For our and your freedom of religion!

The State Department of the United States has recently issued an annual report, the so -called MDRS (an international report on the state of religious freedoms, International Relygious Freedom Report). Such a report is formed annually and compiled by the analysts of the State Department to give an idea of ​​the level of compliance with the 18th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of religion. That is, attention is drawn to one of the most faithful scales of the measurement of freedom in general - religious.

A separate section is devoted to Russia in the report. Experts note that our constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but it limits it on the contrary laws and by -laws ( Constitution Provides for Relygius Freedom , But Other Laws and Policies Restrict Relygious Freedom ). In Russia, according to experts of the State Department, the rights of Muslims and small religious groups are mainly infringed on, such as followers of the Turkish Islamic Theologian Said Nursi, “Jehovah's Witnesses”, the Church of Scientology and others like them. It is noted that “representatives of religious minorities experience difficulties with the registration of their organizations, they limit their activities, and activists are often arrested” ( Reports of Abuses of Religious Freedom , Including Detentions ). The following is the selective application of legal restrictions on religious freedom ( The Government Selectively Enphorced Existing Legal Restricts on Religious Freedom ).

It also comes to manipulative practice of using the “extremist” label against some religious groups and their literature. Experts understand that the level of religious freedom is associated in nature with restrictions on some types of practices. The boundaries of acceptability can vary: so the Roman Senate with a special decree of 180 BC. e. He forbade Bacchanalia, and in the completely liberal Holland, the Mennonites and Amisham did not live very well why they fled over the ocean. However, the report also states that law enforcement officers and FSB employees ( Individuals Within the FSB and Other Law EnForcement Agencies ) “ clamp ” some religious groups, conduct searches and use tax claims and lease agreements as a means of pressure. We understand that there is a possible corruption subtext here, but it is not directly spelled out in the report. In general, they note in a report, in Russia the case with religious freedom is not easy.

At the same time, the authors of the report note the oppression of the followers of Said Nursi in Russia, another American, the head of the Christian charitable organization Open Doors, Carl Moeller, was accused of a different kind. He turned bitter reproaches to Christians in the USA for the lack of solidarity with Christians in the Middle East, the number of which is reduced and whose lives are at risk.

At first it seems that this is just a conversation about different things: the State Department speaks of religious freedom based on political logic, and Melller - about politics, based on Christian logic. It is clear that the “simple Christian” logic is closer and more understandable to the Russian person. Of course, Christians in the East also think about this and sometimes reproach the West, which "betrayed and forgot." But, if you look at this matter more closely , it turns out that in the position of American society, expressed by its two institutions, the church and the government, there are signs of internal contradiction.

The foundations of America are in religious freedoms who were looking for refugees from Europe.

It is enough to recall that the President of the United States takes the oath of the Bible, and the priests of any churches have a pre -emptive right to asylum under the US Constitution. And Melller rightly indicates that the political support of radical Islamism, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Syrian opposition indicates a gradual erosion, or even a change of values. The Christian activist was not indignant at what was happening in the Middle East. He was indignant at what was happening and partly already happened in America. Under the influence of the requirements of political correctness or the growing “black Islam”, values ​​formed by the founding fathers of the United States and dating back to Christian Europe are washed and inferior to others .

According to Meller, it turns out that America is partly against its own foundations. The political pragmatist, which forces the support of Nursi's supporters in Russia and Mursi in Egypt, is not traditional, but a new, trend in American politics. Within the framework of this trend, an inconspicuous rollback begins, built on suspicions of infidelity to national grounds.

The actual structure of confessional diversity, in which an important part of the guarantees of stability lay in Russia as the historical center of Eastern Orthodoxy, is seriously injured around the world. This erosion and transformation are not Russian specifics, it is associated with the diffusion of interests and the displacement of the value of the world, including the United States itself. Imagine for a second what will happen if the American Orthodoxes stop supporting the Israeli state?

Therefore, the historical role of Russia is to protect Christians in the East and be a guarantor of their preservation.

And one more thing: from the report, a pressing need for all of us to understand our own grounds . For example, in the same report, the State Department is surprised why the Russian Office “merged with the state apparatus” and uses preferences. It is surprised correctly, but only in the sense of a modern design. If you think in the logic of history, it will be clear why and why the Church under Justinian the Great or Ivan the Terrible was closely fought with the kingdom and the dissent drove rigidly, and under the Romanov dynasty, all this began to become anachronism.

Now, such a direct bunch of “church-state” and the restriction of religious freedoms simply do not correspond to either the modern ideas of people about the “proper” or the strategic task of the fundamentally new building of church-state relations. There would be such a correspondence - and the State Department would not be surprised, and we would live in another state.

From a hidden skirmish between the authors of the report on Russia and Christian activists, finally, another important thing is revealed: religious freedoms and the right to confessional self -determination, the essence of the basis of emancipation and human freedoms. But the nature of these freedoms is rooted differently in different cultures, so it is hardly possible to arrange a single general standard. This is what the combination of two American texts speaks about.