Lecture
Lecture Plan
1. Processes of secularization and sacralization.
2. The dynamics of the level and character of religiosity; changes in doctrines, theology, religious activity, organization; modernism and fundamentalism. The strengthening of the socio-political activity of religious organizations and believers. The religious factor in political and interethnic conflicts, in socio-political movements.
3. The participation of religious organizations and believers in solving the global problems of our time; the formation of syncretic religious movements. Integrative processes in religions: attempts to create a universal «religion».
4. The ecumenical movement. International religious organizations and forums.
Secularization (from Late Latin «worldly, secular») - desacralization, the process of diminishing the influence of religion on the realization of social and private relations, the loss by religion of its positions in culture and society.
The process of secularization means full or partial independence from the tutelage of religion and the church and can be characterized by the following aspects: economic (the transfer of church property to the state or a private person), political (the secular state), cultural (secular art, education, everyday norms). The signs of secularization are: cognitive autonomization, i.e. the departure of church concepts, norms and values from their religious foundation (Christian love is transformed into secular humanism); the incorporation of religious ideas and logic into a broader worldview system as an auxiliary element, or their complete disappearance from the dominant worldview; the transformation of religion into one of the social institutions alongside others, i.e. the loss by religion of its status as a central element of the social system.
The nature and significance of secularization have always been a subject of debate in the philosophy and sociology of religion. In the doctrines of the French Enlightenment materialists, A. Comte, K. Marx, B. Russell, E. Fromm, J.-P. Sartre, T. O. Dia and others, secularization appears as a natural process of the «aging» of religion, as a consequence of the irreversible development of the human spirit «from myth to logos»: secularization leads to the dying out of religion, which is successfully replaced by science and secular ethics, which help to effectively solve contemporary problems. The opposite point of view (T. Parsons, P. Berger and religious philosophers) asserts that understanding secularization as a linear process of the displacement of religion is incorrect: secularization leads not to the decline of religion, but to a transformation of its role in contemporary culture: today religion moves from society into the individual - religion in secular culture is chosen voluntarily, and this increases its significance for the person. Western civilization grew up on religious soil, and nothing will change this «innate trait». All the positive features of secularization cannot cover its deficiency - secularization has deprived religion of its most important social functions: previously religion sanctified and endowed with unconditional meaning the foundations of social and personal life, gave a unifying idea, values; secularization, on the other hand, postulates that nothing is absolute, and this leads to a loss of meaning and disintegration both of the personality (a person's inner world) and of society (social institutions, morality).
In European culture the process of secularization as a large-scale phenomenon appears in the period of the 15th-16th centuries. Its most significant stages: the Renaissance (an emphasis on the this-worldly, secular art, anthropocentrism as the ideology of culture); the Reformation (the demarcation of secular and spiritual power); the French Enlightenment (the consolidation of the secularization of scientific and social thought begun in the 17th century); the period of bourgeois revolutions (the secular state, the principle of freedom of conscience).
Secularization is a characteristic feature of modern society. Among the causes of secularization as a feature of contemporary Western culture should be included: 1) secular political regimes: the separation of church from state, of school from church, the equalization of rights between believers and non-believers (and adherents of other faiths); 2) the development of science as an alternative explanatory scheme to religion, displacing the sphere of the supernatural from human consciousness; 3) urbanization as a process of a person's emergence from under the power of natural conditions, as a factor changing the rhythm of life; 4) the modernization and acculturation of religion, i.e. a distinctive modernizing of traditional religions through the simplification of doctrine and cult, compromises on the part of the church on disputed questions, the commercialization of religious holidays, etc.; 5) the transfer of some social functions of religion to other social institutions, the decline in the significance of these functions as performed by religious institutions.
