Georgia Religion
His Holiness Ilia II, Patriarch of Mtskheta and All
Georgia, leader of Georgian Orthodox Church
Courtesy Janet A. Koczak
The wide variety of peoples inhabiting Georgia has meant a
correspondingly rich array of active religions. The dominant
religion is Christianity, and the Georgian Orthodox Church is by
far the largest church. The conversion of the Georgians in A.D.
330 placed them among the first peoples to accept Christianity.
According to tradition, a holy slave woman, who became known as
Saint Nino, cured Queen Nana of Iberia of an unknown illness, and
King Marian III accepted Christianity when a second miracle
occurred during a royal hunting trip. The Georgians' new faith,
which replaced Greek pagan and Zoroastrian beliefs, was to place
them permanently on the front line of conflict between the
Islamic and Christian worlds. As was true elsewhere, the
Christian church in Georgia was crucial to the development of a
written language, and most of the earliest written works were
religious texts. After Georgia was annexed by the Russian Empire,
the Russian Orthodox Church took over the Georgian church in
1811. The colorful frescoes and wall paintings typical of
Georgian cathedrals were whitewashed by the Russian occupiers.
The Georgian church regained its autonomy only when Russian
rule ended in 1918. Neither the Georgian Menshevik government nor
the Bolshevik regime that followed considered revitalization of
the Georgian church an important goal, however. Soviet rule
brought severe purges of the Georgian church hierarchy and
constant repression of Orthodox worship. As elsewhere in the
Soviet Union, many churches were destroyed or converted into
secular buildings. This history of repression encouraged the
incorporation of religious identity into the strong nationalist
movement in twentieth-century Georgia and the quest of Georgians
for religious expression outside the official, governmentcontrolled church. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, opposition
leaders, especially Zviad Gamsakhurdia, criticized corruption in
the church hierarchy. When Ilia II became the patriarch
(catholicos) of the Georgian Orthodox Church in the late 1970s,
he brought order and a new morality to church affairs, and
Georgian Orthodoxy experienced a revival. In 1988 Moscow
permitted the patriarch to begin consecrating and reopening
closed churches, and a large-scale restoration process began. In
1993 some 65 percent of Georgians were Georgian Orthodox, 11
percent were Muslim, 10 percent Russian Orthodox, and 8 percent
Armenian Apostolic.
Non-Orthodox religions traditionally have received tolerant
treatment in Georgia. Jewish communities exist throughout the
country, with major concentrations in the two largest cities,
Tbilisi and Kutaisi. Azerbaijani groups have practiced Islam in
Georgia for centuries, as have the Abkhazian and Ajarian groups
concentrated in their respective autonomous republics. The
Armenian Apostolic Church, whose doctrine differs in some ways
from that of Georgian Orthodoxy, has autocephalous status.
Data as of March 1994
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