to ceiling windows.

CNN featured a photo essay by Amos Chapple on Maxime, a monk who lives on a mountain pillar in the country of Georgia. To get to his aerie where he lived for 20 years, the 59-year-old scales a 131-foot ladder, which takes him about 20 minutes.


Maxime follows the ancient tradition of the Stylites (aka Pillar-Saints), a type of Christian ascetics who in the early days of the Byzantine Empire stood on pillars preaching, fasting and praying. They believed that doing so would ensure the salvation of their souls. The first Stylite was Simeon who climbed a pillar in Syria in 423 and lived there for 39 years until his death.

The monk told Chapple that it was up on his perch that he could feel God's presence. The pillar is called Katskhi pillar, and stood unvisited since the 15th century when the Ottomans invaded Georgia. No one had even been to the top for centuries until an alpinist climbed it and found the remains of a chapel and the skeleton of a Stylite in 1944.

Amos Chapple started as a newspaper photographer in New Zealand, including two years at the country’s largest daily, The NZ Herald, before moving to London and working full-time for a project to photograph all of the world’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites. He now works freelance and, as of the past year, has been specializing in photographs of the world’s ”beautiful secrets”. It’s a kind of travel photography, but by making sure each site is little-known, and has an interesting back story, it is proving popular with newspapers and magazines throughout Europe