Sacralization - (from Latin «dedicated to God» and «sacred»): 1) The endowment of some object (thing, phenomenon, animal, person) with sacred content, an unusual quality. The concept of sacralization expresses the idea of dividing the world into the profane (secular, ordinary) and the sacred (holy, transcendent). The relationship between these two worlds is characterized by certain features: first, the sacred is inexpressible by its nature and can be brought closer to a person (his understanding) only through a symbol; second, communion with the sacred requires a special ceremony,
giving human action a sacred meaning. Historical analysis makes it possible to establish stages in the evolution of the concept of the sacred: the first stage - the sacred is understood as everything unusual (both positive, holy, and negative, cursed); the second stage - the sacred denotes the existing order, norm and pattern of actions; the third stage - the sacred functions as the holy, as an ideal, and appears, in the opinion of T. Parsons, as a synthesis of the categories of mind and the categories of morality. The sacred world, believed E. Durkheim, is a totality of «sacred things», i.e. «separated, forbidden things», expressing socially significant meanings and reflecting the social nature of man; the division into the profane and the sacred is the fundamental feature of religion. D. Bell, following Durkheim, believes that the sacred «emerged as the collective consciousness of people». Many researchers (in particular, representatives of the phenomenological school) are convinced that sacralization is a natural mechanism of the reproduction of culture and is rooted in human nature itself, which experiences a need for sacralization («transcending») of its biological existence (T. Luckmann); it is precisely through sacralization (endowing the human world with meanings and significances) that religion has for thousands of years withstood cognitive and social chaos (P. Berger). 2) In religious studies, sacralization is the process of the spread of a religious worldview and religious sensibility in individual and mass consciousness, the growth of religion's influence in the system of social and private relations. The main sign of sacralization is the appearance in cultural circulation of religious symbols and narratives as meaning-giving, explanatory and sanctioning schemes.
The concepts of «sacralization» and secularization reflect the historical dynamics of the relationship between religion, society and culture. Sacralization acts as an inherent element of the process of the formation and development of human society: religion (especially in the early stages of history) is the most important means of sanctioning all social (power, politics, law, education) and personal (family, economic way of life, everyday life, holidays) activity of people. The peak of sacralization for European society and culture falls on the era of the Middle Ages, when «the main principle or main truth (value) was God. All the important sections of medieval culture expressed this fundamental principle or value» (P. Sorokin). The main mechanism of the functioning of medieval life was the religious sanctioning of virtually any action (deed and thought), which relied on the «absolute conviction in the self-sufficiency of Christian Revelation» (E. Gilson).
Starting from the 15th century, sacralization gives way to the process of secularization as one of the most important characteristics of European culture; but such a change in directions in the religiosity of Europe should not be understood as a linear and unambiguous process: sacralization and secularization coexist as tendencies simultaneously, changing over time in significance, scale, the specifics of concrete manifestations, etc. In the second half of the 20th century, for example, clear signs of a growth in sacralization are observed (increased interest in religion, the appearance of a large number of nontraditional religions, etc.).
Among the causes of contemporary sacralization, which vary greatly in their content and significance, the following should be noted: 1) the roots of religion (epistemological, psychological, social, everyday, etc.) as the totality of the conditions of its emergence and reproduction; 2) political circumstances as a factor drawing religion into the sphere of social administration and power; 3) interest in tradition, following fashion as an inherent element in the organization of human behavior; 4) the crisis of the positivist, materialist worldview as a reason for the search for alternative explanatory schemes.
Let us examine the dynamics of contemporary religiosity using the example of Christianity (Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy). Recently, in discussions conducted within church and near-church circles, two terms have gained particular popularity: fundamentalism and modernism. Strictly speaking, all the participants in these disputes have divided themselves into two groups: some call their opponents modernists, while the latter, in turn, accuse their opponents of fundamentalism. Practically no room is left for any «center» between these two camps. In this situation it seems useful to clarify the origin of the terms used.
At first glance it may seem strange that historically fundamentalism arose within the Protestant tradition, going back to revolutionary reformers (who initially acted within the framework of Catholicism), while modernism arose in the depths of the Catholic Church, moreover in an era when the counter-reformation spirit was still strong within it. However, this very fact is quite telling: it testifies that the religious currents in question were above all a reaction: in one case, of a part of Protestant evangelicals, in the other - of some Catholics - against the main, defining tendency, or «idea», of their confession.
