Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is an attempt to analyze the connection between the Church and politics in Russia. The book has a descriptive character with constant references to the personal experience of the authors' travels in Russia, giving the book the tone of a memoir.

The key thesis of the book is that the experience of Patriarch Alexy as a KGB officer enabled him to enter an alliance with Vladimir Putin, affirming Orthodoxy as a substitute for the archaic Soviet ideology. The reader cannot help asking whether this is a just assertion. The possible degree and necessity of the collaboration of the Church with the state have been discussed. However, without citing any sources, the Garrards claim that the patriarch was a “former KGB agent” (52), who “had served in the KGB for more that thirty years prior to his enthronement as patriarch” (xii). Furthermore, he was “one of the KGB's best and brightest operatives” (36). These allegations smack more of yellow journalism than serious scholarship. Without referring to any documents or even to trustworthy investigations, the authors lay a foundation that is doubtful from both the ethical and academic perspective. While concentrating on the patriarch's rapidly developing career under the Soviets, they neglect other facts equally important for appreciating his personality. For example, the fruits of his service in Estonia were exactly opposite to KGB aims. Professor Nathaniel Davies has pointed out that “[w]hile [the patriarch] was bishop of Tallinn in 1961, he resisted the communist authorities' efforts to make the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in the city a planetarium [similar conversions were made elsewhere in the Baltic states] and to convert the Pyukhtitsa Dormition nunnery to a rest home for miners” (A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy [Oxford: Westview Press, 1995], 89).

How fair would it be to say that the cross has become a substitute for the hammer and sickle in post-soviet Russia? “The communist party … left a vacuum once occupied by the official ideology of ‘scientific atheism.’ The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is filling this vacuum and reconstituting a national belief system in its own image. Believers are replacing party members.” However, to present Orthodoxy as a substitute for the communist ideology underestimates the complexities of its life in a country where theology is not recognized as a university discipline. There is no specifically stated right to study religion in school, no provisions made for army chaplains, and the Church does not even own its own buildings.

In 2000, the “Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church” was adopted. The document, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated, dedicates a separate chapter to the relations between the Church and the state. To quote just a few paragraphs:

Never before in the history of the Orthodox Church have the principles of mutual noninterference and the affirmation of the Church's independence from the state been articulated in such an uncompromising manner. One can only wonder why this radical shift finds no reflection in the Garrards' book.

In contradiction to the main argument of the book, the authors themselves admit that the patriarch “has consistently said he does not want Orthodoxy as the state faith, because ‘sooner or later the church would become a department of the State’” (243). This was the fundamental position of the patriarch in his relations with the state and provides a key to the subject of the study.

The book ends with a fantasy—the patriarch's death ought to have been “commemorated in a whole new series of freshly-painted icons,” depicting the coup of 1991 (253). This prophecy has not happened; moreover, his participation in the events of 1991 was not seen as central to his personality. The patriarch is much more famous for being a key figure in the interreligious dialogue, clearly understanding that it is the only way to achieve peace in a country with the strong presence of Islam and other faiths. He knew that “it was upon this basis of traditional morality and respect for each other's social models and lifestyle that various religious traditions coexisted in Russia, where no wars of religion were ever known.” The authors themselves give an account (although again unverified) of his support of the Muslim soldier's right to practice his religious obligations in the army (239). Why they decided to end the book by stating he was “shepherding his flock toward a future where to be Russian and to be Orthodox are one and the same,” we can only wonder.

The volume claims to be “the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today” (front flap). However, the conclusion of the authors leaves the reader somewhat puzzled in regards to its originality: “Russia is not ‘Western’ and most likely cannot be” (xiv). While the authors call to “give up the thinking and lexicon of the Cold War” (13), East-vs-West rhetoric prevails throughout the whole book, perhaps as a tribute John Garrard's past as a British Intelligence officer (xi).