Other Articles & News

2007, Rights - Religious, Human, Russia

The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights: Moscow Meeting

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The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights:
Moscow Meeting, March 2007

Conference of European Churches – Office of Communications Press release No. 07-15/e

23 March 2007 (Slightly edited for layout but not cut – Philip Walters)

Churches Stay Committed to Human Rights

From 20 to 21 March 2007 delegations of experts from the Russian Orthodox Church and from the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) met in Moscow to discuss about human rights.

The meeting was organised because the Russian Orthodox Church intends to adopt a basic document on human rights. Preparations for such a document began with the 2006 Declaration of the World Russian People’s Council and subsequent statements from members of the Russian Orthodox Church on human rights. These gave rise to the concern as to whether there is still a common basis for human rights related issues among member churches of CEC.

The most important result of the dialogue meeting in Moscow in this regard, is that the very concept of human rights is not under question. The Russian Orthodox Church wants only to raise some questions with regard to the interpretation of certain human rights, as H.E. Metropolitan Kyrill, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations put it. The Joint Communiqué of the meeting reads:

The two delegations agreed that the result of the present debate on human rights within the Russian Orthodox Church and among European churches will be to strengthen the churches commitment to human rights as laid down, for instance, in the United Nations Bill of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe’s Social Charter as well as in documents of the Follow-Up Conferences of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

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2006, Rights - Religious, Human

From Territorial Belonging to Consumer Choice? A Social Context for Human Rights

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From Territorial Belonging to Consumer Choice? A Social Context for Human Rights

David Martin

Historically, the voluntaristic notion of religious belonging originated in Western Europe, like habeas corpus, though it first came to fruition in late eighteenth-century North America under the constitutional rubric of ‘free exercise’. In ‘old Europe’ the idea of ‘a free Church in a free state’ came to fruition, and then quite partially, only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a specific marker provided by the separation of church and state in France in 1905. The earlier acceptance of partial pluralism in Poland-Lithuania and in Transylvania became precarious under the pressures of ethno-religious nationalism.

In practice, relatively free exercise takes two forms: the semi-tolerance of minority communities embodied in the Edict of Nantes in 1598, and the semi-tolerance of personal choice accepted during the English Commonwealth from the 1640s to 1660. The sanctions renewed after 1660 against dissent, Nonconformist or Catholic, were slowly relaxed, though in the Catholic case not abolished until 1829, while in practice the vast expansion of Methodism from 1780-1840 finally institutionalised the voluntary principle. The parallel processes in North America began with state churches in Virginia and in Massachusetts (where establishment ended only in 1830), and effectively crumbled with the arrival of migrants professing many different (if mainly Protestant) faiths, and the open policy towards religious faith adopted in Rhode Island. With the American revolution the cause of toleration rapidly mutated into full formal equality.

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2006, Orthodox Church, Rights - Religious, Human

The Power Struggle in Orthodoxy

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The Power Struggle in Orthodoxy

Philip Walters

There are two large issues in the current crisis affecting the Russian Orthodox diocese in Britain. One is the special character the British diocese of Sourozh has developed, which is now at variance with the prevailing mood in the Moscow Patriarchate, under whose jurisdiction the diocese falls. The second issue arises from the first: should the diocese of Sourozh now change its jurisdiction?

While the Moscow Patriarchate spent seven decades preserving its identity against assault in the hostile atheist environment of the Soviet Union, Russian Orthodox jurisdictions of various allegiances developed in Western Europe and the United States. Some, like the British diocese, remained under the jurisdiction of Moscow, but sought to respond creatively to the challenges of being a minority in a pluralist religious environment.

In the words of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, the head of the diocese until his death in 2003:

From the very outset … we Russians have considered that we have been sent to this country to bring Orthodoxy here, that is, to share the most valuable thing we ourselves possess, to give it to anyone at all who feels a need for it. This we have done not violently, nor by proselytism, but by proclaiming it for anyone to hear and by sharing it.

His vision of the Orthodox calling is thus out-going and inclusivist.

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2006, Russia

Current Developments in the Relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Diocese in the UK

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Current Developments in the Relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Diocese in the UK

Peter Scorer

I dedicate my remarks today to the memory of Fr Sergei Hackel. He would have been suffering very much if he had lived to see the recent developments in the UK diocese.

Irina Levinskaya has spoken of the conservatism and insularity which have prevailed within the Moscow Patriarchate over the past decade. The Holy Synod in Moscow has just had a two-day meeting at which it approved the report of the commission looking into the conduct of Bishop Basil Osborne. Members of the UK diocese refused to take part in the commission because it could not satisfy them that they would have a fair hearing. The text of the commission’s findings has not been made available to the UK diocese.

In 1927 Metropolitan Yevlogi, head of the Russian Orthodox diocese in Paris, appointed a priest to London. In 1930 Yevlogi was ordered to take a pro-Soviet line; in response he moved his parishes from the jurisdiction of Moscow to that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. After the Second World War there was a movement to return to Moscow. Metropolitan Yevlogi was persuaded to do so, but died a year later.

