Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-75
Author(s):  
Kristina Stoeckl

Abstract Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism surveys the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church has negotiated its relationship with the secular state, with other religions, and with Western modernity from its beginnings until the present. It applies multiple theoretical perspectives and draws on different disciplinary approaches to explain the varied and at times contradictory facets of Russian Orthodoxy as a state church or as a critic of the state, as a lived religion or as a civil religion controlled by the state, as a source of dissidence during Communism or as a reservoir of anti-Western, anti-modernist ideas that celebrate the uniqueness and superiority of the Russian nation. Kristina Stoeckl argues that, three decades after the fall of Communism, the period of post-Soviet transition is over for Russian Orthodoxy and that the Moscow Patriarchate has settled on its role as national church and provider of a new civil religion of traditional values.

2020 ◽  
pp. 253-263
Author(s):  
Михаил Андреевич Зиновьев

В настоящее время мировая общественность с каждым днем всё больше отходит от традиционных христианских ценностей, выдвигает и принимает зачастую прямо антихристианские законопроекты. Современная политика Российской Федерации направлена на сохранение традиционных ценностей (11 пункт из Стратегии национальной безопасности РФ). В рамках возрождения духовно-нравственных ценностей остаётся неприемлемым наличие законодательства, легализующего детоубийство. Между тем, уже в Древней Церкви мы встречаем неоднократные постановления различных уровней, регламентирующие церковные епитимии для женщин, совершивших аборт, и тех, кто тем или иным образом был причастен к этому. И уже в новейшей истории Церковь реагируют на вызовы времени, рассматривает прежний опыт и издаёт новые постановления и документы. Современная официальная позиция Русской Православной Церкви на различные проблемы биоэтики, в частности аборта, излагается в «Основах социальной концепции», принятой Архиерейским собором Русской Православной Церкви 2000 г. Целью данной статьи является наиболее подробное рассмотрение канонов, посвящённых греху детоубийства, а также современной позиции Русской Православной Церкви, изложенной в «Основах социальной концепции». В ходе исследования автор проводит сравнительный анализ подходов известных канонистов, пытается проследить историческую мотивацию к принятию подобных постановлений и рассматривает современный взгляд и практику епитимий для людей, прямо или косвенно причастных к греху аборта. At present, the world community is increasingly moving away from traditional Christian values, putting forward and adopting, often directly anti Christian bills. The current pol icy of the Russian Federation is aimed at preserving traditional values? (paragraph 11 from the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation). Within the revival of spiritual and moralvalues, the existence of legislation legalizing infanticide remains unacceptable. Meanwhile, in the Ancient Church already we meet repeated resolutions of various levels regulating church penances for women who had got an abortion as well as for those who had been involved in it some how. And in recent history the Church responds to the time challenges, examines past experiences and issues new resolutions and documents. The Russian Orthodox Church’s current official position on various issues of bioethics, abortion in particular, is set out in the “Foundations of a Social Concept” adopted by the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. The purpose of this article is the most detailed consideration of the canons dedicated to the sin of infanticide, as well as the current position of the Russian Orthodox Church set out in the “Foundations of a Social Concept”. In the course of the study, the author conducts a comparative analysis of famous canonists’ approaches, tries to trace the historical motivation for the adoption of such decisions and examines the modern view and practice of penance for people directly or indirectly in volved in the sin of abortion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 60-64
Author(s):  
Evguenia Alexandrovna Belyaeva ◽  
Elena Aleksandrovna Venidiktova ◽  
Dilbar Valievna Shamsutdinova

Purpose: the aim of the undertaken study is to consider the dynamics of the church-state relationship in the context of Russian new cultural tendencies at the turn of the century. Methodology: Thus, The methodological basis of the research was formed by philosophical analysis of the church-state relationship, historicism and comparison principles. The following tasks were being solved: defining the interaction ways between the religious organizations and the state on the modern stage of the Russian society development; pointing out the prospects of consolidation of both the сhurch and the state around the democratic civil society fostering program in XXI century; revealing the need to promote respectful attitude towards human values as an integral part of spiritual culture. Result: The authors achieved the following results within the study: A wider notions of church and state were introduced demonstrating the similarity of some of their functions: offering moral guidance for social well-being; historic doctrinal models “caesaropapism”, “papocaesarism” and “symphony(concordance) of powers” were identified and characterized alongside with their secular counterparts - separation and cooperation models of church-state relationship. In conclusion of the article the urgent need for the transition of church-state relationship from political to social and cultural spheres was justified. Applications: This research can be used for the universities, teachers, and students. Novelty/Originality: In this research, the model of Socio-Cultural Interaction Forms of Church and State on the Example of the Russian Orthodox Church is presented in a comprehensive and complete manner.


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.


Author(s):  
Yu.N. Tsyryapkina

In this article the author examines state-church relations in Central Asia in the 1940s - mid 1960s illustrated by the example of the Tashkent Deanery during the period of the development of the Russian Orthodox Church under the patronage of the institute of state commissioners for the Russian Orthodox Church. On the basis of an analysis of unpublished archival sources, the author describes the process of reconstruction of parishes on the territory of the Tashkent and Central Asian dioceses, analyzes the economic and property relations between the state and the church, and the financial activities of the Orthodox parishes of the Tashkent deanery. The author focuses on issues related to the staff of Orthodox priests assigned to parishes, their level of education. The author briefly touches on the problem of Catholics and representatives of the Armenian Gregorian Church, who were not allowed to establish houses of prayer. The article provides statistics of the rituals requested in Tashkent in the context of the Assumption Cathedral and the Alexander Nevsky Church. The author comes to the conclusion that the demand for Orthodox rituals in the churches of Tashkent was associated with the high proportion of the Russian population living in the capital.


