News
2007-08-09
Russian church:
School must teach morals
A Russian
Orthodox Church spokesman said Wednesday that the country's
schools should teach religious principles and moral values,
a
A Russian
Orthodox Church spokesman said Wednesday that the country's
schools should teach religious principles and moral values,
and he accused some leading scientists of trying to
impose the ''ideology of science'' on the education
system.
Father Vsevolod
Chaplin was responding to a group of prominent scientists
who recently protested the church's growing influence on
society.
Chaplin urged
teachers to instruct children not to follow the examples of
''homosexuals and prostitutes.''
His remarks come
after 10 leading academics wrote to President Vladimir
Putin last month to protest the introduction of a class on
Orthodox Christian culture. The group also opposed an
initiative to give universities the power to award
degrees in theology.
''The scientific
viewpoint cannot be a state ideology,'' Chaplin told
journalists at a discussion between clerics and scientists.
''It never made anybody happy and failed to answer
fundamental questions of human existence.''
The church, he
said, should play a leading role in setting moral
standards for youths.
''We have to show
them an unhappy homosexual in his 40s and an aging
prostitute,'' he said. ''Otherwise, in 30 years our children
will turn into animals influenced by the cult of
glamour and debauchery.''
The Russian
church has experienced a revival since the collapse of the
officially atheist Soviet Union in 1991. It now claims more
than 27,000 parishes and 700 monasteries throughout
the former U.S.S.R.
Government and
religion are separated under Russia's post-Soviet
constitution, but some Russians atheists claim that
religious symbolism is as omnipresent and oppressive
as atheism was during Soviet times.
An outspoken
Orthodox cleric at Wednesday's conference called on the
government to exercise more control over religious affairs
and help the church fight superstitions spread on its
behalf by poorly educated priests.
''We are ready to
put part of our life under government control,'' said
theology professor Andrei Kuraev. ''The church has been
living without censorship for too long.''
The revival of
the Orthodox church's centuries-old ties to the state,
meanwhile, have prompted concern among religious minorities
and scientists.
''Education of
schoolchildren should be based on teaching scientifically
proven knowledge,'' said Andrei Vorobyev, a leading medical
researcher and one of the authors of the letter to
Putin. ''Interference of the church in government
affairs (has) always been deplorable in Russian
history.''
Administrators at
dozens of Russian schools say the class on Orthodox
Christian culture will be taught in the new academic year,
but attendance will be voluntary. (AP)
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