Religious Freedom in Russia Today

Ecumenical Review, The, Oct, 1998 by Vladimir Feodorov

Yet there is a real danger that naive citizens may be misled by pseudo-religious groups which hide commercial aims behind religious or therapeutic slogans. If such a group enjoys the support of the state mass media or governmental officials or representatives of the central or local authorities, people may begin to mistake it for a state-recognized religion.

The Russian Orthodox Church and the state

"Freedom of Conscience for All -- Or Just for the Orthodox?" This was the title of a recent article by a Russian journalist, who asserts that "Orthodoxy must not be the state religion, so we must secure fully equal status for all religious and pseudo-religious groups in society".(3) Two observations may be made in response. In the first place, the Russian Orthodox Church is not and is not seeking to be the state church, as Patriarch Alexei II has stated very clearly on many occasions.(4) Second, if one looks, for example, at the issue of religious freedom as it relates to the Church of Scientology in Germany, it is the state far more than the church which has expressed the need for restrictions. Thus the German government has refused to acknowledge Scientology as a religion and has not allowed Scientologists to hold high positions within administrative organs (such as directors of banks). This in turn has evoked protests especially from the USA,(5) some going so far as to accuse Germany of reverting to Nazi totalitarianism.

In the post-communist search for a new ideological framework, Russian politicians have been heard to uphold religious values, even the values of the Orthodox Church. When President Boris Yeltsin spoke in 1996 of the need for a new ideology, for example, many Orthodox believers took this to be an appeal to restore Orthodoxy to the 19th-century position proclaimed by Count Uvarov: "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, People", while many democratically minded public figures expressed fears of Orthodoxy again becoming a state religion.

Article 14 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (12 December 1993) stipulates that "no religion may be accepted as state or compulsory"; and article 4.1 of the Russian law on freedom of conscience and religious associations (17 September 1997) reads: "The Russian Federation is a secular state. No religion may be established as a state or compulsory religion. Religious associations are separated from the state and are equal before the law."

From the side of the church, bishops, priests and laypeople have argued that the Russian Orthodox Church is and should be separated from the state. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has said that "the Russian Orthodox Church through His Holiness has declared on innumerable occasions at various levels that it needs no privileges, no status of a state religion. All we need is freedom."(6)

The persistent allegations that the Russian Orthodox Church is in effect or aspires to be a state church -- or at least has advantages over other religious communities -- tend in the majority to come from active atheists and representatives of new religious movements. Thus when a member of the holy synod makes a statement to the effect that "Russian statehood is a rampart of the Orthodox Church", it puts society on the alert.(7) And the desire of government authorities at all levels for the church's support in promoting social, education or cultural programmes is likely to elicit rigorous, if often unwarranted, criticism in the press and among some politicians.