According to the participants in the debate, the situation of many religious people in the world remains unfavorable.
– The situation is determined by the confrontation between two global worldviews, the first of which is characterized by the recognition of the dominant role of traditional values, and the second is based on the ideas of secularism, transhumanism and moral relativism . This approach is typical of the countries of the modern “collective West”, where believers can profess their values with less and less freedom, says Vladimir Zorin, chairman of the RF OP Commission on Interethnic, Interreligious Relations and Migration.
Modern history shows examples of direct pressure on believers.
Modern history shows examples of direct pressure on believers, accompanied by a threat to their health and life. Ukraine is especially different here, where believers of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church are persecuted and find themselves in the position of second-class citizens in their home country.
These problems require an adequate and effective response from public and state institutions and new approaches to solve them.
Leading the debate, Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy head of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media, recalled his work ten years ago in European organizations dedicated to the protection of religious freedoms. Compared to today, this is heaven and earth. Now European politicians no longer hesitate to declare that Christian values contradict the LGBT agenda (an extremist organization banned in Russia), that marriage is not necessarily the union of a man and a woman, and their Russophobic guts do not forget to express them themselves.
More than 360 million Christians around the world are today the subject of violence and discrimination, recalled Elena Agapova, vice president of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society. Persecution of Christians in Africa has become widespread, with one in five facing violence. In Syria, due to the war and harsh sanctions from the West, the number of Christians has recently decreased from 6 to 3 percent, the number of Russians has decreased, not to mention the fact that before the war 12 percent lived of Christians. there. In the Gaza Strip, temples and mosques have unfortunately become military targets.
According to human rights activist Ivan Melnikov, current international legislation is clearly insufficient for reality and cannot legally address problems such as the burning of the Koran or the imprisonment of clerics. Simply because they are not reflected in any way in the normative framework that regulates the religious life of modern societies.
The most urgent thing is to pay attention to these problems in Russia.
According to the results, the participants in the round table are ready to present to the country’s leadership proposals on the release from prisons and the inclusion in the exchange lists of the clergy of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Today, society benefits from truly competent religious studies, capable of analyzing problems without getting bogged down in interreligious disputes, religious scholar Roman Lunkin is sure. This will help preserve religious sovereignty and cultural identity.
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