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2006, Russia

Current Extremist Tendencies in and around the Moscow Patriarchate

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Current extremist tendencies in and around the Moscow Patriarchate

Irina Levinskaya

We cannot call the Moscow Patriarchate a progressive force. In fact it is conservative. It constantly demonises the West. It shows xenophobic and anti-Judaic tendencies. It expresses strong support for a centralised authoritarian state. Even those bishops who are labelled as ‘liberals’ are not liberal in the western sense. They are simply more moderate exponents of the same ideas.

The centres of conservatism are the monasteries. The more conservative hierarchs have monastic roots. As far as the theological seminaries and academies are concerned, we should recognise a great difference between those in St Petersburg and those in Moscow. The former are located in the middle of the city, and the students are exposed to international contacts. The latter are in Sergiyev Posad, a long way from Moscow, and do not have these kinds of contact. The new generation of church leaders are products of the Moscow academy.

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2006, Europe (general)

The Work of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Religious Freedom

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The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

Malcolm Evans

Why are we interested in religious rights from an international law point of view? Because in recent history the two have always been linked.

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the question of religious liberty was separate from the question of how states were run and how they treated their citizens. But in the later part of the nineteenth century, and particularly in the context of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, international attention was focused on how religious groups were treated in newly independent states. The motivation was not religious freedom as such, but concern that social friction should be minimised and hence political instability avoided.

Since the Second World War there has been less emphasis on the rights of religious communities and more emphasis on the rights of individuals. The prevailing modern understanding has been that the religious freedom of the individual is to be restricted only by public order issues.

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2006, Turkey

Religion, State and Society in Turkey in the Light of Turkey’s Proposed Accession to the European Union

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Religion, State and Society in Turkey

in the Light of Turkey’s Proposed Accession to the European Union

David Shankland

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire Kemal Atatürk modelled the new Turkish Republic on the pattern of French secularism (laicité), combining this with an emphasis on using science, efficient organisation and technology in order to achieve economic development. Atatürk transmitted his vision to the people largely through his Republican People’s Party (RPP), helping to create its policies and encouraging a network of RPP deputies throughout the country. The RPP were facilitated in their welcome by the fact that they were a clear governing force after decades of war, and often unsuccessful reform.

There was however an inbuilt tension in the new Turkish society. In the spirit of secularism the new country spoke of its ‘citizens’, who were not confined to ethnic Turks. At the same time, Turkey (as opposed to the Ottoman Empire) was now a homogeneously ethnic Turkish country, and virtually all Turks regarded themselves as Muslims. This tension meant that, paradoxically, just at the point when secularism became enshrined as state policy, Turkish citizenship became almost entirely predicated upon also being of the Muslim faith.

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2005, Europe (general)

The Dunblane Symposium

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The Dunblane Symposium

Reports from the Symposium on Faith in Europe
‘With What Will You Save the World?’
Scottish Churches’ House, Dunblane
19-20 October 2005

Marc Lenders   Europe from a Protestant Church Perspective

Alison Elliot   A Scottish Perspective on Europe

Richard Seebohm   Summing up the Presentations

Philip Walters   Summing up the Conference

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2005

The 2005 Kirchentag

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The 2005 Kirchentag

Richard Mortimer

For five gloriously sunny days in May – some might say ‘too hot’ – the Kirchentag descended upon Hannover, the city where it had first begun and had met twice before. ‘The Kirchentag has come home’ proclaimed Bishop Margot Käßmann, herself a former Kirchentag General Secretary and now head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hannover, in her greeting to the international guests, a theme endorsed throughout by the main railway station which greeted bilingually the arrival of every train ‘to the city of the 2005 Kirchentag’. Stir in the statistics: 105,000 participants, of whom some 5,000 international guests came from 87 countries (this last figure higher than ever before), sharing in 3,600 events at 500 venues aided and abetted by 50,000 voluntary workers. Sheila Brain, the English representative on the Central Planning Committee, reckons it has become the largest regular gathering of Christians from around the world outside of a World Council of Churches General Assembly, and of its essential nature much more accessible to the enthusiast. Professor Eckhard Nagel, the Kirchentag President, described it as a forum for a conversation on society and its future between interest groups, facilitated by Christians who are themselves active players. Added to which it is above all a lay-led, church-supported movement.

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2005, Adelheid Project

What we Learnt from the Adelheid Project!

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What we learnt from the Adelheid Project

Carol Pirie

When we in Wales first invited the Adelheid Project to come to Brecon in August 2004 we little thought what effect it would have on us!

Women Walking Together is a group of about 25 members who meet on a regular basis throughout Wales to discuss spirituality issues. About 95 per cent of us are Christian but we also believe that we exist for women of all faiths and none – and it is in sharing our journey together that we learn. Three years ago we chose to affiliate to the Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women – but the European experience is still relatively new to many of us, and some are still quite wary of what goes on across the water!

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