This article originally appeared on: Russian
Faith, a new website with news about the Christian renaissance in
Russia.
“The European Union, when
writing its constitution, declined to mention its Christian heritage even in
the preamble of the document.”
“I firmly believe that a Europe
which has renounced Christ will not be able to preserve its cultural and
spiritual identity.”
Hilarion is a very prominent
and influential leader of the Russian church. He is one of the top 3-4
church leaders in Russia, the ‘foreign minister’ of the Russian Church,
responsible for its relations with other churches and countries.
Participating
in a London conference on the topic of “The Christian Future of Europe,”
Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the External Relations Departments of
the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, spoke on September 22 at the
Russian Embassy to Great Britain, and his talk was something of a warning to
the Churches of the West.
Opening his talk with an acknowledgement
of Christian persecution throughout the world, and armed with research figures
hewn from recent PEW polls and other studies, Hilarion painted a grim but
up-to-date and accurate picture of what Christianity is currently facing due to
migration and Western secularization, and also what the future of Christianity
will look like without a deep and strenuous effort at evangelization.
The
Archbishop [sic] presented a sobering look at how migration is impacting
Europe:
“According
to figures by the European Union agency Frontex, more than 1.8 million migrants
entered the EU in 2015 alone … the number of migrants in Europe has increased
from 49.3 million people in 2000 to 76.1 million people in 2015.”
“The
other reason for the transformation of the religious map of Europe,” said
Hilarion, “is the secularization of European society. Figures in a British
opinion poll indicate that more than half of the country’s inhabitants – for
the first time in history – do not affiliate themselves to any particular
religion.”
This
trend is not holding true in Russia, where an identification with faith is on
the upswing, although “many defined themselves as ‘religious to some degree’ or
‘not too religious’ … However, the number of people who define themselves as
being ‘very religious’ is growing steadily.”
That
good news must be balanced an understanding of the rapid decline of religious
practice in Europe and North America, and here Hilarion suggested that history
must be given its due study, as a warning:
“I
would like to remind you all that in Russia before 1917 nobody ever proposed
that the collapse of a centuries-old Christian empire would happen and that it
would be replaced by an atheistic totalitarian regime. And even when that did
happen, few believed that it was serious and for long.”
“The
modern-day decline of Christianity in the western world may be compared to the
situation in the Russian Empire before 1917.”
“The
revolution and the dramatic events which followed it have deep spiritual, as
well as social and political, reasons. Over many years the aristocracy and
intelligentsia had abandoned the faith, and were then followed by common
people.”
“His
Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia spoke of this in January
2017:
“The
fundamental rupture in the traditional way of life – and I am now speaking … of
the spiritual and cultural self-consciousness of the people – was possible only
for the reason that something very important had disappeared from peoples’
lives, in the first instance those people who belonged to the elite. In spite
of an outward prosperity and appearance, the scientific and cultural
achievements, less and less place was left in peoples’ lives for a living and
sincere belief in God, an understanding of the exceptional importance of values
belonging to a spiritual and moral tradition.”
Hilarion
seemed to reserve a special condemnation of the resistance to religion
demonstrated by the European Union:
And
when half a century after the creation of the European Union its constitution
was being written, it would have been natural for the Christian Churches to
expect that the role of Christianity as one of the European values to have been
included in this document, without encroaching upon the secular nature of the
authorities in a unified Europe.
But,
as we know, this did not happen.
The
European Union, when writing its constitution, declined to mention its
Christian heritage even in the preamble of the document.
I
firmly believe that a Europe which has renounced Christ will not be able to
preserve its cultural and spiritual identity.
The Archbishop’s [sic] full
speech may be read here.
A video introducing Russian
Faith
Reprinted from Russia Insider.