At one time the reformers, having broken free from the heavy embrace of Rome, set out on a free voyage - both organizationally and intellectually. Having rejected Tradition and remaining alone with the Bible, they ensured the possibility of an unrestrained evolution of the understanding of Scripture and, accordingly, of faith itself within the Protestant world, a truly permanent reformation (according to the well-known formula: Ecclesia semper reformanda). In our century this has led to such phenomena as «atheistic Christianity», and other forms of «religionless religion». That is why fundamentalism arose precisely within the Protestant milieu - essentially, as an attempt, contradictory for this tradition itself, on the part of some of its heirs to stop, i.e. to cease the free voyage and finally moor at the immovable «rock of faith». Protestant fundamentalism is a kind of counter-reformation within the Reformation.
The term «fundamentalism» goes back to the title of a series of publications entitled «The Fundamentals. A Testimony to the Truth», undertaken by North American evangelicals in 1910-1912. In them, fidelity to Christian truth was identified with the unconditional acceptance of certain doctrinal assertions: Holy Scripture is divinely inspired and inerrant in every detail; Christ was born of a Virgin, His resurrection was physical, as will be His second coming; the redemption He accomplished should be understood in the sense explained by proponents of the substitutionary theory (Christ suffered in the place of man).
In the Protestant world, Anglican liberals responded to the pronouncements of the American fundamentalists, seeking to express the essence of «the Christian faith in terms of modern thought» («Foundations», Oxford, 1912).
The fundamentalist movement of the beginning of the century was a reaction to the spread of the historical-critical method of studying the Bible and to theological liberalism in general, as an attempt at the rational defense of faith and Christianity amid the rapid desacralization of culture. The ideas of individual freedom and social progress, the autonomy of the humanities and the separation of church and state became dominant, which provoked sharp rejection on the part of conservatively minded Christians. Faith itself, in its traditional understanding, turned out to be under threat, and proponents of extreme views did not fail to come forward with a project of the maximum possible preservation of tradition, its «deep-freezing» (to recall K. Leontiev's image).
However, starting from the mid-1970s of the 20th century, researchers speak of the phenomenon of global fundamentalism. Typologically similar movements exist not only in Christianity (in Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy), but also in other Abrahamic religions - Judaism and Islam - as well as in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Very briefly and schematically, the distinguishing feature of the fundamentalist stance can be defined as follows.
Fundamentalism is an oppositional movement, resisting the process of the secularization of culture, which occurs under the sign of a rejection of the «God hypothesis». It appeals to the absolute authority of Divine Revelation, expressed in Holy Scripture (the Torah, the Christian Bible, the Qur'an) or other canonical religious texts (the Talmud, the writings of the Church Fathers, papal encyclicals, the provisions of Sharia). At the same time, an orientation toward a literal following of the text is asserted, which means that only one understanding of it is recognized as legitimate. In other words, fundamen
talists reject the hermeneutical (interpretive) approach, according to which any text can be understood and interpreted differently even within a single tradition. However, the fundamentalist «faith apart from interpretation» in practice leads to the demand to accept as the only correct understanding the one imposed by the leaders. Thus, fundamentalists oppose any pluralism, which, from their point of view, inevitably leads to relativism, i.e. to the admission of the equal validity of many truths.
Such a stance, as a rule, dictates to proponents of fundamentalism a certain political position. They support far-right political forces, oppose democracy, human rights and freedom of conscience - in favor of strong power, of a rigid moral and ideological order, resting on «true religious values». The meaning of history, from the point of view of fundamentalists, lies in the struggle between the forces of God and the devil (or Christ and the Antichrist). Such a historiosophy leads to the denial of any historical evolution or development and gives rise to intensified apocalyptic expectations. The world history of recent centuries is presented as the victory of the forces of evil and the approach of «the end of the world», by which may be understood unbelief and the moral decay of society (among Western Christians), the victory of secular Zionist ideology (among Jews), the cultural and politico-economic expansion of the West (among Muslims, and also among the Orthodox in eastern Europe). The cause is seen in the fact that religion has lost its determining influence in society, yielding to the pressure of religionless humanism. In this situation, fundamentalists consider themselves a kind of chosen people, called to ensure the victory of God in history (Christian chiliasm, Jewish messianism, the claims of Muslims to the universal significance of their religion and way of life).
