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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Dark forces’ in Turkey plotted to assassinate minority leaders

Reynolds on the Minarets and Fr. Sysoyev

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Dr. John Mark Reynolds

Writing on the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, John Mark Reynolds wonders at the umbrage taken against the Swiss for voting a ban on new minarets — and the silence about the murder of a Russian priest in his church.

Father Sysoyev is dead in Moscow, but by all means let us condemn the Swiss voters loudly enough that we cannot hear his blood cry out for justice. If we look into it too hard, it might complicate the European energy picture.

Read it all:

Real religious oppression in Turkey, not Switzerland

Switzerland should not have banned minarets. It was both wrong and stupid, which is something even for government. Condemnations will be loud and are deserved. Meanwhile in November a Russian priest has been martyred in Moscow for the temerity of disagreeing with the Islamic religion or Putin’s oligarchy.

Few will notice or care.

It is sad commentary on the state of Europe and America that a few minarets not built will generate more outrage than a dead priest. It is wrong to keep someone from building a place of worship, but it is worse to kill their religious leaders to silence them.

If we are to condemn violations in Europe of the right to build religious structures, and we should, then we must raise our voices against Turkey. Continue reading →

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Archbishop Hilarion responds to U.S. State Dept. report on religious freedom

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In late October, the State Department released the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom, a study annually submitted to Congress. Remarks on the study by Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, are available here. (The country report for Turkey is available here.) The Russian foreign ministry said, on publication of the report, that it was compelled “to reiterate our previous repeated assessments of the U.S. State Department report as a politically engaged, garbled document which intentionally distorts the real situation of religious freedom in Russia and keeps silent about positive developments in this field.”

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk issued his own response to the State Department study (full text at the bottom of this post) which amounts to a summary of the Moscow Patriarchate’s position on religious freedom in Russia. While much more temperate than the Russian government’s response, the archbishop’s letter did, however, question why the authors of the religious freedom report voiced “concern for the rights of Satanists.”

In a related development, today’s Moscow Times reports on proposed changes to the Russian Law on Religious Activity that some Protestant Christians say will result on a crack down on missionary activity:

Ordinary believers face fines for sharing their faith with strangers in the metro or on the street under amendments drafted by the Justice Ministry that are stirring worries among Protestant groups about a clampdown on religious freedom.

Under the proposed changes to the Law on Religious Activity, only leaders of registered religious groups and their officially authorized missionaries would be allowed to pass out religious literature, preach and talk about their faith in public, according to a draft of the amendments published in Kommersant on Wednesday. Continue reading →

Robert P. George on the Manhattan Declaration

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Princeton professor Robert P. George, one of the drafters of the Manhattan Declaration, is interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez on National Review Online.

LOPEZ: Why just Christians?

Robert P. George

GEORGE: For too long, the historic traditions of Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy have failed to speak formally with a united voice, despite their deep agreement on fundamental questions of morality, justice, and the common good. The Manhattan Declaration provided leaders of these traditions with an opportunity to rectify that. It is gratifying that they were willing — indeed eager — to seize that opportunity. Of course, as Cardinal Justin Rigali observed at the press conference at which the Declaration was released, the foundational principles it defends “are not the unique preserve of any particular Christian community or of the Christian tradition as a whole. . . . They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of goodwill even apart from divine revelation. They are principles of right reason and natural law.” So the signatories are happy to stand alongside our LDS brothers and sisters who have worked so heroically in the cause of defending marriage, our Jewish brothers and sisters, members of other faiths, and people of no particular faith (even pro-life atheists such as the great Nat Hentoff), who affirm our principles and wish to join us in proclaiming and defending them.

LOPEZ: Many who signed the declaration are politically conservative. And yet you don the cloak of a Christian tradition of “proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed, and suffering.” Conservatives aren’t exactly known for such things. though. Should they be? Are those who signed the declaration doing anything to change the perception?

GEORGE: Actually, not all of the signatories are conservatives. Ron Sider, for example, who leads Evangelicals for Social Action, is an unabashed liberal. On matters of economics and foreign policy, he would be more comfortable in the company of the editors of The Nation than in the company of the editors of National Review. Several other signatories fall into that category. But they are strongly pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro–religious liberty. I would add that many conservatives certainly have resisted tyranny and reached out to the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering. Conservatives fought Soviet tyranny and worked for the liberation of millions of oppressed and suffering Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Russians, Romanians, and others.

Many conservatives have been in the forefront of the fight against poverty and disease in Africa, the trafficking of women and girls into sexual slavery at home and abroad, and the fight for human rights across the globe. Are there many liberals who have accomplished nearly as much as has been accomplished by the conservative activist Michael Horowitz on any of these fronts? Moreover, it is worth noting that many people who are today “conservatives” were civil-rights activists in the 1960s. Start that list with Mary Ann Glendon, Leon and Amy Kass, and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. They have not changed their views about racial justice. They are today “conservatives” and no longer “liberals” because mainstream liberalism has embraced a combination of statism and moral libertarianism that they regard — rightly in my view — as deeply misguided.

LOPEZ: What’s the top-priority issue for signers of the Manhattan Declaration?

GEORGE: The three principles — life, marriage, and religious freedom — are integrally connected. They are, as the Declaration says, foundational to justice and the common good, properly understood. They will stand or fall together.

Read Reminding Caesar of God’s Existence on NRO.

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Turkey and the minaret ban (Updated 12-02-09)

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Not quite related but powerful nonetheless because of the artistic beauty of the music and architectural beauty of the Swiss village set in the stunning natural beauty of the Swiss Alps, this short video reveals two expressions of human creativity that will disappear if the light of Christianity that nurtured them is extinguished.

Switzerland

Update: To support its position, the SVP cites a famous remark by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who once implied that the construction of mosques and minarets is part of a strategy for the Islamization of Europe. The pro-Islamic Erdogan said: “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army.”

Armen Hareyan writing on Huliq News:

The Swiss Minaret ban has drawn many critical voices from around the world. The majority of Muslims in Switzerland are from Turkey and some from the Balkans. Turkey feels the minaret decision pain as number of Christian churches (namely Armenian and Greek) in Turkey are either closed or turned to museums.

Nearly 57 percent of the voters in Switzerland voted to ban the building of Minarets in this picturesque country opening a door for a Europe-wide debate on the issue of religious dialogue throughout the old continent and the Middle East. This was a nationwide referendum, which was supported by Switzerland’s right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP). The Swiss People’s Party is widely associated with anti-immigration campaigns.

Observers report that the Swiss Minaret vote indicates the rise and strength of far-right groups in Switzerland. However, others observe that this vote may the first indication of how the Europeans may feel about the limits that the Christians and Christian churches have to face in number of Muslim Countries. The development is indeed very worrying and calls for removing all the barriers around the world for the freedom of religious worship.

Switzerland has nearly 7.5 million population. The Muslims comprise the small 5 percent of the population with 400,000. They are the second minority next to the Roman Catholic. The country has 150 Mosques where the Muslims worship and only 4 of them have Minarets. Most of the Muslims are from Turkey.

Turkey, on the other hand is one of those countries where the opposite problem exists. While most Muslim countries and many Christians strongly criticized the Swiss Minaret vote, no one in the Muslim world or even in Europe seem to really care about the situation situation of the Christian churches and seminaries for preparation of schools in Turkey.

Read more on Turkey Feels The Pain Of Swiss Minaret Ban on Huliq News.

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