DESCRIPTORS:

World outlook; religion and school; contemporary Russian schools; church and school relations in Russia; renewal of religion; influence of religion; relationship of religion and education; church influence on Russian schools; Russian state role and religion; church domination of state schools; factors preventing church domination; the paradigm of influence; a new relationship of church and state; predictions for the future.

SYNOPSIS:

If a philosophical world outlook is the result of a need to investigate the world in order to obtain the principles of a righteous and virtuous life then a religious outlook rests on divine revelation about a virtuous life. Science and religion seemed not to share a common methodology until science, due to its neglect of moral limitations, brought itself and all of mankind to the brink of catastrophe. Our contemporary world is witness to the rise of a new configuration of stability; a harmonization of religion, science, and philosophy created by a discipline external to all three – education.

In the very near future, relationships between school and church will be rebuilt. The Russian state will support the Orthodox Church and the church’s influence on Russian schools will grow. The Russian state will passively approve strengthening the church’s influence on education until a certain boundary is crossed.

There are objective factors that will prevent the domination of church over school. Common problems make them more likely partners rather than leaders or followers. There will be a change in the paradigm of influence and a new definition of relationship will be developed because “today, we are practically reproducing and reintroducing a ‘quasi-Soviet’ pattern.”

The field of education might help develop a partnership between church and school.

A person’s world outlook is one of the most important and complex results of an individual’s education. Unlike one’s attitude to the world or one’s perception of the world, this) world outlook always presupposes reflection, and it is always based on reflection on that which is rational and real. In this sense, a world outlook[2] can be philosophical, scientific, and religious. It can combine all three types, or it could be anyone of them. Moreover, these attributes don’t necessarily contradict each other. They just have different foundations, which can either be in conflict with each other, or in agreement.

Historically, these philosophical and religious world outlooks sprang up almost simultaneously in Greece, Palestine, India, and China at the beginning of the so-called “axial time”[3]. A philosophical world outlook in these areas of the world replaced irrational and extra-personal myths; it was based on axiomatic knowledge and on obvious logic, which derive directly from true-to-life rational observations. A religious world outlook developed from the combination of ideas about supernatural forces, which came from mythology and rational-reflexive philosophical wisdom. This became the basis for the four great world religions: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. So if a philosophical world outlook is the result of a need to investigate the world in order to obtain the principles of “a righteous and virtuous life”, then a religious world outlook rests on “divine revelation” about “a virtuous life”. However, for quite a long time science was not interested in  “justice and virtue”. Its field was so-called “experimental knowledge” concerned with different abstract objects – theoretical models of certain aspects of reality. Such models gave rise to all the immense scientific and technicalprogress of the world from antiquity to today.

Religion and philosophy share this common trait – they seek a way to establish and define what virtue is; thus, philosophy and science share a common approach in their methodology. Until very recently, science and religion seemed not to share a common methodology, until science, due to its neglect of moral limitations, brought itself and all of mankind to the brink of catastrophe, and until religions saw the frightful results of the inhuman and fanatical distortions inherent in their dogmas.

Our generation has experienced the time when science was forced to accept “the hand of aid” from religion (in questions of moral principle), and religion began to seek support from modern science for protection against the folly of fundamentalists.

Thus, our contemporary world with its growing uncertainty on all sides is witness to the rise of a new configuration of stability.

Moreover, this stability is not static or dogmatic, it is flexible, synergetic, and if you wish, multi-dimensional. Today, discussion clearly centers on the convergence of the three ideological bases: the religious, philosophical, and scientific. Therefore it is clear that the interrelationships between the philosophical, religious and scientific world outlooks should not be built on the principle of “either…or”, but instead on the principle of complementarity. However, if it is built on this principle, then this complementarity, this harmonization and coordination of religion, science, and philosophy should be created by a discipline external to all three of them. In the modern world I see only one force, which by definition and a priori, can both unite and, at the same time, be independent from these disciplines. This force is education.

It means, that contemporary education should help to form such a world outlook by developing a curriculum which includes philosophy, religion and science, but which does not include the history of their hostility and opposition to one another.

