I realize that there are political aspects to this topic. I hope that we can restrict our discussion on the effects, if any, of church-state collaboration on the Church. Does such collaboration affect the well being of a local church, and if that is so, what are the positive and negative consequences.
I am starting this topic because the largest of the Orthodox Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church, is showing signs of "collaboration" in the eyes of some Wesrtern observers. One such sign was the recent statement by Father Chaplin that according to Paul Goble of the blog Window on Eurasia, "...speaks volumes about the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church is whipping up the kind of xenophobia that will require a great deal of time to overcome."
The article relates "In a 5,000-word interview with a Tatarstan business paper, (Fr.) Chaplin, who oversees the patriarchate’s policies on the church’s relations with society, said that Russia has often had to fight civilizational models which threaten its own, including not only Napoleon’s but Hitler’s. (http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/122025/).
"Today, the patriarchate official continued, “we will stop the American project as well! This is a civilization of usury, a cult of the principle of ‘money makes money,’ and the triumph of egoism as the supposedly optimal model of human existence.” For Russians, convictions and faith must be “more important than profit.”
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/12/window-on-eurasia-we-stopped-hitler-and.html
As the author of the article notes, Fr. Chaplin's probable target audience was Muslims and that may have played a role in equating Western civilization with usury. Nonetheless, this interview is the most anti-American statement by the Russians since the "good old days." That said, is this view congruent with that Patriarch Kirill's remarks on the occasion of Metropolitan Tikhon's recent official visit, when he said:
"Several decades ago, we and Christians in the USA were divided by the Iron Curtain and the Cold War psychology, but at a difficult time we were united by the awareness that we as Christians belong to the same system of moral values’, he said, pointing to the common system of values as a very important philosophical factor that created the system of relations between Christians in the two countries.
‘Today we cannot say about many Christians in the USA that we belong to the same system of values as they do, Patriarch Kirill stressed. He noted that a deviation from the fundamental biblical moral norms makes it impossible to continue dialogue with a considerable part of the Protestant communities in America who are members of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, with which the Russian Church used to maintain cooperation for decades including the grievous Cold War years. ‘At the same time, we are fully open to cooperation with the churches in North America who have remained faithful to the biblical morality. These are, in the first place, Orthodox Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches’ "
https://mospat.ru/en/2014/12/03/news112466/
I am starting this topic because the largest of the Orthodox Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church, is showing signs of "collaboration" in the eyes of some Wesrtern observers. One such sign was the recent statement by Father Chaplin that according to Paul Goble of the blog Window on Eurasia, "...speaks volumes about the ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church is whipping up the kind of xenophobia that will require a great deal of time to overcome."
The article relates "In a 5,000-word interview with a Tatarstan business paper, (Fr.) Chaplin, who oversees the patriarchate’s policies on the church’s relations with society, said that Russia has often had to fight civilizational models which threaten its own, including not only Napoleon’s but Hitler’s. (http://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/122025/).
"Today, the patriarchate official continued, “we will stop the American project as well! This is a civilization of usury, a cult of the principle of ‘money makes money,’ and the triumph of egoism as the supposedly optimal model of human existence.” For Russians, convictions and faith must be “more important than profit.”
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/12/window-on-eurasia-we-stopped-hitler-and.html
As the author of the article notes, Fr. Chaplin's probable target audience was Muslims and that may have played a role in equating Western civilization with usury. Nonetheless, this interview is the most anti-American statement by the Russians since the "good old days." That said, is this view congruent with that Patriarch Kirill's remarks on the occasion of Metropolitan Tikhon's recent official visit, when he said:
"Several decades ago, we and Christians in the USA were divided by the Iron Curtain and the Cold War psychology, but at a difficult time we were united by the awareness that we as Christians belong to the same system of moral values’, he said, pointing to the common system of values as a very important philosophical factor that created the system of relations between Christians in the two countries.
‘Today we cannot say about many Christians in the USA that we belong to the same system of values as they do, Patriarch Kirill stressed. He noted that a deviation from the fundamental biblical moral norms makes it impossible to continue dialogue with a considerable part of the Protestant communities in America who are members of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, with which the Russian Church used to maintain cooperation for decades including the grievous Cold War years. ‘At the same time, we are fully open to cooperation with the churches in North America who have remained faithful to the biblical morality. These are, in the first place, Orthodox Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches’ "
https://mospat.ru/en/2014/12/03/news112466/
