scholarly journals SOCIO-CULTURAL INTERACTION FORMS OF CHURCH AND STATE ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

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.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 925
Author(s):  
Bojidar Kolov

The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces emerged against the background of growing cooperation between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. A key aspect of that re-energised relationship has been the intensified engagement of State and Church leaders in practices of mutual legitimation. This study examines the case of the new church of the Russian Armed Forces as an illustration of how the Patriarchate and the Russian Government make sense of each other’s power and positions in Russian society. Analysis of the official discourses indicates three key developments. First, both Church and State, in their own right, construct a statist and nationalist normative framework where the well-being and the greatness of “the Fatherland” is of utmost value. The two institutions legitimise each other by representing the other party as acting on behalf of this shared value. Second, the dedication of cathedral to the “Victory in the Great Patriotic War” integrates the Church into this key national narrative and simultaneously incorporates elements of the Soviet past into Russia’s “sacred memory”. Third, the involvement of the Patriarchate and the Kremlin in mutual legitimation constructs a relatively independent Church–State legitimating nexus, making popular support less necessary.


Author(s):  
Elena Drinova ◽  

Introduction. The aim of the work was to analyze the leading directions of interaction between the state and religious authorities in the modern public space. It is shown that the result of this interaction was the politicization of the Russian Orthodox Church (hereinafter ROC). It is proved that in recent decades the Church continues to exert direct and indirect influence on the state, which, in turn, uses its spiritual potential to stabilize the socio-political system. Methods and materials. Institutional and modernization approaches were used as the research methodology. Within the framework of the institutional approach, an analysis of the interaction of government structures and the ROC in the context of adaptation, cooperation and competition in the course of democratic transformations in the country was carried out. Within the framework of the modernization approach J. Haber formulates the fundamental thesis on the increasing role of religion in a secular (modernizing) society and its strengthening in the national state. Analysis. It is noted that in the 1990s the leading direction of interaction between the state and the ROC was exclusively the political sphere, which was associated with the democratization of public life, the involvement of the clergy in political modernization. At the beginning of the 21st century the state proclaimed a course towards depoliticizing the institution of religion. The activities of political religious parties were prohibited. Subsequently, the ruling United Russia party began to focus on mutually beneficial partnership with the ROC, priority was given to the patriotic education of young people. The result of joint activities of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the ROC was the formation of a new type of soldier, a bearer of spiritual and moral values, a statesman, defender of the Fatherland. The ROC, as the dominant religious figure in the public space, actively participates in the domestic and foreign policy of the country, challenging other confessional structures. The highest officials of the state and the church share the common values of conservatism, but at the same time, each of them defends its own interests, which initiates the limitation of their mutual support. Results. The state power, together with the ROC, solves internal political problems, including the formation of spiritual, moral, patriotic constants in modern Russian society. In the context of the sanctions policy, the activity of the ROC as a conductor of the “soft power” of the state contributes to the improvement of the countrys image. The result of the interaction of state and religious structures is the formation of a new ideological paradigm based on the principles of religious ethics, conservative values, as well as national identity, patriotism.


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.


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.


Author(s):  
A. Sliusarenko ◽  
T. Pshenychnyi

The events that are taking place today in the church field of the Ukrainian State testify to the importance of the national church in building the national security of the country. The union of the church with the state has been formed for centuries, and to consider the absence of this tandem today would be wrong. However, such an alliance can be dangerous for the state if the church provokes separatism, ignites national conflict, undermines the national security of the state. Evidence of this is the aggressive policy of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church towards Ukraine throughout history, which has turned the church into an instrument of political games. Thus, by annexing the Metropolitan of Kiev in 1686 and establishing a protectorate over the Ukrainian church space, the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church did everything to destroy the Ukrainian church tradition. History of Ukraine of the twentieth century testifies to the repeated attempts of Ukrainians to get out of the grip of the Russian Orthodox Church and build their own independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. A striking example of this is the All-Ukrainian Orthodox Church Council of 1918, which, in the context of national competitions of the Ukrainian people for their own state, brought to the agenda of the revolutionary events the question of independence of the Ukrainian Church. At the second session of the Council, the idea of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for the first time in many years consolidated a small part of the Ukrainian church and political elite around it. This article is devoted to analyzing the documents of this council session. The author tries to present the main stages of the competition for the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the difficulties that have arisen.


