Russian Church: Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth!

Moscow (AsiaNews) – Fresh controversy has broken out in Russia between the Orthodox Church and human rights organizations. The head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for Relations between the Church and society, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, has appealed to the community of believers to be more courageous in showing their faith. "We should have no qualms about making the sign of the cross wherever we like, or hanging an image of the crucifix, where we live and work," the priest wrote in an article published in the April issue of the Orthodox journal Sovereign Rus'.

The idea of the crucifix in the workplace or in schools has angered human rights activists. "The problem in our society is not the number of crucifixes on the walls, but immorality," Lev Ponomarev, a noted leader of a human rights movement, told Interfax. "Concern yourselves more with prayers and sermons - he continued, addressing Chaplin – and not with pushing for official displays of Orthodox attributes”.  How does his argument make for much of a human rights issue? I've heard many human rights people decry legislating morality, but being told how to act while at the same time being told what not to display seems a bit disingenuous. I guess the iconoclasts will always be with us.

He stressed that in Russia, church and state are separate and attacked the Patriarchate’s interference in civil society. "I think that religious symbols have no place in public offices, schools or in institutions - added Ponomarev – for example, if they were hung in schools, what would the many Muslims say? Would they start asking to hang the crescent? And why is it needed? All this will only contribute to dividing society. " Ponomarev has, however, admitted that if some people work in offices that are considered Orthodox, nobody has the right to prevent them from hanging a cross. " Bolstered by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (see here) that has found display of crucifixes in classrooms not in violation of human rights, Chaplin continues to launch high-impact hypothesis on a society that is still recovering from 70 years of state atheism. In the case against Italy raised by a citizen of Finnish origin Sole Lautsi, the Moscow Patriarchate has always openly supported Italy.

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The argument against Christianity in the Public Square is often couched like this: If we let you do it, what is to stop every other group from thinking they can do the same? Wouldn't that be disorganized, disruptive, and an unnecessary incursion on time better spent doing [insert topical reference].
Two problems with this 'obstruction to public order' mentality:

1. It is rather silly to pretend there wasn't a Church before the Communists took over and spent decades exterminating millions of believers. The immigration to a country by people of other faiths is not a reason to place the faith of a thousand years on parity with other beliefs. This doesn't mean we can exclude or intimidate people who believes something else, but equating equality to mutual silence returns the people to the forced totalitarian secularism of the past. I don't go to Muslim countries and knock on the door of the nearest mosque and ask the muezzin to skip the adhan this morning because it makes me uncomfortable. Pluralism should not be a byword for selective exclusion of those outward signs of moral values a group holds which might make another group uncomfortable. 
2. Why does a religious symbol garner so much more attention than the items others take to work? If I were to harken back to the last office I worked at aside from all the family pictures taped to cubicles there were also a lot of bawdy cartoons put up, unsavory images shared in email and through instant messaging, and mature (a certain irony in this word choice) music played. To say that people can bring all the specious dross from their home lives into the office, but a cross or icon will be cause célèbre for a carnival of internecine religious bickering is laughable.

A recent homily I listened to centered on the idea that a purely areligious person simply doesn't exist. If the God a person chooses not to accept is God, then he will make a God out of something else. He will make sacrifices by slavishly cleaning his new car, by constantly adding to his home theatre system, by watching pornography for increasingly longer periods, by focusing on body image to the exclusion of all else, etc. etc. It is odd that the outlandishly colored images of racing cars pinned to cubicle walls, the magazines on stereo components on desks, the lewd computer background images of women, and the quart-sized bottles of wheat grass smoothies seem sensible, but God Himself is deemed a personal matter that should not impose on the otherwise serene workplace environment we all enjoy.