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Metropolitan Hilarion calls to take into account Russian Church Abroad’s experience of relations with state

25.06.2008 · Архив 2005-2009, События  

Speaking at a plenary session on the second day of the Russian Orthodox Church Bishops’ Council, Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, dwelt on the experience of his Church that ‘could benefit the Church in Russia’.

Especially valuable experience of this kind, he said, was accumulated in relations with the secular authorities. ‘For ninety years of existence in separation from our Church, we had to, like it or not, learn to co-exist and interact with diverse governmental structures’, the metropolitan said, referring to the difficult historical situations which required special flexibility from the Church Abroad, in particular, in Western democratic societies in the situation of totalitarianism in the period from 1920s to 1930s and in non-Christian countries of the East. ‘In some countries, the Church Abroad enjoyed full freedom under a democratic system, while in others she had to find opportunities for taking pastoral care of her flock in a situation of some kind of dictatorship’, he reminded the Council.

A similar diversity of situations, according to Metropolitan Hilarion, can be observed today in various parts of the former Russian Empire. ‘In countries where the Church works in a society guided by Western European norms of democratic system but has not yet accustomed herself to them, the experience of the Church Abroad, which learnt to exist in a situation of society governed by law during the last century, could be useful’, he believes.

The metropolitan expressed his conviction that ‘the basic principle for the Church’s work in a democratic society lies in achieving or maintaining a maximum freedom from the state’s interference in her life’. The function of a state should lie first of all in ‘establishing or maintaining the conditions necessary for a free existence of the Church’.

‘In all centuries there has been a special temptation for the state authority to try and make an influence on the Church in its own, not always plausible interests. Having survived totalitarian systems, our Church should realize the need to rise above changeable political circumstances’, Metropolitan Hilarion said.

He gave special attention to the need to expose the false interpretations of such an important historical and theological notion as symphony in relations between the Church and the State, saying, ‘this very notion as introduced and developed theoretically by pious Byzantine emperors meant first of all symphony, that is, harmony, in relations between an Orthodox autocrat rather than any authority and an Orthodox patriarch. Secondly, it has remained an ideal unfulfilled in reality to this day. And the history of Byzantium and the history of Russia showed that what often came out of much longed-for symphony was actually a spiritually pernicious cacophony. It should not be forgotten that the state and the Church of Christ are not at all equal ‘partners’, since there is no equality between things temporal and eternal. things earthly and heavenly’.

Metropolitan Hilarion singled out among the positive achievements of the Church Abroad in her relations with the state the granting of the status of legal identity to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, exemption of the clergy from military service and inclusion of Orthodox holidays in the secular calendar as days-off in many countries of the world.

Unfortunately, the Church in Russia and the near abroad does not always enjoy the same rights, Metropolitan Hilarion stated and called for taking into account the diverse experience of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia in the practice of building church-society relations.