Rating: 
Summary: The Title is Clue to author's bias
Review: Victoria Clarke, a British journalist with a wide range of experience in Eastern Europe, has written a book which is noble in its effort but regrettably mistaken and unenlightening.The topic is a good one -- Orthodoxy. In the decade since the end of the cold war, the Orthodox Church has reemerged in Eastern Europe as a strong cultural and political force. It is becoming increasingly clear that in order for Westerners to understand the region well, a thorough understanding of Orthodoxy is also needed -- and there are remarkably few works that address the contemporary situation of Orthodoxy in these countries. So far so good. Where Clarke's book misfires, however, is in its approach to Orthodoxy. Rather than trying to understand Orthodoxy as a spiritual system, as a religion, and attempt to understand its force in that way, Clarke instead focuses on the worldly aspects of the Orthodox Church, leaving the reader with a good understanding of how worldly some Orthodox prelates can be, but with almost *no* understanding of what really drives the rank and file of Orthodoxy in their beliefs. In other words, Clarke fails to delve deeply enough into Orthodoxy to really explain it well to anyone, and this is a very serious shortcoming in a work that is an attempt to explain Orthodox Europe to Westerners. Because Clarke never really excapes her Western/Secular viewpoint (which must be thoroughly entrenched to have survived her tremendous exposure to Orthodoxy), neither does the reader -- and the result is that the reader is given a Western/Secular understanding of Orthodoxy. This is the equivalent of "Orientalism" done this time not for the Near East, but for Eastern Europe. Clarke poses the question "Why do Angels fall" as the issue of her book, and answers it, for Orthodoxy, in one word: phyletism (religious nationalism). That is a fine perspective to have, but it really does not explain Orthodoxy at all other than as an expression of nationalism. Clarke spends almost no time explaining Orthodoxy as a spiritual system, exploring the meaning of Orthodox liturgy and worship, the forms and meaning of Orthodox piety, the differences between East and West. In other words, Clarke fails to address some of the central issues that must be understood well, in order for a Westerner to understand the tenaciousness of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe, why it is experiencing a revival there currently, and why it remains so apparently stubbornly recalcitrant in its relations with the West. Religious nationalism is a part of the picture -- but focusing on that aspect to the exclusion of a broader, spiritual perspective provides a woefully incomplete, and therefore unsatisfactory, picture. In the end, the most complete picture the reader gains from "Why Angels Fall" is that of the typical Western/Secular view of the Orthodox Church. Clarke provides this in flying colors, and to her credit she does not hide her own views. Clarke is clearly upset at the political incorrectness of Orthodoxy (her choice to begin the work with a lament of her inability to visit Mount Athos due to her gender sets the tone for the book), upset at its doctrinal exactitude (exemplified in a heated chat Clarke has with an Orthodox Bishop, where she is clearly disturbed by his stubborn insistence on Trinitarianism), discomfited at the level of its faith, time and time again. Perhaps it is this discomfort with the "religious" aspects of Orthodoxy that led Clarke to focus on the more "worldly" aspects of the Church -- but, in any case, it was not lost on those with whom she spoke (one perceptive Serb Bishop noted that Clarke seemed awfully interested in politics for someone writing a book about Orthodoxy). Ultimately, because there are so few works on Orthodox Europe, Clarke's book deserves a read. But, to be honest, the most enlightening thing the reader will take away is an accurate portrait of how the Secular West views Orthodoxy -- not "what makes Orthodoxy tick".
Rating: 
Summary: On Angels' Wings.
Review: _Why Angels Fall: A Journey through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo_ by English journalist Victoria Clark is an openly unobjective description of various elements in Orthodoxy from a "non-practicing" Catholic. That said, this is otherwise an interesting book on Orthodoxy in Europe. The cover reflects the author's rather negative tone: it features an illustration Blessed Pasius Velikovsky laying helplessly on a bed. Her title, "Why Angels Fall," refers to what she claims is Orthodoxy's greatest evil--affiliating itself with ethnic nationalism, anti-Westernism and in some cases anti-Semitism. It was considered the heresy of "Philytism." Clark considers this "base" because it tends to resist the global hegemony of liberalism and feminism. Her smug, condescending worldview makes itself readily apparent when she starts her narrative by slamming Mt. Athos for its thousand year rule of totally banning women from entering. Clark describes a handful of bishops, monks, nuns and various other prelates but mostly highlights the negative impressions they made upon her, usually their zenophobic, misogynist, anti-Western, anti-Semitic statements. The Orthodox clergy are portrayed largely as ignorant, racist, sexist barbarians. She is also rather wary of Eastern Europe's monastic revival as giving ethnic tensions a renewed vigor, although she praises the spirituality of the Hesychasts who practice Orthodoxy's tradition of interior prayer. This book is one of the few sources of information I've run across about the political involvement of Orthodox prelates in the post-communist era. The Orthodox world has been shrinking between Western and Islamic expansion on both sides but it holds onto a considerable amount of turf today and Clark divides her book according to her travels in Orthodoxy's bastions: Mt. Athos, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Romania, Russia, Cyprus and Istanbul. Orthodoxy has nothing to fear from critical books like this. Its ultimate victory will be moral and eschatological (On Angels' Wings!), even if it is doomed to fall as a political authority like the Christian emperors of Rome, Constantinople and Moscow. Also recommended: _The Black Hundred_ by Walter Laqueur about the post-communist political right in Russia, and _The Orthodox Church_ by Timothy Ware for a decent outline of Church history from a genuine Orthodox (Ware's a British convert) perspective.
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