In modern Russia the relations between School and Church are very topical subjects because these two institutions embody three distinct world outlooks, that were recently hostile to one another, but now are forced “to live together”. The topical nature of this phenomenon can be understood as Russia is experiencing the crisis in civilization that besets most of the world today.

First, historical analogies (the USA in the 1930s, Germany in the 1920s, Brazil and Mexico in the 1990s) tell us that similar socio-psychological and socio-cultural shifts lead, as a rule, to a gigantic growth in religious activity outside traditional faiths. In other words, there is a swift propagation of different sects that leads to a radical reformation of one of the traditional faiths, or God forbid, to forms of public madness such as totalitarianism. Russia was truly lucky to experience this shift with the simultaneous natural death of totalitarian Communist ideology. Fortunately in the 1990s, we had become mature enough to overcome a passion for nontraditional religious movements, and we managed to legally restrict their activities in Russia, albeit with partisan support from “native” religions and faiths. This means that some time soon the peoples of Russia might expect a multidimensional renewal of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. In fact, we are already witnessing the first steps of such a renewal which in its turn means a tremendous growth in the social activities of churches, predominantly in the spheres of education, health care, and social assistance. It is possible that the above named faiths will become active members of multi-sided social partnership which will construct new types of relationships between education, society and state.

It is also evident that in the very near future relationships between School and Church, our two most important and co-equal socio-cultural institutions, will be rebuilt; this phenomenon has been typical and has occurred in many countries during the last 150 years.

Historical analogies tell us that with its strong socio-cultural influence, the Orthodox Church will develop its political influence as well. For example, Germany after WWII had the Christian-Democratic and Christian-Social Parties’ union as their mainstay and support of their country. In post-war Italy the Catholic Party played this same role; after the collapse of its colonial empire, Great Britain faced the power of conservatives, mostly clerical in their nature; General Charles De Gaulle became President of France during the period of granting independence to French colonies, and the Catholic Church fully supported him.

All that has been said before allows us to conclude that the Russian state, regardless of its legal structure, will support the Orthodox Church in increasing its influence on its flock. Russian schools in spite of their legally proclaimed municipal status, in reality remain public; consequently, the Church’s influence on them will continue to grow.

The Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church, published in 2001, demonstrated a serious shift towards secular activities; very soon we can expect the appearance of a new political party grounded on the maxims of Orthodoxy. Today we can already observe religious influences in the actions of all Duma parties: the United Russia, the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and “The Motherland” Party (“Rodina”).  It goes without saying, that the active social and political activities of the Russian Orthodox Church will increase and can already be seen in the increased number of clerics in schools. Mutatis mutandis, everything, which has been said about the Russian Orthodox Church, can easily be applied to Islam in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and the republics in the Caucasus, and to Buddhism in the Republic of Hkalmg-Tanch (Calmykiya).

However, the Russian state will passively approve strengthening of the Church’s influence on education, until a certain boundary is crossed – that boundary is marked by the right to privacy of allowed by the state. We should therefore expect competition between the public, official “ideological” education in schools and the multi-faceted influence on the spiritual life of students and teachers of the Orthodox Church. If there is no harmony between the influence of State and Church on younger generations, then we can expect growing tensions between them. The situation is even more complicated because churches and political parties are not homogeneous. Today the basic political forces of the state (any kind of “centrists”) and the majority of traditional religious leaders are interested in bringing about such a harmony. But tomorrow, forces in the churches embodying tendencies to increase the private and personal foundations of one’s faith, will face the contradiction between its aspirations and the power of the state. As often happens in Russia, we expect that the harmony between Church and State in education will definitely come into question, and the State will attempt to control every church activity in public schools.

If we apply the same logic, we will see that the resistance of science to religion is almost over, and as a result, the resistance of School to Church is almost over too. But our experience taught us long ago that the end of one form of resistance would inevitably bring another kind of domination. This is exactly the moment when the question arises, ‘Does it mean in the pairing of “School and Church,” that the dominating role should now switch to Church in contradiction to the epoch of Enlightenment and the Soviet era, when School played the leading role?’ This is the most difficult question the traditionally democratic, and liberal, and intelligent Russian mind of today has to face.

