Search

Each time I found myself in Sarpi, that windswept coastal village perched between the Black Sea and the forested cliffs of the Georgian-Turkish border, it felt like more than a retreat. It was, in some sense, a return—to stillness, to attentiveness, to another way of understanding coexistence. In Sarpi, Orthodox Christians and Muslims live side by side. Not in a staged performance of multiculturalism, but through shared routines that bind people long before belief divides them.

Once, I watched a local Christian baker rise before dawn to prepare bread—not for his own family, but for his Muslim neighbors observing Suhoor during Ramadan. A few weeks later, I learned that those same Muslim families had helped refurbish the village’s Orthodox church in preparation for Easter. No words were needed to sanctify these gestures. They weren’t orchestrated by NGOs, celebrated in media, or cited in policy reports. They were ordinary, untheatrical, and utterly transformative.

As I discussed in a recent article in The Review of Faith & International Affairs, moments like these demonstrate that when religious diversity is rooted organically in mutual respect, equal dignity, and civic cooperation—that is, when exhibits the characteristics of covenantal pluralism—it can be a source of strength rather than division.

But Sarpi’s quiet harmony is exceptional not because it is rare in human experience, but because it is increasingly difficult to sustain within Georgia’s broader institutional landscape.

From Lived Coexistence to Legal Hierarchies

While the Georgian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, the lived experience of religious minorities in most parts of the country tells another story. At the heart of this disconnect lies the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC)—a deeply embedded institution that occupies a position of unrivaled moral authority and legal privilege. Enshrined in the 2002 church-state agreement, the GOC enjoys tax exemptions, a formal advisory role in public education, and preferential access to public property—none of which are afforded to other religious groups.

The effects are not merely symbolic. Despite efforts to democratize the legal landscape—such as the 2011 law allowing minority religious groups to register as public legal entities—minorities face systemic inequalities. These include bureaucratic obstacles to mosque construction, delays in property restitution, and unequal access to state funding. While the GOC receives approximately 25 million GEL annually from the government, all minority communities combined receive a fraction of that amount. The imbalance is more than numerical; it communicates a hierarchy of belonging.

And yet, back in Sarpi, I saw none of this hierarchy enacted. I saw shared kitchens, borrowed tools, greetings exchanged between elders outside the small local grocery. This dissonance between grassroots coexistence and institutional exclusion forms the central tension I want to explore in this blog.

The Church’s Institutional Muscle Memory

Can a small village on the edge of the state model pluralism more effectively than the capital’s legal architecture? To understand this, we must first acknowledge that the GOC’s dominance is neither accidental nor new. It is the product of what I call institutional muscle memory—an accumulated repertoire of authority and legitimacy shaped over centuries. From the early patronage of King Vakhtang Gorgasali to the post-Soviet reemergence of Orthodoxy as a national symbol, the Church has honed its ability to adapt, survive, and assert influence. This memory is not prescriptive, like the Byzantine ideal of symphonia, which imagines a harmonious unity between church and state. It is descriptive—marked by resilience, negotiation, and at times, resistance to pluralism.

This institutional muscle memory manifests in legal inertia. For example, although the Constitutional Court ruled in 2018 that some of the GOC’s privileges were unconstitutional, the practical implementation of this ruling has been slow, selective, and politically sensitive. Such decisions rarely trickle down to alter how minority religious communities navigate bureaucracy, secure land for worship, or contest discrimination.

But the contrast remains: while religious pluralism in Batumi, just ten kilometers from Sarpi, gets stuck in courtrooms and government appeals, Sarpi itself remains a functioning ecology of interfaith cooperation. What explains this paradox?

Theological Resources for Covenantal Pluralism

It may be tempting to dismiss Sarpi’s harmony as a byproduct of small-scale intimacy. But I would argue that its rhythms point us toward a different kind of theological-political imagination—one that the GOC is uniquely positioned to reclaim.

Orthodox theology offers two powerful concepts that align strikingly with the principles of covenantal pluralism: perichoresis and kenosis. The first, perichoresis, refers to the interrelationship of the Trinity—distinct yet inseparably united. It provides a vision of unity that does not erase difference. If applied civically, it imagines a polity where Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Armenians, and others co-exist without needing to collapse their distinctiveness into sameness.

The second, kenosis, refers to Christ’s self-emptying love—a humility that renounces power for the sake of communion. In the context of Georgia’s religious landscape, kenosis could mean the GOC taking steps not to defend its privileges, but to advocate for the rights of others: supporting property restitution for Muslims in Batumi, ensuring fair funding allocations, and modeling theological hospitality without fear of relativism.

The GOC’s leadership on these issues would not be a political concession—it would be a spiritual testimony. And again, I return to Sarpi. The Christian baker who delivers bread to Muslim homes before dawn is not abandoning his Orthodox faith. He is embodying it. The Muslim carpenter who repairs the church roof is not diluting his commitment to Islam. He is strengthening the foundations of shared life.

Structural Reform and Civic Agency

Of course, theology alone cannot transform institutions. Covenantal pluralism, to be sustainable, requires not only moral imagination but also structural reform. This includes enforcing court rulings on religious equality; ensuring transparent and proportionate funding for all religious communities; guaranteeing equal access to permits, property, and public representation; and from a more structural perspective, integrating multi-faith religious literacy education into schools and public discourse.

None of this will be easy in a context where populist narratives often cast minority religions as “foreign” or “destabilizing.” But these narratives can be challenged—and they often already are, by civil society actors, legal advocates, and ordinary citizens.

Still, the GOC holds disproportionate power. That means it also holds disproportionate responsibility. Whether it chooses to exercise that responsibility as servant-leadership or status preservation remains the central question.

Sarpi, Again

If covenantal pluralism is to take root in Georgia, it won’t start in courtrooms or parliament chambers alone. It will begin, as it already has, in villages like Sarpi—where theology is lived before it is articulated, and where belonging is practiced across lines that, elsewhere, are used to divide.

The task ahead is not to invent pluralism. It is to notice it where it already exists, nurture it where it is struggling, and remove the structural and theological barriers that prevent it from flourishing more widely.

And maybe, it starts with something as simple as baking bread—for someone whose God you do not name, but whose dignity you do not question.