One Church, Many Faiths: Bishop Malkhaz's Radical Interfaith Project in Tbilisi, Georgia
Looking south from a rain-slicked green hillside, white beard whipping in the wind, walking stick in hand, posed before a medieval chapel’s ruins, Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili is playing tour guide today.
After leading a Palm Sunday procession through the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia, the bishop has taken me and a small group some 80 kilometers west of the capital to scramble up to the Skhvilo Fortress. This cobblestone bastion helped decide Georgia’s fate during the Lezgian, Ottoman, and Persian invasions in the 18th century.
As we slip and slide our way up the soggy slope, Bishop Malkhaz tells me more about his Peace Project — a combined cathedral, mosque, synagogue, Buddhist meditation room, Yazidi temple, and more — in the heart of Georgia’s capital. In a time and place where religious nationalism incites spiritual exclusion and profound social divisions, the Peace Project dares to recognize the Sacred in supposed “others,” and, in doing so, unleash love’s full power and potential.
But if the bishop is excited to talk about the Peace Project, he is also keen to regale us with stories of how the walled battlement before us is of particular interest for film buffs as the setting for a scene in the Georgian movie The Eccentrics (Sherekilebi).
A 1973 Soviet-era satire, the film centers around Ertaoz Bregvadze, who heads to the city to sell a chicken, pay off his father’s debts, and find love. Through a series of unfortunate events, Bregvadze finds love in Margarita, but winds up imprisoned in the famed fortress. There, he meets Khristofor, a bearded, idiosyncratic inventor who created a flying machine fueled by love. Together, they plot their escape.
As I look up at Bishop Malkhaz gazing out over the Lekhuri Valley and Tiriponi plains below, I cannot help but see in him an echo of the film’s cast of eccentrics.
In a time when we struggle to see the reflection of the Divine in others, Bishop Malkhaz and his Peace Project are not only bold — they may also seem bizarre, channeling the power of love and a theology of beauty to welcome and celebrate a diversity of faiths in Georgia and beyond.
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According to the U.S. Department of State, members of the Georgian Orthodox Church make up over 80 percent of Georgia’s population. But Georgia also features a significant Muslim population (10-13 percent), as well as members of the Armenian Apostolic Church (around three percent), and smaller Catholic, Yezidi, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, and other religious communities, ranging from Baptists to Buddhists and Bahá’í.
Officially, the constitution prohibits religious persecution, acknowledges equality for all, and recognizes certain religious minorities with “close historic ties” to Georgia — Muslims, Jews, Roman Catholics, and the Armenian Church — as legal entities.
The Georgian Orthodox Church, however, is inextricably intertwined with the country’s historical mythos and its arduous journey to independence, thus enjoying asymmetrical legal and institutional privileges. Today, the church remains one of the most trusted institutions in the country. A 2018 survey by the Caucasus Research Resource Center Georgia found that nearly half of the population felt religious diversity was a threat to the nation’s culture and traditions.
The result is a sometimes rigid religio-national identity that has produced a history of othering that narrows the full power and scope of the Sacred in the country.
More recently, the nongovernmental organization Tolerance and Diversity Institute (TDI) reports that the current ruling party, Georgian Dream, has weaponized “pseudo-religious narratives” to position itself as the defender of “Christianity and traditions.” In this environment, opponents, human rights defenders, media, and religious minorities are labeled “anti-Georgian,” “anti-Church,” or “liberal fascists.”
The combined religious oppression and political manipulation of faith creates a pride and fear-fueled blindness that fosters fierce othering, often centered around sacred sites and places of worship, says social anthropologist Tsypylma Darieva. “In various Georgian cities, Muslim, Armenian Apostolic, and Catholic communities experience administrative barriers in obtaining construction permits to build new prayer houses or restore existing ones,” Darieva wrote.
In her research, she cited numerous requests made by Muslims in Batumi — Georgia’s second largest city, situated along the Black Sea coast — to construct a new mosque, which have been met by regulatory obstacles and refusals by the city’s leadership. Though around a quarter of the port city’s population is Muslim, there remains only one purpose-built mosque, which is forced to accommodate upwards of 15,000 worshippers on holy days. This leaves many forced to gather and pray outside, exposed to the elements.