The answer is, most certainly, no.  And this is not because there are circumstances “here and now”, which might prevent it. Quite to the contrary, the objective situation, which we have analyzed above, would have everyone conclude that the Church will start controlling schools as soon as tomorrow, as has happened in many countries that experienced a similar situation. But there are a number of objective factors, some common problems of Church and School in Russia today that will make such a scenario hardly possible.

I will name just a few of these objective factors which will prevent the domination of Church over School:

• The multi-confessional and multi-religious nature of modern Russia in every part of its territory. If our schools were not mostly public, then we might expect to have multi-confessional schools that would correspond to the multi-faith nature of our state. In Russia, due to the policy of having a  public school system, this phenomenon will not occur. Try to imagine a Russian public school which will have different days-off, as a minimum, three (or four, or even five), different cafeterias, different teachers of different religions, different attitudes to teaching boys and girls together, different prayer times; all of this sounds totally unrealistic.
• A serious inner and often outer negative attitude of teachers and   parents to any religious activities within schools. Some data confirm that one-third of all teachers and one-fifth of all parents are still atheists.
• There will be even more negativism towards a Catholic priest from the Russian Orthodox believers and vice versa, and both of them together might expect bitter criticism coming from Protestants and other sects, not to mention the mutual hatred which can be easily raised between Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
• The small number of clerics and the lack of their readiness (regardless of their faith) for mass religious instruction of both school students and teachers makes the perspective of Church domination over schools hardly possible. Though if under serious circumstances one or several religions decide to systematically influence public schools, this will, most certainly, bring about a rebirth of radical and even totalitarian sects which more effectively preach to and indoctrinate young and innocent minds than traditional priests. Let us not forget that our schools did open their doors to Religion in 1991-1993 and that this openness brought mostly “non-traditional” preachers into the schools.
• Common problems which both Church and School experience today, make them more likely partners than leaders and followers. One of the problems is a change in the paradigm of influence: the Church – on its flock, School – on its students. Both Church and School are changing their strategies which previously lacked a clear identity. Before, the Church sought a way to preserve its flock, the School was directed towards collectivism and teaching. Now both Church and School are orientated towards a personal search for truth, towards variety in education and religious instruction, the development of one’s own mind, and the search for an individual path in education and one’s own way to God.
• Another problem, which is also very serious, is a new and adequate definition of the level and kind of relationship of religion with the state. Both School and Church cannot be independent from the state, but a direct and rigid dependence on the state is harmful for them both.
• Finally, there is a problem of the interaction of Church, School, State and Family in our children’s education. Today we are practically reproducing and reintroducing a “quasi-Soviet” pattern. The State pretends that it formulates goals for education and demands that School should achieve them. Schools can no longer do this and looks to Church for this. The Family as an institution ignores all three forces and tends to decline more and more. Meanwhile, we are facing a deep and growing moral crisis in our Motherland today, and we cannot see any other “savior” of the situation other than Church, School and Family together. This should come about with the state playing the leading role andwhile retaining its regulating authority.
• I believe that the field of education might help in developing a partnership between Church and School and bring about a serious and deep level of cooperation between them, while every partner will have its own role toplay and keep their own unique potential free and intact.  The Church, together with the family, should be the source of moral education, form the inner world of children, impart a sense of responsibility, and develop a sense of conscience. The School, again together with the family, should be responsible for forming acceptable standards of social behavior, social interaction skills, and a sense of civil honor, and dignity.

I predict that in the very near future the formation of a partnership of Church, School and families will lead to the establishment of long-term partnership of Church and School in education. This will finally allow us to form students who are both independent and responsible, to create civic relationships based on mutual respect, to restrict the ideological influence of the state, and to advance the state’s evolution from the paternalistic model of the past to one that is based on positive legal and socially acceptable norms.