Russian writer attacks Western concept of freedom
-21/05/06
Russian writer Aleksandr So
Russian writer attacks Western concept of freedom
-21/05/06
Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for many years a dissident against Soviet communism, has defended an Orthodox church-sponsored document calling for a new concept of human rights to counter Western notions of freedom said to lack “moral norms”, writes Jonathan Luxmoore for Ecumenical News International.
Solzhenitsyn told the Moskovskiye Novosti weekly newspaper: “Even to call for self-restraint is considered ridiculous and funny. However, it is only self-restraint that offers a moral and reliable way out of any conflict.”
The 87-year-old writer was reacting to a “Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity” adopted by the tenth World Russian People’s Council, which met at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour basilica from 4 to 6 April 2006 and was chaired by Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow.
The document said the world faced “a conflict between civilisations with different understandings of the human being”. It stated it was unacceptable to use human rights “to legitimise behaviour condemned by both the traditional morality and historical religions”.
Solzhenitsyn said the director of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, Metropolitan Kirill, had been right to assert that personal freedoms should not “threaten the fatherland” or be used to “insult religious and national feelings”.
He added: “If Russia were to join the North Atlantic Alliance, which is engaged in propaganda and forcibly inculcating the ideology and practices of today’s Western democracy in various parts of the planet, it would lead not to an expansion, but to a decline, of Christian civilisation.”
The human rights declaration said Russians rejected “the policy of double standards with regard to human rights,” as well as “attempts to use them for imposing a particular socio-political system.”
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970. His books include The Gulag Archipelago, a factual account of Stalin’s terror for which he was exiled to the West in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has often defended Orthodox tradition against Western popular culture.
Ekklesia adds: The report and Solzhenitsynís comments will be widely seen as an attack on womenís rights, equal status for lesbian and gay people, and other emancipatory movements which clash with certain conservative religious interpretations of morality and human dignity.
Critics of the ëclash of civilisationsí thesis will point out that these issues are contested within, as well as across, different religious and non-religious traditions. And that inclusive human rights finds support and advocacy in non-Western settings, too.
Questions are also likely to be raised by secularists and post-Christendom theorists about the concepts of territoriality and church-state hegemony which lie behind the reportís particular understanding of Christianity.
The leadership of the Orthodox Church in Russia has recently been involved in disputes with other religious bodies, including the Salvation Army and Baptists, over matters of religious freedom, state regulation and freedom of expression.
With acknowledgements for the first part of this report to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches.
Russian writer attacks Western concept of freedom
-21/05/06
Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for many years a dissident against Soviet communism, has defended an Orthodox church-sponsored document calling for a new concept of human rights to counter Western notions of freedom said to lack “moral norms”, writes Jonathan Luxmoore for Ecumenical News International.
Solzhenitsyn told the Moskovskiye Novosti weekly newspaper: “Even to call for self-restraint is considered ridiculous and funny. However, it is only self-restraint that offers a moral and reliable way out of any conflict.”
The 87-year-old writer was reacting to a “Declaration on Human Rights and Dignity” adopted by the tenth World Russian People’s Council, which met at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour basilica from 4 to 6 April 2006 and was chaired by Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow.
The document said the world faced “a conflict between civilisations with different understandings of the human being”. It stated it was unacceptable to use human rights “to legitimise behaviour condemned by both the traditional morality and historical religions”.
Solzhenitsyn said the director of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, Metropolitan Kirill, had been right to assert that personal freedoms should not “threaten the fatherland” or be used to “insult religious and national feelings”.
He added: “If Russia were to join the North Atlantic Alliance, which is engaged in propaganda and forcibly inculcating the ideology and practices of today’s Western democracy in various parts of the planet, it would lead not to an expansion, but to a decline, of Christian civilisation.”
The human rights declaration said Russians rejected “the policy of double standards with regard to human rights,” as well as “attempts to use them for imposing a particular socio-political system.”
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970. His books include The Gulag Archipelago, a factual account of Stalin’s terror for which he was exiled to the West in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has often defended Orthodox tradition against Western popular culture.
Ekklesia adds: The report and Solzhenitsynís comments will be widely seen as an attack on womenís rights, equal status for lesbian and gay people, and other emancipatory movements which clash with certain conservative religious interpretations of morality and human dignity.
Critics of the ëclash of civilisationsí thesis will point out that these issues are contested within, as well as across, different religious and non-religious traditions. And that inclusive human rights finds support and advocacy in non-Western settings, too.
Questions are also likely to be raised by secularists and post-Christendom theorists about the concepts of territoriality and church-state hegemony which lie behind the reportís particular understanding of Christianity.
The leadership of the Orthodox Church in Russia has recently been involved in disputes with other religious bodies, including the Salvation Army and Baptists, over matters of religious freedom, state regulation and freedom of expression.
With acknowledgements for the first part of this report to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and the Conference of European Churches.