Elsewhere, the country’s historic wooden mosques fall into disrepair, and Christian nationalist symbols adorn the cupolas of newly built churches.
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Enter Bishop Malkhaz and the Peace Project.
The metropolitan bishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Bishop Malkhaz not only leads a church from the Georgian Baptist tradition, which has suffered its own history of persecution and societal sidelining. He has also built an icon for religious freedom and sexual and gender equality.
Established as the First Baptist Church of Tbilisi in 1867 and later known as the Peace Cathedral, it is the mother church of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia. “In the course of its history, the Peace Cathedral has repeatedly taken bold stands in support of oppressed minorities,” Malkhaz told me, “even as the church has suffered periodic harassment from religious extremists.”
Painfully aware of religion’s role in violent conflicts and oppression of minorities, Bishop Malkhaz’s congregation took the bold step of constructing a mosque and synagogue — and later a Buddhist meditation room, with future plans for Hindu, Yazidi, and Bahá’í spaces — within its walls. In a time when it would be impossible for each community to build their own space, the Bishop’s community and its international supporters have made it possible for clergy and laity of multiple faiths to find sanctuary and pursue their own understanding of the Sacred under the same roof. “We wanted to create a spiritual home for Abrahamic faiths, including both Sunni and Shia Muslims and progressive Jews,” he said.
Entering the softly lit Cathedral with its early Romanesque feel, the rich symbolism is immediately striking. Icons, sculptures, and architectural features all speak to what the Bishop calls a “theology of beauty.” A cross of nails in its Reconciliation Chapel; a chiseled pulpit representing the hope of a restored Ukrainian people and nation; chairs in a semi-circle surrounding the central altar, each bearing the symbol of a different religious tradition; an icon representing the regions occupied by Russia in 2008. Each time Bishop Malkhaz and his community come across ugliness, they respond with beauty, creating art to represent the pain and point toward more peaceful futures.
That symbolism carries through to the mosque and synagogue in the back of the building. Tucked into their respective corners — each lovingly designed and constructed according to the precepts and requirements of their respective faiths — a burgeoning, progressive Jewish community has found its home, and a diverse array of Muslims gather for prayer and solidarity.
Ilona Levinetz, 36, grew up with the Cathedral. Her father was a socially active member of the Jewish community, and Bishop Malkhaz was a family friend. With pride, she points to the Menorah that fills the niche behind the altar, which was blessed by her father as he lit its first candle.
Even so, her family was not particularly religious, and her mother was not Jewish. When she became an adult and started to explore her own spirituality, she cobbled together her own Jewish routine from what she could find online. Levinetz did not, however, find a home with Georgia’s established communities of Orthodox Georgian Jews or Russian-speaking Ashkenazis. Instead, she was drawn to what she called the Peace Synagogue’s “progressive Judaism.”
“Our community is small, so we do not have the luxury to be liberal, reformed, or conservative,” said Levinetz. “While I may be drawn to more conservative practices, we are not able to divide ourselves into smaller communities.”
Sharing her story and experience with local Hillel leaders Misha Grishashvili and Keti Chikviladze, Levinetz was bat mitzvahed in May 2023.
Within the intimate environs of the Peace Synagogue, Levinetz’s sense of the Sacred took deep root — and she has started to become one of its more prominent leaders. She was the first woman to blow shofar in Georgia and, along with five others in July 2023, one of the first women to ever read Torah in the country. She is now studying to become a rabbi under the tutelage of a rabbi in Minsk, Belarus.
Georgia’s traditional Jewish communities, with roots stretching back some 2,600 years, have denounced the synagogue and its leadership for including women in leadership and its intimate connections with both a church and mosque. “There is always someone who would say we are ‘not Jewish enough,'” said Levinetz. “But here, in this place, we are confident in our Judaism.”
