Church and state to teach together
“Today, a partnership between the Church and the state is a must,” believes the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill.
His Holiness said this while opening the traditional Christmas Readings – an international forum when education issues are discussed. This forum is being held in Moscow for the 19th time already.
This time, the theme of the readings is cooperation between the Church and the state.
The year 2010 showed how productive such cooperation may be. One such example was state-Church cooperation in collecting humanitarian aid for the victims of forest fires this summer. The Church collected several million rubles, to say nothing of food and clothes.
The Patriarch believes that the government and the society must pay special attention to education and pedagogy:
“The future of the nation is, to a great extent, determined by the education which the younger generation receives from an early age. Education is a complicated process, in which many people, many governmental and non-governmental structures are involved. It is an area for dialogue between the Church and the state.”
The state has already taken a big step towards this dialogue. In 2010, school lessons on religion were introduced as an experiment in over 20 regions of Russia. The Church has been insisting on introducing religion into the school curriculum for about a decade already. However, this idea has quite a few opponents who say that this would violate the principle of secular education. Still, the experiment showed that the majority of pupils and their parents liked this idea. Today, more and more people insist that lessons of religion must be included into the compulsory school program.
Here is His Holiness Kirill again:
“The absolute majority of parents whose children took part in this experiment, welcome the idea of introducing religion lessons at school. 28% of parents say that after introducing such lessons, their children became kinder and more tolerant. Some opponents of this idea claim that teaching religion at school would cause a separation between children of different faith. However, in reality, nothing of the kind has happened. Over 20% of parents say that, on the contrary, children became more consolidated. Over 40% believe that better knowledge of your own religion helps to better understand other religions. This is a way to a stable and peaceful life in a multi-national and multi-confessional country.”
“Today, Russia is a country with some of the largest number of migrants coming each year,” the Patriarch continued. “People from other countries sometimes have different traditions and habits, and it can be difficult to find a common language. Better knowledge of each other’s traditions and mentality, as a rule, brings more respect towards each other. This is why the Russian Orthodox Church must teach young people what Orthodox Christianity is.”
“The aims of the Church and the state are, in fact, the same – to make people well-educated, to teach them to love their country and to abide by its laws,” Patriarch Kirill concluded. “Joining our efforts is a must.”
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