REPORT
by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate

International Interconfessional Jubilee Conference
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever (Heb. 13:8):
Christianity on the Threshold of the Third Millennium”
November 22 – 25, 1999, Moscow

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad
Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations
of the Moscow Patriarchate

“God has called us to peace” (1 Cor. 7:15)

1. Fulfilling her immutable mission as commanded by God to save humanity and bring it to eternal life in the Kingdom of God, the Church of Christ exists and works in the context of dynamic earthly reality. She shares the joys and sorrows of people, both those who make up her flock and those who stay outside her fold. Together with society she lives through times of hardship and times of constructive endeavor.

Today many political leaders speak of their desire to renew Russia, to restore her state power and her much-ruined economy. These intentions are understandable and respectable as such. But the success of efforts to overcome the prolonged crisis, which has affected many sides of life in our country, depends not only on a more or less effective solution of economic problems, nor on a particular political change or cabinet shifting. It is time to realize that many of today’s troubles have been caused essentially by a spiritual crisis of society or rather a crisis of the human personality. Indeed, it is out of the human heart that evil thoughts come (Mt. 15:19), hindering the realization of many good intentions aimed to improve public life.

2. The Gospel of Christ can meet the spiritual needs of people and help them find the right guidelines in life. This has been repeatedly confirmed by our historical experience. Nowadays there is hardly a person who will deny the special historical role that Christian values have played in forming the consciousness of the Russian people and their great culture and in shaping Russian statehood.

The Orthodox Church has been the major herald of these values for over 1000 years in our country. Stressing the decisive role that she has played in forming the spiritual and cultural tradition of our people, we by no means call for the restoration of that model of church-state relations which prevailed in the pre-Revolutionary period of Russian history. Even at that time, the best people in the Church and her most prominent hierarchs were far from idealizing the situation in which many regarded the Church, despite her unique role in forming the spiritual foundations of the people’s life, as part of the state apparatus, as a Department for the Orthodox Confession.

3. The Russian Orthodox Church, just as other religious bodies in our country, is separated from the state today. She does not function, nor does she seek to function, as a “ministry of ideology”. Indeed, to accept this function would mean to sacrifice the freedom of the Church, which, believe me, is extremely dear to our hearts. The Church, however, cannot be separated from society; she has no right to distance herself from the problems, including political ones, that arouse people’s concern. Christian faith is expressed not only in the inner, spiritual, life of the individual. If it is a genuine and living faith, it pervades both the occupational and social activity of a church member, giving Christian motivation to his or her every action.

Without indulging in wishful thinking, I should admit that we have yet much to do in order that all our people may learn to follow the evangelical principles in various areas of their everyday life and work. We should help them “become mature, attaining to the full measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), so that through them the faithful may be increasingly revealed as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Mt. 5:13-14), thus promoting the spiritual enlightenment and Christianization of society. At the same time, the public influence of the Russian Orthodox Church has already become visible. It is evident from public polls showing that it is the Church that enjoys the greatest confidence of a majority of people in our country.

4. This factor seems to attract a close enough attention of politicians today. On the one hand, this attention that politicians give to the Church is quite understandable. Indeed, they cannot ignore public opinion and the spiritual and moral authority of the Church which unites millions of believers in Russia, other CIS countries and the Baltics. I believe such an attitude should be welcomed. At the same time, an altogether different assessment should be given to the attempts to use the Church as an instrument in the political struggle and election campaign. As the elections are approaching, we can feel here, in the center and especially in provinces, the growing pressure to persuade the Church to get involved in politics. Our position on this remains clear and unambiguous. The Russian Orthodox Church does not support any political party or an electoral bloc. She does not participate in the political struggle.

At the same time, we can see no obstacles for cooperation with diverse political and social forces and the people of good will, both believers and non-believers, who are willing to hold an honest and friendly dialogue with us. But it should be cooperation in concrete actions aimed to benefit the people, rather than promotion of any private interests whatsoever.

It is my conviction that the norm for church-state relations should lie in active partnership for the benefit of society. At present, the Church’s relationships with both federal and local authorities have developed successfully on the whole. These relationships can be described as partnership carried out in a number of areas of social life, such as social service and the common search for ways to strengthen the moral health of society, education of the youth, revival of Russian culture and many other areas.

