Russian Orthodox leader says U.S. follows Western ideology on rights

Published: 2007-04-12

MOSCOW (CNS) -- A Russian Orthodox leader said U.S. government attitudes toward religious freedom follow a Western "ideology of human rights." "U.S. experts are superficial and biased when judging the Orthodox Church's approach to understanding human rights and the problems of church-state relations," said Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations. "As a political mechanism, democracy makes it possible for various value systems to coexist. It isn't identical to the ideology developed in the West, without other civilizations and cultures being taken into account," he said. The Orthodox official told the state-owned Rossijskaya Gazeta weekly April 6 that he had sent a late-March letter to the U.S. ambassador to Russia in response to claims in a U.S. State Department report that religious minorities face discrimination in Russia. Metropolitan Kirill said he had informed William Burns, the U.S. ambassador, that the Orthodox Church was concerned about a "radical-liberal interpretation of human rights" and would condemn human rights notions that "humiliate human dignity and undermine conventional ethical principles." "Support for same-sex marriages, drug addiction, prostitution and death by lethal injection in the West shouldn't be made the criterion of democracy in society," Metropolitan Kirill added. "Nor should they make everyone think they're useful, right and ethically acceptable."

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