Maia Rizhvadze, who works with the nongovernmental organization Solidarity Community, which advocates for wider recognition of Georgia’s diverse Muslim populations, only found the Peace Project recently. But since she first stepped through its doors, it has become a place of refuge and strength. Most of all, Rizhvadze said it is a place where she can be herself. “When I am there, I feel I can talk about my faith, my life, my struggles,” she said. “It’s a place that exists for all.”
Celebrating diversity and inclusion, Rizhvadze said, is often just talk or formal frameworks. “Too often, it is not concrete,” she said, “but here, it is a physical reality where you can go and pray as a Muslim. You can pray as a Jew. You can pray as Catholic, Christian, or any kind of Christian, or Buddhist, or Yazidi.”
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In a time when Georgians must contend with historically conservative views, narrow definitions of the Sacred, and a baleful lack of interfaith acceptance, the Peace Project is a tangible reminder that people of different traditions can pray, worship, and live in peace with one another.
To that end, the Bishop not only wants his place of worship to be open to people of multiple faiths, but to members of the LGBTQI+ community, dissidents speaking out against the current Georgian regime, and refugees who have fled for their lives from Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Belarus, or Gaza. To those who have experienced such ugliness, the Cathedral extends its theology of beauty as well, in the form of a sand candelabrum where lit candles can be placed in honor of those attacked at recent protests. Or that of a liturgy that honors all sexualities and genders, created in the wake of anti-LGBTQI+ riots led by Georgian Orthodox priests and laity in 2013.
These are not only meant to honor the memories of those who were attacked, but to celebrate all Georgians, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, language, code, sexual orientation, spiritual tradition or lack thereof, Bishop Malkhaz said.
The Bishop emphasized how seeking the Sacred in one another and embracing other ways of engaging with the Sacred as legitimate and healing, rather than threatening or harming, people of different faiths working together can pave a path to shared flourishing. “Diversity is God’s creation, God’s gift,” he said. “We celebrate that gift here, stand in solidarity with one another, and seek to learn from each other’s respective understanding of the sacred.”
Knox Thames, director of the Global Faith and Inclusive Societies Program at Pepperdine University, said Bishop Malkhaz’s Peace Project has created a setting where people from diverse walks of life can come together — not only for worship, but to encounter one another in honesty and compassion.
“In a world where religious institutions are often seen as sources of division, Bishop Malkhaz has reimagined his sacred space as a place for sacred connection, hospitality, mutual respect, and dialogue,” he said.
Rather than resist through protest alone, Bishop Malkhaz models a different path, Thames said. He responds with beauty: transforming his church into a place of radical hospitality, acceptance, and religious reverence. In doing so, the church invites a divided society to imagine new ways of being together, where diversity is not just tolerated, but celebrated as divine.
In societies like Georgia, where polarization and fragmentation threaten the country’s political hopes and path to international integration, sacred spaces like the Peace Cathedral hold incredible potential as platforms for peacebuilding. “In this way, sacred sites can become catalysts for healing, understanding, and collective action, especially during times of division and uncertainty,” Thames said.
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As I make my way up the muddy mountainside with Bishop Malkhaz, a light rain starts to fall. Undeterred, he continues to play the tour guide, pointing out stones that speak to the site’s history. Walking around the side of the chapel ruins, he points to one stone in particular.
Here, Bishop Malkhaz shared, the imprisoned pair from The Eccentrics stopped for a moment of repose, laying purple flowers on the stone, a stand-in for the tomb of the inventor’s own lost love. In the course of the film’s general festival of strangeness — and before the inventor’s plane can take flight in the final scene — it is a potent reminder of the burdens the characters carry with them along the way.
Amidst the contradictory arrangements of Georgia’s creaking democracy, the marginalization of its religious minorities, and tensions in society at large, Bishop Malkhaz takes his own moment at the stone before we make our way back down the hill.
As he walks before me, I cannot help but see in Bishop Malkhaz a reflection of the film’s bearded inventor. Unconventional, unorthodox, and bidding us all to take flight with the liberatory power of love.
By Ken Chitwood