#2
BBC Monitoring
Russian church leaders convene to discuss 21st century
threats and opportunities
Source: Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian 0500 gmt 13 Dec 01
[Presenter] In two hours' time, the 6th World Russian People's Synod will open in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. The opening ceremony will be conducted by Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksiy II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also expected to attend. The overall theme of the assembly is "Russia, Faith and Civilization".
One of the participants of the synod, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, is in our studio. The main topic to be discussed at the synod by the clergy as well as by representatives of various public and political movements is Russia, faith and civilization. Within this theme, which issues will the assembly focus on?
[Kirill, captioned as metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, speaking live] The 20th century is consigned to history with all its conflicts which emerged from differences in ideology and contradictions in philosophy. But the 21st century is threatening us with new conflicts. And the events of 11 September have shown that these conflicts are indeed a reality. These conflicts are based on people's lifestyles, on various civilization models, if you will.
Since religion is one of the factors that defines people's lifestyle and religion is one of the main factors defining a particular model of civilization and often people's behaviour as well, a need has arisen to look from the religious point of view at where we are going and who we - humanity entering the 21st century - are today.
This will be a serious attempt to comprehend the 11 September tragedy from a philosophical perspective, and to try to understand what happened then and what is happening to us today and to see what role religion can play in overcoming the horrendous conflicts which are threatening humanity in the 21st century.
[Presenter] Yet another topic to be discussed at the synod today is the relationship between Muslims and Orthodox Christians. In view of the recent events in the world and in Russia, would you say that there is a contradiction between the two beliefs?
[Kirill] For a thousand years Christians in Russia have lived side by side with Muslims, Jews and Buddhists. The four traditional religions have always interacted with one another. Russia is probably the only place in the world not to have had a single religious war for a thousand years. And we have lived through such difficult times, take the 20th century, for example, and the tragic situation in which religion was.
What does it mean? What conclusions can we draw from our thousand years' old, ancient and not so ancient history? We think that the experience of interaction between the traditional religions can today be of help not only to Russia but to humanity as a whole because in this country a wonderful image of cooperation between the traditional religions has been established.
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