Realizing I don’t know as much as I’d like about Orthodox Christianity as a geopolitical force or shaped by them.

Like, Orthodoxy has lost territory to Islam in a way that in Catholicism only Spain was and that story concludes with a redemption that reworks it as a colonial force. How do they make sense of that?

Do they play similar roles in literacy and governance as the Western Church did? As the other Eastern religions they rubbed up against?