5. To sum up, the Russian Orthodox Church accepts the separation of church and state, but does not accept the separation of faith from life and the Church from society. On the political plane, it implies the need for dialogue and cooperation between church and state in the interests of the people. This position was formulated in particular by the 1994 and 1997 Bishops’ Councils. The first one of them stated that “the Church does not give preference to any social order or existing political doctrine or concrete social force or its leaders, including those in power”. The most important thing for us is that the state, whatever its name or social system may be, should not be filled with lawlessness and immorality, chaos and dictatorship. The 1997 Council reaffirmed this policy, while stressing that it welcomed “dialogue and contacts between the Church and political organizations if these contacts are not in the nature of political support”.

Certainly, every person including a clergyman can have his own political convictions and can sympathize with a particular political party. Experience however has increasingly convinced us that the 1997 Bishops’ Council made the right and timely decision that it is inadmissible for clergymen to be involved in any election campaign or join any political body whose statute provides for participation in elections on various levels. Indeed, the pastor, according to St. Paul, should become all things to all men (1 Cor. 9:22), which is hardly compatible with a party affiliation requiring one to identify with only one group of people and its particular interests. As for our Church’s attitude to the political activity of lay people, it was expressed concretely enough by the 1994 Bishops’ Council and elaborated by the 1997 Council. It was stated in particular that it is admissible for Orthodox lay people to join a political organization and to establish such an organization “provided the latter has no clergy among its members and consults the church authorities in a responsible way”.

6. It is our conviction that at this crucial time the Church bears a special responsibility for the preservation of peace and accord in society torn apart by the struggle of ethnic, party and private interests. The unity of social forces is often impeded not so much by difference in views as the personal ambitions and interests of some political leaders and the so-called “influence groups”. Unfortunately, the striving for power so characteristic of our politicians has increasingly pushed them to resort to morally dubious actions and manifestations of extreme animosity and hostility, which by no means benefits the people. In this difficult situation we have been entrusted by God to intercede for the week and the underprivileged, for it is with us, as we know from the Gospel (Mt. 25:31-46), that the Lord dwells in a special way (cf. Mt. 25:31-46). The Russian Orthodox Church authorities will continue to do all that is possible to keep reminding the powerful of the hard lot facing those who do not receive pensions and salaries and of the miserable condition of the people, many of whom have been thrown far below the poverty line.

Reconciliation and unity for the sake of the future worthy of our country and for the sake of her spiritual and material prosperity – this is, to my mind, what should become an imperative today for all responsible statesmen and political leaders. This is what the Church is calling for.

7. Cooperation in peacemaking and social service among various Christian confessions appears to me to be extremely important in this regard. We, followers of Christ, should set our politicians a good example. We have a solid ground to support this affirmation. We do, because the Lord Himself “has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19) and it is to us, preachers of the gospel of Christ, that the message of peace has been entrusted. We should not underestimate what has already been done and is being done in our common work. Thus the CIAC has proved to be an effective instrument of cooperation in peacemaking.

8. The Christian confessions in Russia, the CIS and the Baltics have covered a long historical road of cooperation and sharing. For some churches this experience amounts to centuries of common existence in the territory of the once united country, while for others it amounts to decades. However, despite certain complications experienced in history by the interconfessional relations, on the whole we can speak about cooperation and peaceful coexistence rather than animosity. Thus, as far back as the 16th century, non-Orthodox confessions were already present in Russia, coexisting peacefully with Orthodoxy. Since the Petrine reforms, when Russia began an active cooperation with Europe, contacts with non-Orthodox confessions became regular. Many people of other confessions came to Russia. The army, navy, administration, science, medicine, culture – these were the areas in which everyday contacts between Orthodox Russians and non-Orthodox Western Europeans were maintained. This experience of communication became a school of religious tolerance and mutual understanding. When the Russian Empire began to incorporate territories with a predominantly non-Orthodox population, this also contributed to the development of the model of peaceful coexistence among confessions.