The distinctive feature of fundamentalism is that, while calling for a return to tradition
in the forms of a past, historically obsolete manner of religion's dominance
in the life of society, it is, nevertheless (unlike conservatism proper), a modern project of building a «new world order», based on the rejection of the principles of humanism and democracy and the assertion of a totalitarian religious ideology using the technical means of contemporary civilization. Proceeding from the idea of the essential sinfulness of man - in the sense of his inability to adequately perceive the divine call and follow the laws sent from above - fundamentalism proposes to restore in society a coercive religious order, resting on the absolute authority of religious power acting «in the name of God». It may be said that fundamentalism is a radical rejection of the separation of the secular and the religious characteristic of the contemporary era, and an attempt to interpret religion exclusively in terms of power over man - both in the spiritual and in the political sense.
Modernism is the antipode of fundamentalism. As a current, it took shape in the Catholic world, where the centralized ecclesiastical institution itself acted as the conservative-protective force, whose unconditional authority was strengthened by the adoption in 1870 of the dogma of papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals. If earlier the main opponent of the Catholic Church was Protestantism, and its program was the counter-reformation, initiated by the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, then at the beginning of the present century a far more dangerous enemy was discovered in the depths of the church itself - modernism.
The term «modernism» goes back to the encyclical of Pope Pius X «on the doctrines of the mo-
dernists» («Pascendi Dominici gregis», 8 September 1907), in which was outlined a complex of ideas and intellectual attitudes finding expression in the works of a number of French, English, Italian and German Catholic authors. After a thorough analysis, the corresponding «teachings» were classified as a «synthesis of all heresies». The essence of the accusations came down to the following: modernists reject the absolute authority of Divine Revelation, reducing faith to immanent inner experience; they fundamentally separate the spheres of science and religion and use modern scientific methodology to explain the origin and evolution of Christianity and church doctrine, in particular introducing a distinction between the «Christ of history» and the «Christ of faith». In studying Holy Scripture they use the historical-critical method, reject miracles, and understand the church sacraments as external symbolic acts. All this leads to a rejection of the teaching authority of the Church and to religious individualism, which is accompanied by a defense of the pluralism of theological opinions and of democratic principles, in particular the principle of the separation of Church and state.
Catholic modernism had as its source the same Protestant liberal theology and biblical criticism. More important, however, is something else: it revealed an inner dissatisfaction of many Catholics with the fact that by the beginning of the 20th century the Church was increasingly turning into a «bastion of reaction» - both political and intellectual. Modernists indirectly pointed to the danger threatening the Church of falling out of real history «in the name of eternity». And if their theories went to extremes, and some prominent representatives of the movement, after their views were condemned, left the Church altogether, this does not diminish their historical merit: the modernists showed how pressing is the task of an honest clarification of the relationship between Christianity and modernity.
Classical Catholic modernism was an attempt to free the Christian faith from the power of medieval scholasticism and «dogmatism» and to reconcile it with the data of modern science and new socio-political realities. In the aforementioned papal encyclical, agnosticism and immanentism are indicated as the philosophical foundations of modernism. However, most modernists did not renounce faith and did not oppose the ecclesiastical institution, but in their own way tried to bring religion out from under the blow of atheistic science, giving due credit to the latter's evident successes. The dispute between church authority and the modernists was a manifestation of an internal church conflict between traditionalism and openness to modernity,
however, the modernist stance itself is not oriented toward finding that middle, «royal» path which the Church is called to follow.
What is modernism as a religious-ideological stance? Modernism (like fundamentalism) is a reaction to secularization,
hostile to Christian traditionalism. However, in this case what is proposed is not to «deep-freeze» religion, but, on the contrary, to liberate it to the maximum extent (which leads to extremes). On the other hand, modernism is a response to the problem of the new, i.e. to the historical mutability of life, the appearance of previously non-existent forms and ways of engaging with the reality surrounding man - both natural and sociocultural. And just as in fundamentalism (the extreme form of conservatism) there is present a pathos of preserving that which, owing to historical changes, may not simply be externally altered, but essentially distorted, so modernism is obsessed with the very phenomenon of novelty. It does not simply emphasize the justification and necessity of historical changes - in the very fact of the changeability of culture it finds a source of religious inspiration. This is a kind of veneration before the idea of «progress» (which dominated at the turn of the century, but today, fortunately, has been safely outlived).
