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Old Saint Basil's Cathedral in MoscowJohnson's Russia List title and scenes of Saint Petersburg
Excerpts from the JRL E-Mail Community :: Founded and Edited by David Johnson

#11
Argumenty I Fakty
December 5, 2001,
CHURCH AND STATE
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

For the first time in many years, the Church and the state taken several significant steps toward one another.

Both the state and the church are concerned that young people have lost some "traditional values"; and the church claims it's able to restore these values. According to Deputy Education Minister Yury Kovrizhkin, three-quarters of all believers in Russia are Orthodox Christians. Sixty percent of Russians are convinced that religion is necessary for preserving national self-awareness. Young people, 25% of the population, are a cause for concern because their faith is shallow and doubtful: 17% of young people believe not in God but in some "higher powers"; 16% of young people are superstitious, and 17% more believe in UFOs. They are the potential victims of totalitarian sects and religious extremism, and they needed to be saved. So "close cooperation between the church and the state on the issues of education, the environment, and human rights" has been proposed as the best option for saving Russia's youth. According to Kovrizhkin, in practice this means "opening Orthodox day-care centers, kindergartens, schools, gymnasiums, Christian-patriotic and Christian-sports clubs under the patronage of local authorities."

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