Of course, I am far from painting the relations among Christian confessions in rosy colours. It is certain that the state status enjoyed by the Orthodox Church in Russia and the fact that an absolute majority of citizens belonged to Orthodoxy led inevitably to a certain marginalization of other Christian confessions. Some of them had to go through a period of a rather nasty attitude on the part the then authorities. It should be remembered, however, that the heavy weight of the state machine was felt by the Orthodox as well, and for the Orthodox Church cooperation with the state was far from unclouded. The tight embrace of the state did not only support but sometimes also suffocated the Church. The tragic events of 1917 radically changed the situation in Russia. The scourge of persecution hit the Orthodox Church most of all as the Russian Empire’s state Church. The godless authorities sought her full destruction in the first place. Other confessions, which the bolshevist regime believed to be less dangerous, were much less affected by the persecutions, at least in the first post-Revolutionary years. Already in the 30s, though, the situation changed for the worse for all the religious communities in the country as believers regardless of their confession or religion were subjected to mass repression. However, the persecution carried by the authorities contributed to closer relations between believers as they all were considered “second sort” citizens and they all suffered under the atheistic policy of the state. The persecution created prerequisites for interconfessional and interreligious cooperation; they helped to awaken mutual sympathy and develop the feeling of solidarity. In the post-war period when the authorities needed the support of religion on international arena, these prerequisites developed into concrete forms of cooperation. Churches were given access to external contacts to serve as proof to the peace intentions of the Soviet State and visible evidence that the state did observe international standards in human rights, especially in ensuring the freedom of conscience.

These newly-introduced circumstances had only a secondary importance for the churches themselves. More essential was the fact that Christians, deprived at that time of the opportunity to engage themselves in social action and witness, used the sphere of inter-Christian relations allocated to them by the state to come out of the rigid framework of a social and cultural ghetto assigned to them ealier. They fully and creatively mastered inter-Christian contacts both within and outside the former USSR.

We believe that the permission given to the churches by the then authorities to develop external contacts, though motivated above all by the state’s own interests, did not take place without God’s will. And the God-given gift was multiplied a hundredfold. In the years of Khruschev’s thaw, though cold for the Church, the inter-Christian relations and external contacts of the Russian Orthodox Church made it possible to prevent the closure of monasteries and churches and allowed her a certain degree of independence in her internal life. These years saw the development and consolidation of good relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the non-Orthodox from the Christian communities in the Soviet Union.

I believe that this experience of communication and cooperation is very important and edifying for us all today. Its importance can hardly be overestimated. A common trouble unites: in face of a common threat, when the only agenda was survival, former offences and misunderstandings in relations between Christians had to be put to the background. While the doctrinal differences remained, a common sphere was opened up for the churches to act together in face of a world hostile towards Christianity.

The period after the disintegration of the atheistic system has been characterized by alienation in interconfessional relations. The common trouble seemed to be past, and Christians have found the longed-for freedom. A broad horizon has opened up before them to make effort in various areas of the internal life of the communities. The tasks of internal community building has taken priority over interconfessional dialogue and cooperation.

9. Today many of us are aware that Christians in our societies are facing extremely complicated socio-political realities. The trouble lies not only in the uncertainty of the future and the instability of the model of social system that has developed in recent years but also in the disturbing signs discernible at this very moment.

Thus Christians of various confessions today are facing in equal measure the acute moral crisis that has hit our societies in which the essential ethical guidelines have been dramatically perishing. The economic crisis has led to mass impoverishment, bringing thousands of people to the brink of an everyday exhausting struggle for physical survival. In the aggravated political situation, libel and compromizing information have been put in everyday usage, while the methods of settling a score with a political opponent have become disgustingly mean and unscrupulous. Many mass media have put into circulation the stereotypes of permissiveness, cruelty, unruliness and amorality. Crime is growing. Public health is in a disastrous condition as the death rate has come to exceed birth rate, and drug-addiction and alcoholism keep spreading. Separatism and ethnic discord have led to fierce armed conflicts victimizing civilians. Radicals and fanatics have made an attempt to “pump up” these conflicts with the “oxygen” of religious emotions. All the above-mentioned developments have become a customary but no less frightening reality in our everyday lives.

Crisis has become a key notion in our time. This word means “condemnation” in its Greek origin. A world lapsing into darkness caused by sin and de-Christianization is to be condemned by God’s judgement. But the Christians do not condemn anybody. They have a different task which is the service of the world. Christians around the world are facing today a common threat and, hence, a common task of resisting the world’s spiritual suicide.

Confronted today by a world perishing by the law of flesh, they can no longer permit themselves the luxury of ignoring one another. The Christian communities in the CIS and Baltic countries are also called to join efforts for reconciliation and the moral revival of society, to raise their voice in defense of human life and dignity. In order to fulfil this task, however, they themselves should embark on the path of reconciled cooperation. An important example and promising initiative in this field has been offered by the CIAC.

I hope that the present conference will contribute to our Christian solidarity and help us become more aware of the common problems and tasks facing us.

