The Human Rights Debate in the External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Stoeckl
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Kalinin

The reсonsidering of the methodological foundations of modern theoretical jurisprudence includes both the search for new approaches and the identification of the limits and conditions for their adequacy. At the same time, the needs for studying the interaction of the value-worldoutlook nature and the spatial conditionality of the state and law, considered in the logic of an open system, correspond with the geocultural approach. This approach is based on the multi-valued category “geoculture”, that allows one to comprehend the cultural codes and meanings of the transformation of reality and space (world projects), including those that exist as ideas about ideal forms of public power and social regulation. The geocultural approach may be part of such methodological phenomena as the worldoutlook research program, world-system analysis and geomeasurement. At the present stage, the geocultural approach of the worldoutlook research program is most suitable for analyzing the conflict of geocultures, allowing to take into account the replacement of geocultural standards, the crisis of the modern capita list world economy, legitimized by liberal geoculture, and the search for new mo dels of world order, carried out in the framework of the conflict of liberal and traditional values. The importance of understanding this conflict is due to the critical attitude of liberalism towards traditional statehood, its fulfillment of the role of an instrument of “controlled chaos” and an instrument of dominance of the West. The reсonsidering of liberal geoculture is permissible on the basis of the doctrines of traditional religious faiths, among which the Russian Orthodox Church is dominant in the post-Soviet space. Liberal geoculture is a multidimensional phenomenon, which at the same time puts forward the idea of protecting human rights and freedoms, and is an instrument for implementation of an elitist policy, characterized by excessive criticality in relation to the state and government, as well as any categories reflecting collective soli darity. Moreover, human rights, which are an integral part of liberal geoculture, initially stem from the Christian idea of a man as an ontologically free human being, the image and likeness of God, whose status metaphysically extends to anyone, but only his own. Substantially there are three interdependent problems in the phenomenon of human rights, the answer to which predetermines the practice of legal regulation: who is a person (in a particular geoculture), who is recognized as the ontological subject of human rights violations, who is recognized as the relevant subject of human rights protection. The complexity of the attitude of traditional Christianity to human rights, including denial (due to historical reasons for using human rights to marginalize Christianity), understanding, and recognition, is confirmed by the historical practice of the Russian Orthodox Church, which positively interprets this phenomenon in its conceptual documents at the present stage. The foregoing makes it expedient to use the canonical positions and official documents of traditional religious faiths in lawmaking and lawenforcement practice, which are the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches for Belarus.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pasquale Annicchino

The compulsory display of crucifixes in Italian public schools does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The victory before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the Lautsi judgment of a variegated coalition of actors ranging from the strong alliance between the Vatican and the Italian Government to the Russia of the New Orthodoxy as well as to American Conservative Evangelicals, promises to change our understanding of church-state relationship in Europe and signals the emergence of a ‘new ecumenism’ in which the religious groups of different traditions work together toward common political goals. But was this judgment a real success for the Holy Alliance that successfully overturned the first Lautsi decision? I will argue that the March 2011 decision may result in a pyrrhic victory. The continuous reliance on State support to defend majority religious privileges may endanger, rather than benefit, religious vitality.


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