A few months later, on October 25, 1990, Russia passed its first law guaranteeing the freedom of religion. Its aim was to protect the rights of people of all faiths, not to regulate religious life. The law forbade the establishment of “executive and bureaucratic organs of state power, as well as of state offices, especially charged with making decisions regarding the realization of the citizen’s right to the freedom of religion.” In addition, the law proclaimed that, henceforth, “not one religion or religious organization will have any advantages or be subjected to any limitation different from others.”
Restoration of destroyed churches and construction of new ones was begun immediately, throughout the entire country. The shelves of bookstores were suddenly full with religious literature. Sermons became regular programs on radio and television. This new cooperation between religious organizations and the government gradually widened to affect such aspects of society as its general spiritual enlightenment and concepts of philanthropy; stimulated peacemaking; influenced science, culture, and security; encouraged a restoration of historical monuments; and created a general concern for social values.
In 1995, for the first time in Russian history, a Presidential Council for the Cooperation With the Religious Organizations was created. Its members were representatives of the largest, most influential religious groups. Included were the Russian Orthodox Church, the Old Believers, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Adventists, Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, and Evangelical Pentecostals. The council was to formulate recommendations regarding various issues of internal and external politics.
Also carried on the wave of freedom in Russia were new religious movements of local and foreign origin. At first this religious activity drew no special attention to itself in the new conditions of ideological and religious pluralism. Gradually, however, there has come a more vocal demand to “protect society from aggressors from totalitarian sects and international groups posing as missionaries.”
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the religious organization in Russia with the greatest following, has many times stated its opposition to a merger with the state. In practice, however, we often find the opposite. A considerable part of the political elite and part of the Orthodox clergy continue to undertake great efforts in an attempt to turn Orthodoxy into a new government ideology.
In Russia, politicians as a rule, do not have even the smallest understanding of Orthodox theology. Its majority is far from being genuinely religious, as was, rather curiously, the case during the Soviet era. Some of them—those who represent nationalist forces—are drawn to the goal of creating a “monolithic union” of Russian society under a new flag. God, for many of them, is simply a means for furthering their own power. These politicians want to force bishops of the ROC to play the role of protector of the “ideological purity” of society, which was played in the pre-Yeltsin period by party committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Then on October 1, 1997, just a few days before the 80-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, a new law came into force in Russia: “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.” According to Russian human rights defenders, this document could with much more reason be entitled “On Freedom From Conscience.” The first articles of this document reproduce the wonderful provisions of the Constitution on the separation of religious associations from the secular state and their equality before the law. But after this follows a whole series of openly anticonstitutional, wittingly discriminatory provisions, practically canceling out all that is written before.
The law ignores the provisions of the Constitution in accordance with which freedom of religion should be guaranteed to everyone. It introduced, retroactively, various categories of juridical persons with unequal amounts of rights. Those associations that do not belong to a centralized structure nor can confirm with documents the fact of their “existence on the appropriate territory for a period of not less than 15 years (i.e., from the time of Brezhnev and Andropov) forfeit the right to “produce, acquire, export, import, and distribute religious literature or printed, audio, and video materials and other objects of religious purpose, invite foreign citizens with the goal of professional work, including preaching and religious activity.”
Supporters of the clericalization of the government, acting within the Russian Orthodox Church, are clearly trying to bring potential members into the church by the means of secular authority. Coming from the former Soviet system, these people have not learned the meaning of genuine Christian missionary work. They suggest that they can achieve their goals by merging with the government structure, by monopolizing religious broadcasting on state television and radio, and by limiting the freedom of other denominations to preach.
Leaders of all religious organizations in Russia recognize the unique role that Orthodoxy has played in the history of Russia, beginning with its Christianization 1,000 years ago in 988. But they are not willing to concede it a religious hegemony and are insisting on their constitutional rights. Naturally the discriminatory law of 1997, “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations,” has provoked many serious discussions in society. O. Mironov, the official authority on human rights in the Russian Federation, issued a statement in 1999 concerning the new law. “These norms,” he wrote, “cannot act legitimately in the territory of the Russian Federation, originating from the preeminence of rights over domestic legislation, established by international agreements, which was foreseen by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”
“The law on freedom of conscience,” he concludes, “in essence, consolidates the privileged position of different religions.” At the same time, religious organizations that have been termed “nontraditional” relinquish many rights. According to the Authority on Human Rights, the law broadens the “exhaustive list of lawful limitations of the rights regarding freedom of religion,” as formulated by the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights. This is an additional limitation linked to national security. While the law “can be protested by citizens by submitting a case to the European Court of Human Rights,” this would seem a weak restraint.
On November 23, 1999, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation admitted to the illegal enforcing of the retroactive power of the law passed in 1997. One of its statutes clearly discriminated against a large group of “local” religious organizations, depriving them of their right to exist as a legal entity.
Curiously, real-world limitations have worked to discredit the disposition of the new law, which required the conclusion of the universal reregistration of religious organizations in Russia by December 31, 1999. The registration process provided for the eventual liquidation, by due process, of those organizations that did not make it through the reregistration process. Directed against “nontraditional” religions, this disposition actually affected, first and foremost, the largest of all churches in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church. The church did not have enough time to complete the documents for the legalization of the majority of its parishes.