10. The attitude of love and commitment to one’s own religious tradition and to its integrity are natural for every believer whatever his or her confession may be. In any case, I can say this with confidence with regard to the faithful of the Orthodox Church. If we take a closer look into our Russian history, however, we will see that animosity towards people of different religious convictions has never been characteristic of Orthodox Russians. This is except for cases of external aggression often accompanied with attempts at forced proselytism. Even if restraint and sometimes suspicion have been displayed today by some believers and even pastors, the primary reason for it seems to lie in the situation which has been generated by a massive intervention of “overseas” missionaries and pseudo-religious preachers, whose preaching has often been accompanied with attempts at open proselytism.

11. Speaking about inter-Christian relations, mention should be made of inter-ethnic relations as well. The Orthodox Church educated and still educates her people for the love of not only their heavenly but also earthly homeland. She blesses patriotism inspired and enlightened by Christian faith with its inherent sense of universal community. The Church stands for patriotism fermented by the gospel’s leaven, not by the attitude of national exclusiveness and animosity towards those who are different. We will never tolerate those false preachers of national hatred who disguise their appeals with the sacred name of Orthodoxy. I am delighted to repeat here the statement made by His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia at the opening of the First Russian World Council six years ago. He said, “We, the servants of the Church, see patriotism as seeking not to connive at people’s vices, but to purify and transfigure the children of God, thus encouraging them towards sanctity… We will not search for foes, but will faithfully and courageously seek to revive spiritually, to cast away sin, and we will not be frightened by anyone, even the devil, the most vicious enemy of the human race”.

12. The burden of daily worries caused by the domestic crisis tends to absorb us so much today that it is difficult sometimes to take to heart the concerns of other nations and to respond in good time to universal human problems. But by the virtue of the super-national, universal nature of the gospel message, Christians are called to bear witness to Christ before the whole human race. This witness presupposes sensitivity towards problems of concern not only for those who are near, but also those who are far. A loss or weakening of this sensitivity leads to a distortion of perspective. We may no longer see our domestic problems as related to common tendencies prevailing in the human development. The celebrations devoted to the Nativity of Christ is a good occasion to stop and try to understand what is happening in the world around us as the second millennium of Christian era is nearing the end and how these developments can affect the life of our peoples.

13. Recent centuries have seen the development of quite a complicated system of relations among peoples, states and national cultures. Nations and states have emerged and vanished; their boundaries have changed; international alliances have emerged and disintegrated. Unfortunately, these processes would usually lead to bloody confrontations, the most destructive of which were two world wars. Many states have also seen the aggravation of internal controversies – inter-ethnic, social and political.

International and civil conflicts have brought to power in some countries openly theomachistic and anti-Christian forces, which subjected believers to severe persecution. Martyrdom has become a vivid affirmation of the futility of efforts to overcome Christian faith. We believe that it has also become the basis for the present revival of religious life and the spreading of the word of God “even to the end of the earth”.

In the mid-20th century, the USA and the USSR have developed weapons of mass destruction capable of putting an end to the very survival of life on the planet. The threat of universal destruction has led humankind to search for ways of peaceful settlement of various disputes. The interstate organizations established by that time have been called to overcome confrontation and promote the peaceful settlement of international conflicts. In spite of the threat to peace that existed in the period of Cold War, humanity has managed to avoid the apocalypses of a third world war, but failed to prevent many minor wars and military conflicts, in which dozens of millions of lives were lost. The disintegration of the socialist bloc seemed to create objective preconditions for putting an end to the confrontation and for establishing a lasting peace in Europe and the world. Reality, however, points to the reverse.

14. There are still inter-ethnic confrontations, separatist tendencies and conflicts of interests among various nations and states continuing and even sharpening throughout the world. The end of this millennium has come to see fierce local wars combined with new forms of confrontation in which pressure, aggression and interference in the life of nations have been realized through political and economic actions. Unfortunately, the evil will undertaking such actions has sometimes made use of international law and interstate organizations. We have increasingly seen double standards applied in world politics to allow the powerful and affluent nations to dominate the weak and the poor. Actually the political internalization, which was originally intended for the benefit of nations, has sometimes presented a challenge to justice, peace and the free will of human beings.

This millennium has been marked by an impressive advance of economies. Scientific and technological achievements and advanced production and trade have helped people to work more fruitfully, earning livelihood and other earthly goods for themselves and their relatives. This, however, has not removed but sometimes even aggravated spiritual problems involved in the economic realm.

