Socio-economic Issues in the Theory and Practice of Institutional Christianity

Abstract

The article outlines the problem of the current crisis of institutional Christianity, which is developing against the backdrop of a systemic crisis of the world economy. In this context, the problems of reducing the mass Christian religiosity of the modern “developed” society, the marginalization of the Christian consciousness, as well as the attempts of the institutional Churches to offer an answer to the current socio-economic issues of the present are considered. The basis for the development of socio-economic teaching of the Roman-catholic theology is provided by a long historical tradition. Its emergence is due to the reaction of the Holy See to the “crisis of faith” associated with the genesis of industrial capitalism. This teaching substantially evolved in time – from classical political economy and trade-unionism through post-industrialism and neo-liberalism in the direction of neo-Keynesianism, while retaining the quite traditional terminological framework of classical political economy. An important place in this took the overcoming of “Catholic Modernism”, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, attempts at institutional reception of a number of phenomena that have arisen within the Church. Russian Orthodox theology passed a more complex and less consistent path in the field under investigation. The genesis and development of industrial capitalism had no real effect on the domestic theological discourse – two or three publications on this subject are an exception. In fact, the first approach to the problem turned out to be the “Outlines of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church”. The positive potential of its content is connected precisely with the beginning of the path from concept to teaching. Due to a number of reasons, as socio-religious and economic, and conceptual, a system of social initiatives of the ROC is now in the early stages of development.