The Russian Orthodox Church is feeling its way along the path to a cooperative future. However, as we have seen before, it constantly needs to check itself for internal movements that call for a return to traditions of the past. Naturally, the conflict surrounding the new law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations” has considerably complicated the religious situation.
As Old Believer Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia Alimpi observed, speaking at a session of the council before the president in September of 1997, “approval of this law by the Federal Assembly has tangibly lessened the level of trust in relations between religious confessions....Interfaith contradiction in Russia has attained an acute political character.”
Sensing the danger of isolation, the Russian Orthodox Church made a concerted effort to regain the trust of other religious organizations. At the end of December 1998 a meeting was held between representatives of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, at which it was decided to create an Interfaith Council for “organizations and support of dialogue concerning societal and other related problems.” The Christian Interfaith Coordinating Committee, or CICC, was reactivated in January 1999.
The International Interfaith Conference held in Moscow, November 23-25, 1999, was dedicated to the 2,000-year anniversary of Christendom. It made a positive contribution to the normalization of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and non-Orthodox Christians. The final version of the conference document admits that “many different-natured problems of the upcoming millennium are motivating Christian associations to active cooperation in joint searches of an adequate answer to the challenges of a new time, to the realization of responsibility of Christian organizations for the fate of mankind.”
A synodal working group has examined the social doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church (“conception concerning questions of church-state relations and problems of modern society as a whole”). The discussion of doctrine is not easily settled, taking into account differing, at times diametrically opposing, views from representatives of separate and distinct intrachurch movements.
A document approved by the synod on June 19, 1999, is of great interest. Given the title “Conceptual Foundations of Church-State and Church-Societal Reciprocity in Connection With the Celebration of the 2,000-Year Anniversary of the Birth of Christ,” it begins with an acknowledgment of the necessity for “a conclusive self reevaluation of man” and “comprehension of global mistakes,” since “without... a true attempt to understand the progress of world history, ... today’s historical mark is risking becoming a means for empty celebrations. Modern man has already become accustomed to these.”
This document refers to the inevitability of globalization of the world economy and the future development of intergovernmental institutions, “which are becoming centers of authority [over individual sovereign states].” At the same time, the document notes that this process of transfer of authority “is accompanied by a growth in interethnic, political, and intercultural tensions, appearing in the form of bloody confrontation; clearly a threat to the peaceful future of all peoples.”
The “Conceptual Foundation” document sees a number of conditions necessary to realize the strengthening of the positive and weakening of the negative results of globalization. They include “meaningful dialogue and fair reciprocity among different traditional religions, cultures, and personal philosophies, and affirmation of the principle of multipolarity of the earth on the level of all systems that make this decision.”
The overall aim of the document is a constructive answer to the question of the
“main calling of all people, which will be a concern in the twenty-first century.” It is obvious, from this document’s tone, that “there is an attempt to represent as the only universal and progressive one of many existing cultures in the world today. [These cultures] are founded on an understanding of freedom of the fallen man as an absolute value and measured truth.” It can be easily understood that western Christians are implied here. Since specifically they not only were the first to claim the fundamental worth of the rights of man as created by God (“fallen man,” in accordance with synodal terminology), but also were the first to accept all acting international rights of man norms, including the United Nations Charter of 1945, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the European Agreement on the Rights of Man and Fundamental Freedoms (1950). The last of these was ratified by the Russian Federation in 1998.
This part of the “conceptual foundation” directly relates to the circumstances referred to by Metropolitan Kiril in the spring of 1999. In his Athens report he criticized the international norms in the area of human rights as “exclusively western and liberal.” According to his words, before the Orthodox church “there stands a large and difficult work to formulate and assert its position in the presence of the international community in the United Nations and other international organizations.” This requires dialogue with “all churches, denominations, and religions.”
In reality, the only result to this so far is an exchange of opinions with religious leaders in Iran. Iran, of course, is a country in which Muslims uphold the death penalty, a doctrine that can be found in the Bible. After meetings between the Russian Orthodox Church and the extremist Iranians during June 1999, a published communique said that “every people should have the right to determine the origins of the realization of its historical mission, its adequate representation, and the assertion of its interests in the realm of the world association.”
Imperial Byzantium established “canonical territory” where “authorized personnel only” were permitted (with which even Islamic religious extremists agree). The present discussion is shifting back to the triviality of a new division of the world by religious blocs. In the twentieth century there was a division between different ideological and social systems. However, Metropolitan Kiril suggests that the world should be divided into spheres of religious influence, or as he put it, “canonical territories.” Clearly, he does not realize how closely his suggestion parallels that of the situation of the discussions of Yalta, when the Communist and Western blocs were divided along political boundaries. Now Kiril suggests a dividing along religious lines, i.e., all Russians should be Orthodox. This perspective is in blatant violation of general religious principles. This irony underlines the absurd nature of his theory.
We cannot forget the famous expression of James Madison, one of the founders of the United States, who warned in his Memorial and Remonstrance, written more than 200 years ago: “When there is a union of state and church, this has often resulted in using religion to uphold political tyranny.”
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