The ongoing public campaign «I am with my Patriarch» on «The Voice of Islam» cannot be ignored. Participants in this campaign are circulating a text that claims, among other things, the following: «Have you noticed how the mass media and social networks are flooded with negativity, how there is a tendency to show courage in evaluations, a special, relaxed style of dealing with clergy, spontaneous «civil resistance» to Church initiatives? Journalists, bloggers, pop stars, politicians take advantage of every opportunity to make new, increasingly anti-clerical statements. All of this takes place against the background of the passive, ambiguous position of government officials and the federal media during periods of artificial tension that sometimes arise out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the number of mentions of people who have made anticlerical issues the content of their permanent, systematic «pumping» is increasing many times over».
Well, as those who participate in the «promotion of antichurch themes» within the limits of our modest abilities, we would like to explain why we do it and why, apparently, many others do it as well. First of all, since the title of the campaign emphasizes the defense of the current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), Kirill Gundyaev, it can be concluded that the opponents are attacking him personally, and this should be clarified. Except for the flock of the ROC, no one else should be concerned about who their patriarch is. And if they like the fact that their supreme pastor has turned their church into a large commercial enterprise that is intertwined with the government and defends that power rather than the disenfranchised and powerless majority of the people, who are predominantly Orthodox, then that is their business and their problem.
However, what has become a problem for everyone else, including us, and is not directly related to the personality of the current Patriarch, although it is indirectly related, is the role that the ROC has begun to play in society and in its relationship with the state. It is quite evident that the ROC has become a de facto state church — not just the first among equals, but simply the first, while the others are at best sidelined, and at worst eradicated.
Meanwhile, Article 14 of the nominally functioning Russian Constitution states: «1. The Russian Federation shall be a secular state. No religion may be established as state or compulsory. 2. Religious communities are separate from the state and are equal before the law. But if this is true on paper, and in reality the ROC has become a state church and there can be no talk of equality of religious associations, what does it mean? It means that the country has undergone an unconstitutional coup, trampling on one of the most important provisions of the country’s Basic Law. Yes, it can be argued that this is far from the only provision of the Russian Constitution that has been demonstratively violated during Putin’s rule, especially in recent years. But it is precisely the equality of religious associations and their separation from the state that has been crushed with the direct involvement of the ROC and its leadership. They have thus become active accomplices in this coup.
And it is precisely this fact that most people who «promote anti-church issues» dislike, and it has nothing to do with the personal or spiritual qualities of the head of the ROC, which should be judged only by his flock. The initiators of the campaign in defense of the Patriarch present the situation as if the outrage that is rising in society against the current church-state establishment is the result of some malicious campaign by dark forces that have suddenly and inexplicably attacked the ROC and its Patriarch. The truth is quite the opposite: in a secular state and a multi-denominational country, the ROC has become a privileged religious-political-commercial entity that seeks to dictate its will, policies and ideology to all other citizens. This, by the way, violates another article of the Constitution (Article 13), which states that «no ideology may be established as state or compulsory».
This does not sit well with the secular part of the population, nor with representatives of religious groups such as Protestants or Jehovah’s Witnesses, whom the ROC is trying to exterminate. It also does not sit well with representatives of the country’s second-largest indigenous religious community, the Muslims, with whom the ROC has adopted a double-standard approach. For example, when Muslims try to assert rights that are natural to a religious society, which is what the ROC is trying to turn Russia into, many politicians or pundits associated with the ROC appeal to the «secular state» that is supposedly threatened by such «Islamization. But when the same «secular state» is rapidly carrying out «Orthodoxization,» it is taken for granted, and dissent from the rest of society is presented as a mysterious campaign directed against the Patriarch.
As for this figure himself, it cannot be overlooked that the systematic and purposeful policy described above was developed precisely during his tenure. And since he and his like-minded individuals have no intention of abandoning this policy, the flock of the ROC must understand that by defending such a Patriarch, they automatically choose to wage war against the rest of society. The only alternative to this can be a change of course and leadership in the ROC.