On what, then, does modernism rely? Above all, on rationality, which has «proven» its effectiveness in European history. Emotionally, it opposes the staticness, routine, and rigidity of tradition, which appears as a «brake on progress». Sensitively responding to all the innovations appearing in culture, in thought, in ways of perceiving the world, modernism always wants to interpret Christianity «in the most contemporary way». And since contemporary thought is becoming less and less metaphysical, less total, and more and more pluralistic - both methodologically and substantively - the consistent modernist stance inevitably leads to Christianity, in its interpretation, being reduced to individual ritual-psychological practice, losing its religious depth. It may be said that religious modernism asserts «horizontalism», and if we return to its merits, they are almost limited to the framework of the most general apologia of God and Christianity by the means of reason.
Being historically limited, modernism today (unlike fundamentalism, which has only gained strength over time) represents an outdated attempt to counterpose the «demands of modernity» to the «rigidity of religious tradition». The Catholic Church resolved this dilemma long ago. The central idea of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) became the so-called aggiornamento, i.e. the «modernization» of the Church - but without «capitulation» before the world. This, of course, does not mean that extreme tendencies have disappeared, but they do not define the general atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of a significant part of the Orthodox Church, which has still not been able to reach a conciliar understanding of the problems that gave rise, in our century, to both modernism and fundamentalism.
Protestant fundamentalism and Catholic modernism at the beginning of the century
are forms of Christian extremism. (In fairness it should be said that they themselves were a reaction to extremism, that is, to unrestrained Protestant liberalism and institutional Catholic conservatism.) In addition, these movements relied on some historically and intellectually limited concepts - be it the medieval theories of atonement among the fundamentalists, or the modernists' emphasis on religious feeling, going back to the subjectivism of the previous century. The further evolution of theological thought in the 20th century showed that contemporary Christianity can find a middle path without veering into extremes.
In the Protestant world, figures such as Barth or Tillich revealed
both the depth and the breadth of genuine theological thinking within the tradition going back to the Reformation. In the Catholic world, a whole galaxy of theologians appeared, relying on modern biblical, patristic and liturgical studies, who destroyed the false alternative of «scholasticism or modernism». It is enough to name such thinkers as Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Romano Guardini, Jean Daniélou, Hans Urs von Balthasar.
However, to follow the «middle path» is a difficult task, requiring a high level of culture, above all theological culture. And since religion is a mass phenomenon, there is always present within it the temptation to solve the problems of the collision of the eternal and the temporal, the divinely revealed and the historical, by means of simplifications and - then - external prohibitions on thought, on doubt and creativity. This, in turn, gives rise to a reverse reaction, fed by the pathos of the struggle against religious obscurantism, the result of which is a purely rationalistic critique, which in the limit rejects the transcendent as such and leaves no room for either Mystery or God. That is why the terms «fundamentalism» and «modernism» remain relevant even today: they denote two kinds of internal danger for the Church, two opposite paths of the degradation of religious consciousness.
A distinctive feature of the contemporary religious situation is that the sources of religious searching have been expanded to the limit - to encompass the entire experience of human history. The religious sphere includes all possible religious traditions and practices (which, in the «European» cultural context, gives rise to bizarre combinations usually called religious syncretism).
A sign of the 20th century is the appearance of a «new religiosity», which in a certain sense has already achieved victory over «outdated» Christianity. And if one thinks historically, one may suppose that many peoples and cultures of the world that experienced the expansion of the Christian religion and culture
An astonishing situation: the failure of Western civilization, which wished to dominate the East, was accompanied by the triumphant march of «Eastern spiritual practices» into the West. And a civilization that grew up on Christianity, and then - in the era of secularization - on its «internal» negation, is compensating for its need for «religious metaphysics» at the expense of non-Christian religiosity. have now taken revenge on their enslavers - if not through expansion, then through the infiltration of their religious ideas and practices. And they are winning precisely through their effectiveness. Western man, wishing to find spiritual support and to «change his consciousness» (including for the more successful conduct of his affairs), often turns not to a priest and not even to a psychotherapist, but - to the nearest guru.
