The Orthodox church in the face of world integration: the relation between traditional and liberal values

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad.

The confrontation between liberal civil standards and the values of religious and national-cultural identity should be recognized as expressing one of the fundamental contradictions of our time, and a basic challenge to the human community in the 21st century. The tension between these civilizations is endangering not only the security but even the very survival of humanity.

The rapid development of communications has changed strikingly the structure of interpersonal, intercommunity and interstate relations. In the present-day world, the borders that used to separate national cultures have actually collapsed. People move around the world with unprecedented ease, choosing freely a place to live and work. It is no secret that, in doing so, many prefer wealthy and prosperous countries; however, in receiving much, one also loses a great deal.

The above should not be understood as nostalgia for the past, and even less as an invitation to the return to the past. It is only to note that what is happening before our very eyes leads to tremendous cultural and ethical shifts, and we are hardly ready to realize their consequences in full measure. The epoch of mono-ethnic and mono-confessional states is fading into the past. The rapidly growing Muslim presence in the European continent has become a social and cultural factor not to be ignored. The world has become open, diffusive and interpenetrating. How should Christians, and the communities which identify themselves as Christian, respond to this challenge of our time?

It is my conviction that the future of the Orthodox church in the 21st century in Russia, just as of other Christian churches in various countries, does not depend in the first instance on how many new churches we will open and how many baptisms we will administer in them. What is crucially important is how successfully those who consider themselves Christians will adopt the truly Christian way of life: by that, I mean a way of life built on religious motivation in everyday life, including professional work and participation in Social affairs. Indeed, the ideology dominating today seeks to inculcate in a person the idea that religious faith is exclusively an internal, innermost and even intimate affair of the individual. The liberal secular consciousness regards a religious motivation for the choices people make as justified and admissible only in as far as it determines their personal -- or at most family -- life.

Indeed, personal ethics lies at the heart of Christian morality. The vector of the Christian message is the personal spiritual condition, for that message is addressed to every person with the purpose of transforming their heart. These salvific transformations in our internal world, however, do not take place in isolation from the external milieu, but in real and living contact with people around us: first of all family, work collective, society and state. It is impossible to remain Christian behind the doors of one's home, in one's family circle or in the solitude of one's cell, and to stop being Christian when rising to a professor's chair, posing before a television camera, voting in parliament, starting a scientific experiment, and so on. Christian motivation should be present in all that comprises the sphere of a believer's vital interests. It is a universal and all-embracing motivation, for a believer cannot exclude professional or scientific interests, professional, political or social activity or work in the mass media, and so on, from the spiritual and moral context of his life. Thus, the religious way of life is a mode of existence in the world for a person whose choice is motivated and determined by his confessional principles.

Tradition as the norm of life

From the point of view of an Orthodox Christian, the religious way of life is distinct in that it is rooted in the Tradition of the church. The Tradition, for us, is a totality of doctrinal and didactic truths which have been adopted by the church through the apostolic witness and which are preserved and developed by the church with reference to the historical circumstances of its existence and the challenges it has to face in various eras. In short, the Tradition is a living flow of continued faith within the church, and is nothing else but the norm of faith. We understand every deviation from the Tradition as primarily a breach of the norm or, in short, a heresy. It is not just a matter of an intellectual choice, of course. Commitment to the Tradition is manifested above all in one's life values.

In order for the norm of faith to become a norm of one's life, one needs not only knowledge but also a real experience of life in the church, an experience of participation in its mystery. Only in this case the norm of faith becomes natural for a person, breathing praise to the Lord. Without restricting, limiting or violating personal freedom, this norm protects a person from destruction, like a mother's womb protects a developing life from destruction.