Author(s):  
Alexander Sotnichenko

After the fall of Soviet Union we can state a fact of a religious heritage in Russia. It is applied not only to the traditional religious institutions, like Moscow Patriarchy, but also to different heterodox religious movements. Now we can state a fact of the originally shaped religion policy of Moscow. Orthodox Christianity in Russia has one universally recognized center – Moscow Patriarchy. Its position is shared by 90% of Russian Christians. But we can’t say that the leaders have one consolidated opinion about the problems of the relations between Islam and Christianity. We can single out two groups; one can be called „For Islam” and the second „Against Islam”. Their followers have different views on the problems of proselytism, inter-religious dialogue and religion policy of the state and the foreign policy of Russia. The same, but much more multifaceted situation is in Russian Islam. Muslims in Russia don’t have any universally recognized authority. There are several organizations, regional or aspiring to the center position, authorities, sheikhs and popular homilists with their own opinions. Here we try to classify the main organizations and their views on the problem of a dialogue with Russian Orthodoxy, Christianity at all and the Russian State’s regional policy.


2015 ◽  
pp. 72-84
Author(s):  
Stefan Dudra

Government policy towards the election and activity of Metropolitan Macarius (Oksijuk) In post-war Poland, the state authorities aimed at taking control of the religious life of the individual Churches and religious organizations. Surveillance efforts were made to maintain, among others, by appropriate selection of the superior of the Church and diocesan bishops. The election of Macarius (Oksijuk), Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church for the position of Metropolitan in July 1951 years should be understood in this context. The hierarch was also to give a guarantee of loyalty, implement his policy in line with the vision of communist authorities and ensure close cooperation with the Patriarchate of Moscow. Unrealized demands of the state authorities (emerging Russification trends, the lack of wider support in missionary activity among the Greek Catholics) contributed to undertake a process of dismissing Macarius from managing the Orthodox Church. Polityka władz państwowych wobec wyboru i działalności metropolity Makarego, zwierzchnika Polskiego Autokefalicznego Kościoła PrawosławnegoPowojenna polityka państwa wobec Polskiego Autokefalicznego Kościoła Prawosławnego zmierzała do ograniczenia jego roli tylko do zadań religijnych, jednocześnie przy objęciu pozostałej działalności całkowitą kontrolą. Nadzór starano się utrzymywać m.in. poprzez odpowiedni dobór zwierzchnika Kościoła. Jednym z elementów polityki był wybór na stanowisko metropolity w 1951 roku Makarego (Oksijuka), arcybiskupa Rosyjskiego Kościoła Prawosławnego. Po odsunięciu w 1948 roku od zarządzania Kościołem metropolity Dionizego władze wyznaniowe dążyły do obsadzenia tronu metropolitalnego przez hierarchę, który miałby realizować politykę kościelną zgodną z linią polityczną władz. Pomimo zrealizowania założonych celów metropolita Makary okazał się hierarchą, który nie spełnił oczekiwań władz (m.in. w zakresie polityki wobec grekokatolików), co wpłynęło na podjęcie decyzji o usunięciu go z zajmowanego stanowiska.


Slavic Review ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail V. Shkarovskii

Russia is embarking upon a new path of historical development. Today, as the country gradually liberates itself from the vestiges of a nondemocratic society, it seems especially propitious to trace the subordination in the 1920s and 1930s of Russia's most important social institutions to a nascent totalitarian regime. The Russian Orthodox Church belongs on the list of such institutions. During its long history it frequently exerted a stabilizing, consolidating effect on the nation, especially during times of national crisis; even during the civil war it maintained a neutral position.


2021 ◽  
pp. 243-255
Author(s):  
Валентин Викторович Серпенинов

Предметом данного исследования является история последних лет существования Почаевского Свято-Духова скита в советский период, обстоятельства его закрытия и непосредственная деятельность архиепископа Палладия (Каминского), выступившего бесстрашным защитником этой обители. На примере Почаевского скита можно проследить некоторые особенности религиозной политики коммунистической партии в УССР, где советская власть установилась лишь в 1939 г., что не могло особым образом отразиться на церковно-государственных отношениях. Источниковую базу составляют квартальные и годичные отчёты уполномоченных Совета по делам Русской Православной Церкви в Тернопольской области, которые мы находим в Государственном архиве Российской Федерации и Государственном архиве Тернопольской области. Благодаря анализу архивных материалов мы приходим к выводу о деструктивной политике советской власти, направленной на борьбу с Русской Церковью на территории Тернопольской области. Главным объектом вышеуказанной политики являлась Почаевская лавра и её Духовской скит. Полной ликвидации православных монастырей в Тернопольской епархии советская власть добиться не смогла благодаря дипломатическому таланту архиепископа Палладия, который поплатился за это очередным переводом на другую кафедру Русской Православной Церкви. The subject of this study is the history of the last years of the existence of the Pochaev Holy Spirit Skete in the Soviet period, the circumstances of its closure and the direct activities of Archbishop Palladiy (Kaminsky), who acted as a fearless defender of this monastery. On the example of the Pochaev skete, one can trace some features of the religious policy of the Communist Party in the Ukrainian SSR, where Soviet power was established only in 1939, which could not have a special effect on church-state relations. The source base consists of quarterly and annual reports of the commissioners of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ternopil region, which we find in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the State Archive of the Ternopil region. Thanks to the analysis of archival materials, we come to the conclusion about the destructive policy of the Soviet government aimed at combating the Russian Church in the territory of the Ternopil region. The main object of the above-mentioned policy was the Pochaev Lavra and its Dukhovskoy skete. The Soviet authorities were unable to achieve the complete liquidation of Orthodox monasteries in the Ternopil diocese thanks to the diplomatic talent of Archbishop Palladiy, who paid for it with another transfer to another department of the Russian Orthodox Church.


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