Secularization has turned into a new religiosity. Eastern spiritual schools and practices, syncretic cults, charismatic movements, pagan traditions (for example, African or «Castanedan»), by virtue of their particularity or, conversely, their universality, are quite compatible with contemporary pragmatism - at the level of individuals in need of «spiritual support». And Christianity, having ceased to be a real enemy of contemporary civilization, has lost all its energy (not to mention its «teeth») and is reduced to an element of «the glorious history of our past victories». Christianity is still present «in the bones» of the contemporary European, but, at the same time, its evident ineffectiveness is plain to see.
Another distinctive feature of the contemporary religious situation is connected with the processes of globalization. The world has become a single, interconnected whole, and the world religions have come face to face. It has been discovered that there are religions which still, to a significant degree, determine the social existence of peoples - this concerns above all Islam, which claims to be the basis of a special «Islamic civilization». It has become obvious that secularization is a feature specifically of the Christian world and does not extend to other religious traditions. In the global process the religious factor has proven to be highly significant, since religions are deeply connected with cultures, with the ethics and mentality of peoples. The project of spreading the values of European religionless humanism to the whole world has failed. Only pragmatism has proven universal, but it runs up against the inner spiritual life of people, against the traditional ways of social communication determined by religion.
We live in a multicultural and multiconfessional world, and this poses the problem of the relationship between religions, which turn out to be competitors on the «market of faiths». There is also mutual misunderstanding between representatives of different religious traditions. In addition, some religions acquire political significance, participating in the «clash of civilizations».
This problem can only be solved along the path of asserting the principle of mutual tolerance and respect and of intensifying interreligious dialogue.
The ecumenical movement is a movement for worldwide Christian unity, or, in a narrower and more commonly accepted sense, a movement for better mutual understanding and cooperation among Christian confessions.
Ecumenism arose at the beginning of the 20th century with the goal of:
•strengthening the influence of Christianity;
•resisting secularization;
•developing a common Christian social program, suitable for believers living in countries with different social systems;
•abolishing interconfessional differences by bringing the dogmas of all churches to a single compromise version - a Christian teaching common
to all.
At present, ecumenism is understood as a liberal religious-philosophical movement with a tendency toward uniting various confessional directions within the framework of a single community.
Among the first ecumenical gatherings were the 1920 conference in Geneva (Switzerland), the Lausanne Conference of 1927 (Switzerland), and the formation of the ecumenical movement in its contemporary form was completed by the 1945 conference in Stockholm (Sweden).
In January 1920, the locum tenens of the patriarchal see of Constantinople, Metropolitan Dorotheos, issued an encyclical entitled «Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere», in which he declared that he considered possible the mutual rapprochement and communion of various so-called «Christian churches», despite the dogmatic differences between them. These Churches are called in the encyclical of the Patriarchate of Constantinople «co-heirs, constituting one body». Metropolitan Dorotheos proposed founding a «League of Churches» and, as a first step toward rapprochement, adopting «a single calendar for the simultaneous celebration of the main Christian holidays».
Half a year after the publication of this encyclical, the Patriarchate of Constantinople took part in an ecumenical conference in Geneva (August 1920), which was engaged in developing the principles of the ecumenical movement.
The next notable stage in the ecumenical activity of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was the «Pan-Orthodox Congress» of 1923 in Constantinople. It was attended by representatives of only five local Orthodox Churches: the Constantinopolitan, Cypriot, Serbian, Greek and Romanian.
The Congress establishes a change in the church calendar, permits second marriages for clergy, and adopts other resolutions.
The new style is introduced in the Patriarchate of Constantinople and in the Church of Greece in March 1924, on 1 October 1924 - in the Romanian Church. Over the course of
the following years the Alexandrian and Antiochian churches switched to the new style.
