I did know a few things about Albania. I knew that it was the world's first atheist state -- at least according to Enver Hoxha. Ten years ago there was not a single church, not a single monastery, not a single seminary, open in the whole country. Now there are many active congregations of Orthodox Christians, there are priests, deacons, and a beautiful seminary with more than 60 students, and there was this youth conference. And all this had happened in less than 10 years, starting from atheism.
In my country, South Africa, we have had the Orthodox Church for nearly 100 years. We have about 15 parishes and the same number of priests, but nearly all those priests are foreigners, who have come from other countries. We have no seminaries, and no monasteries and no youth conferences like the one in Albania.
So I said something like this.
Wherever it is that we are going, it seems that the Orthodox Church in Albania is going there a lot quicker than the Church in South Africa.
Outside the church, things are different. Both Albania and South Africa had a period of about 45 years with oppressive governments that tried to control the lives of their citizens, and in the 1990s democracy came to our countries. In South Africa, democracy came in 1994, later than in Albania, and yet since the coming of democracy, it seems to me that South Africa has made more progress than Albania. In South Africa since 1994, we have many new factories, but in Albania I see many factories that are derelict and abandoned.
So in one country I see progress in the church, and in the other I see progress in the economy. But what is this progress? What is its goal? In the church, or in society, are we drawing closer to God? And what does it mean to draw closer to God?
Because I have not been in Albania for a long time, I have tried to learn more about it, and I asked the students in the seminary to tell me something about themselves and their parishes. I learnt some very interesting things. One is that though in one sense the church in Albania is only 9 years old, in another it is nearly 2000 years old. The Church in Albania is both younger and older than the church in South Africa. South Africa has only had any kind of Christianity at all for less than 400 years, and the Church in Albania is five times older than that. But whether it is young or old, we need to ask ourselves what the Church is here for.
