Russian Roulette: Orthodox Church Leaders Seek Influence Over Public Schools
Rob Boston printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Tue Sep 25, 2007 at 02:06:31 PM EST
One of the most foolish arguments the Religious Right uses against church-state separation is that the concept is communistic.

Political and religious leaders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Roger Williams, John Leland and others pioneered church-state separation in colonial America long before anyone knew what a communist was. Yet over the years, advocates of church-state separation had to fend off claims that the Soviet constitution separated church from state.

The Soviet Union is long gone, and now, ironically, Russia is looking more and more like a place the Religious Right would call a model society.

The New York Times reported recently on efforts by the Orthodox Church to regain its historic ties to the state. Church leaders are moving aggressively to introduce their version of Christianity into the public schools, often with great success.

It's remarkable how the rhetoric used by boosters of Orthodoxy in Russia echoes what we hear from the American Religious Right. Orthodox clergy insist that they merely want to teach about the church's affect on culture and Russian history. They argue that since most Russians were historically Orthodox, children should learn about the faith.

But what Russian children are getting in some public schools is far from instruction "about" a faith - it's indoctrination.

The Times reported on the instruction offered to second graders by teacher Irina Donshina in the city of Kolmna, about 60 miles south of Moscow. Donshina lectured the youngsters about God, telling the class, "[The] people he created crucified him. But did he accuse them or curse them or hate them? Of course not! He continued loving and feeling pity for them, though he could have eliminated all of us and the whole world in a fraction of a second."

Later in the lesson, she led the children in reciting the Ten Commandments and added, "Faith in God is as important for every human as the root for a tree. But our tree unfortunately has died just like a human soul can die without doing good. This is what happens to people who do not do good things and do not follow God's laws." Russian saints, Donshina added, "have shown us how one must live to be close to God." She even dismissed each child with a chocolate.

The Times reported that in some regions of Russia, the classes in Orthodoxy are mandatory; others allow students to be excused. In southern Russia, where 10 to 15 percent of the population is Muslim, the reintroduction of classes in Orthodoxy has stoked interfaith tensions.

The people of Russia have never experienced true religious liberty or separation of church and state. For centuries under the czars, Orthodoxy was established by the state and integrated itself with government. During the communist era, houses of worship were torn down and religion was brutally suppressed.

Modern Russia is a multi-ethnic, multi-faith state that would benefit from a system of church-state separation that allows all perspectives about religion to flourish but shows official preference toward none. Unfortunately, recent steps to merge public education with the Orthodox Church represent a giant step backwards.




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...was debatable in the extreme. I did my senior thesis on the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet Era (through 1990; I graduated in 1991) and found that, contrary to the Soviet Constitution, the state and the official church were inextricably intertwined. Stalin used the church to bolster support for the fight against Hitler after the invasion of June 1941 and subsequent regimes used the church as a propaganda and intelligence tool, particularly helpful for influencing international religious dialog.

What is happening now is, however regrettable, a not-unexpected emergence of the Russian Orthodox Church of imperial times, when the church gave the monarchs legitimacy and thus power over the people. Russia isn't a monarchy any more, but the ROC maintains a tremendous hold over the country as a symbol of ethnic identity, even if the population of ethnic Russians isn't nearly as religious as the church might like. The incursion of ROC teachings into the public schools is as much for ethnic identity purposes as religious, I suspect.

It remains to be seen whether the government in Moscow and at more local levels can evict this curriculum effectively, but for the long-term health of the country, if religion is taught in the public schools there at all, it should be as a social science course covering the many facets of religious culture in Russia rather than as one-dimensional proselytizing.

by RevRuthUCC on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:38:27 PM EST


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