The industrial era has torn people away from the soil in many ways, making them small screws in the production machine. This era has generated insurmountable social inequality, dividing peoples into North and South, rural and urban workers, labor and business. The gap between rich and poor has widened further when a self-sufficient international financial system has emerged to produce money while continually downgrading real labor. One has to state that with the modern business technologies and the globalization of economies gaining strength, the world is now threatened by a rise of all-powerful centers of economic power that would yield to no control whatsoever by the peoples’ or even governments’ will.

By the end of the 20th century humanity has not yet learnt to live in harmony with nature. The rapid growth of industrial production has resulted in the merciless exploitation of the environment, especially in the poorest countries. The strongest possible blow to natural resources has been struck by armed conflicts. As a result, the world has come to encounter such alarming developments as global warming, lack of drinking water and ecologically pure food and pollution. The dangerous development and science and some technologies has challenged the very integrity of creation. This concerns first of all experiments in biotechnology, genetic engineering, cloning and reproductive variations.

This millennium, especially its last centuries, has seen the opportunity to collect, keep and spread information enhanced many times over. The emergence of book printing, the press, radio, television, computer networks and the development of transportation facilitating the transfer of people and goods have generated the phenomenon of informational and cultural globalization. Societies have become more diverse in their ethnic and ideological composition. While recognizing some positive aspects of this process, especially its benefits for scientific and cultural exchange, we cannot help expressing our concern for some of its consequences. Thus, there is an attempt to use the achievements in communications to assert in the world the dictate of particular ideologies, cultures and political views. Sometimes the modern mass media serve mainly to disseminate mass pseudo-culture exploiting sinful elements for commercial purposes.

Unfortunately, this era of external freedom, gained gradually through the last centuries, has not brought with itself any growth in the moral self-education of society. Disintegration of the family and the aggressive propaganda of sexual laxity have again immersed humanity into an abyss of vices that ruined ancient pagan nations. Violence, crime, corruption, dishonesty have acquired unprecedentally sophisticated forms and sometimes have been even perceived as the “norm” of behavior.

We are well aware that the globalization, which presupposes the maximum possible consolidation of financial, political and communicational resources, is fraught with an enormous danger for the whole human race. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: “Humanity as a whole has always sought to order itself universally” (The Brothers Karamazov). This desire is motivated by the false need to achieve universal peace and prosperity through ensuring material welfare by making the human family merge into an “unquestionably common and concordant ant hill”. In the end of the 20th century we realize the profundity of Dostoyevsky’s insight. We can say with certainty, however, that this process is far from being completed. Some nations continue to resist common standards being imposed on them, and sometimes this resistance has to be paid for by their own blood and welfare. I am far from the idea that in the West, too, people are equally content with the situation in which those are right who have more power, as the world mass media tried to persuade us during the NATO bombings in Belgrade.

In response to the globalization challenge, Christians will have to prove once again the gospel’s truth that “man shall not live by bread alone” (Mt. 4:4). Indeed, Holy Scriptures clearly shows that a person can die spiritually even in the happiest material conditions. Suffice it to remember, for instance, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus or the words of the Lord Jesus Christ: “Let the dead bury their dead” (Lk. 9:60). Our peoples have been convinced by their own experience that any merger and any efforts for the sake of daily bread alone lead to inevitable disintegration. We can predict, therefore, that the decay of morality and lack of spirituality with globalization in the background will lead to degeneration and perhaps to the self-destruction of humanity, because “the lamp of the wicked shall be put out” (Pr. 13:9).

It seems to me that a way out of materialistic conceptions will lie in the return to the religious awareness, since it is only in the perspective of eternal life that man can comprehend fully the meaning of his existence on earth and rebuild relations with his neighbors and nature. In other words, the very survival of human civilization depends on how harmonious are his relations with the Creator. On the other hand, the loss of religious awareness is a precondition for degradation in the original integrity of the personality damaged by the fall and restored by the incarnation of the Son of God. It is fraught with disastrous consequences for the whole globe. The above-mentioned gives us reason to affirm that the 21st century will be either religious or it risks to become the last century in human history. This danger threatening humanity should be clearly realized.

Since the coming of the Saviour to the world, it has been “the acceptable year of the Lord” predicted by the prophets. The Lord Jesus Christ came “to preach the gospel to the poor… to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance of the captives and recovering of the sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Lk. 4:18). Entering the 21st century, all Christians are called to bear witness to this before the world, preparing, as St. John the Baptist did, “the way to the Lord” in people’s hearts. We need to unite our efforts so that the notions of good, justice and sanctity may have decisive meaning in people’s life, so that we and our children may live (Gen. 43:8).