Author(s):  
N.A. Beliakova

This study aims at providing an overview of the everyday life of Russian nuns in Palestine after World War II. This research encompassed the following tasks: to analyze the range of ego-documents available today, characterizing the everyday life and internal motivation of women in choosing the church jurisdiction; to identify, on the basis of written sources, the most active supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate to examine the nuns’ activity as information agents of the Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet government; to characterize the actors influencing the everyday life of the Russian nuns in the context of the creation of the state of Israel and new borders dividing the Holy Land; to present the motives and instruments of influence employed by the representatives of both secu-lar and church diplomacies in respect to the women leading a monastic life; to describe consequences of including the nuns into the sphere of interest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR; to show the specific role of “Russian women” in the context of the struggle for securing positions of the USSR and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the region. The sources for the study were prodused by the state (correspondence between the state authorities, meeting notes) and from the religious actors (letters of nuns to the church authorities, reports of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, memoirs of the clergy). By combining the methods of micro-history and history of the everyday life with the political history of the Cold War, the study examines the agency of the nuns — a category of women traditionally unnoticeable in the political history. Due to the specificity of the sources, the study focuses exclusively on a group of the nuns of the Holy Land who came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patri-archate. The majority of the Russian-speaking population of Palestine in the mid-1940s were women in the status of monastic residents (nuns and novices) and pilgrims, and in the 1940s–1950s, they were drawn into the geopolitical combinations of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, staffed with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, becomes a key institution of influence in the region. This article shows how elderly nuns became an object of close attention and even funding by the Soviet state. The everyday life of the nuns became directly dependent on the activities of the Soviet agencies and Soviet-Israeli relations after the arri-val of the Soviet state representatives. At the same time, the nuns became key participants in the inter-jurisdictional conflicts and began to act as agents of influence in the region. The study analyzes numerous ego-documents created by the nuns themselves from the collection of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. The study shows how nuns positioned themselves as leading a monastic life in the written correspondence with the ROC authorities and staff of the Soviet MFA. The instances of influence of different secular authorities on the development of the female monasticism presented here point to promising research avenues for future reconstruction of the history of women in the Holy Land based on archival materials from state departments, alternative sources should also be found. The study focused on the life of elderly Russian nuns in the Holy Land and showed their activity in the context of the geopolitical transformations in the Near East in the 1940s–1950s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Maria Avanesova

The Russian Orthodox Church has become a significant actor in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. This text is dedicated to its role in Russiaʼs foreign policy, specifically to the topic of the Russian interest in problems and protection of Christians, which is one of the most essential parts of the cooperation between the state and the Church. Analyzing primary sources (state and Church documents), the author shows when and under what circumstances this topic became relevant to both actors, what role the Russian Orthodox Church played in this regard and how the topic of protecting Christians is used by the Russian regime today. The study shows that the interest in protection of Christians did not arise simultaneously on both sides and that it is connected mainly with situations where a threat for Christians is posed by unfriendly actors.


Author(s):  
M. A. Ardashkina

The article is based on the structural-functional, comparative research methods and critical analysis of sources on the post-Soviet period in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church (hereinafter – ROC), including data reference and information materials, public Internet resources. The author analyzes traditions, continuity and the realization of social policy in the Kuzbass archdiocese at the modern ROC stage. Using the example of Kuzbass archdiocese the author identifies the ROC units responsible for social work, and the main types of social assistance to the church. The conclusion is made that within the period of 1990s-the beginning of XXI century Russian Orthodox Church, with the support of the state, created a major conceptual, legal and organizational base of its social policy, for its implementation involving Orthodox public organizations and associations. Of great importance was the fact that the Church concentrated its efforts on solving social problems, which the state and public organizations could not solve effectively. Therefore, the ROC is hardly criticized for the use of social activities as a mechanism to achieve its main goal – to spread creed. Analysis of the social activities of the Church in the Archdiocese of Kuzbass allowed the author to make a prediction about the promising directions of development of social work in the region.


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