At the Moscow Pan-Orthodox Conference of 1948, the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Poland and the Russian Orthodox local Churches spoke out against ecumenism. In the resolution «The Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church», this representative conference categorically rejected the possibility of participation in the ecumenical movement.
But exactly ten years later, Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsy and Kolomna (chairman of the Department for External Church Relations), speaking at the Moscow Theological Academy (see ZhMP No. 6/1958, pp. 67-73), effectively overturned the decisions of the Moscow Pan-Orthodox Conference and declared a change in the position of the Russian Orthodox Church regarding participation in the ecumenical movement.
The main pretext for departing from the decisions of the Conference was (as it is now) the opinion of the necessity of preaching Orthodoxy among the heterodox. Moreover, Metropolitan Nikolai asserted that «thanks to the participation of some Orthodox Churches» an «evolution of the ecumenical movement» had occurred… «coming into contact with our church life, many figures of the ecumenical movement completely changed their conception of Orthodoxy». And therefore, Metropolitan Nikolai continues, we must «increase our attention to its development».
In 1960, Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) was appointed to the position of chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, still remembered for his ecumenical activity. From this moment the Russian Orthodox Church becomes a direct and active participant in the ecumenical movement.
On 11 April 1961, Patriarch Alexy I made a statement about the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches, in which he confirmed the agreement of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Constitution of the WCC and the compliance of the Russian Orthodox Church with the WCC's requirements for newly joining members. «The Russian Orthodox Church has not only always prayed and prays for the well-being of the Holy Churches of God and for the union of all, but is also full of determination to make its contribution to the great cause of Christian unity along the lines of the former movements «Faith and Order», «Life and Work» and «World Friendship through the Churches»» (Church Life. - 1961. - No. 5-7. - pp. 95-96).
The Bishops' Council (July 1961), in its ruling on the report of Metropolitan Nikodim, approved the entry of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches and thus confirmed the reversal of the decisions of the 1948 Moscow Pan-Orthodox Conference.
The era in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1960 to 1978, when the Department for External Church Relations was under the leadership of Metropolitan Nikodim, is known among opponents of ecumenism under the name of «Nikodimism». It is characterized by an intensification of the Russian Orthodox Church's contacts with the Vatican.
This period ended with the death of Nikodim (Rotov) at the feet of the Pope of Rome in 1978. However, many followers of Metropolitan Nikodim remained in the Russian Orthodox Church. They continued his ecumenical work.
In a statement of the Holy Synod of 20 March 1980, the following is stated:
«Labors in the ecumenical sphere, their development and deepening must also remain at the center of our Church's attention. And, in particular, theological dialogues with non-Orthodox Churches have as their goal the striving to achieve unity… We consider it necessary to continue deepening these dialogues… We consider it necessary to further deepen the participation of the Orthodox Church in the ongoing activity of the WCC, as well as of the Conference of European Churches» (ZhMP. - 1980. - No. 5. - pp. 3-6).
In the ecumenical movement, alongside the WCC, there have long existed such notable regional structures as, for example, the Conference of European Churches (CEC), one of whose leaders was, at one time, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II.
But in the most recent era of the late 1990s, the role of such regional supra-church religious organizations has increased considerably. The most recent example is the creation of a unified «Fellowship of Churches in India» in May
2004.
At approximately the same time the «Interreligious Council of the CIS» was created, whose Presidium included Patriarch Alexy II, the Chairman of the Administration of Muslims of the Caucasus Pasha-zade (Azerbaijan), Catholicos Ilia II of Georgia, the Armenian Patriarch Garegin II, Metropolitan Vladimir (Ukraine), Metropolitan Filaret (Belarus), Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev), the Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, the head of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia Damba Ayusheev and other religious leaders from the CIS countries. In total, 9 Christians, 8 Muslims, 4 Jews and 1 Buddhist.
This council sets itself three main tasks:
1) to affirm «traditional spiritual values» in society;
2) to promote the integration of the CIS countries;
3) to coordinate the relations of religious organizations with the state.
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