The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights

The Russian Orthodox Church as moral norm entrepreneur

“…Yet, in order to understand more precisely what is at stake, we need to situate the ideological stance of the traditionalists in a larger debate inside the ROC on human rights. 6 The attitude of the ROC to human rights as an idea and a legal instrument has already been discussed at length in this journal (Agadjanian 2010 ; Stoeckl 2012 ) and elsewhere (Brüning and Van der Zweerde 2012 ; Namli 2014 ; Stoeckl 2014 ). The main point, which is relevant in the context of this article, is that from 2000 to 2008 the discursive strategy of the Moscow Patriarchate with regard to human rights changed.…”

“…The ROC opposes this type of rights diffusion, and it does so with an argument that recalls favourably the discrepancies between human rights and legal practice that were admissible in 1948. I have previously called this argument ‘the discovery of article 29’ (Stoeckl 2014 , 60–65). We find it expressed in numerous ways and by various members of the ROC.…”

“…16 ‘It is about time that the ideological monopoly in the sphere of human rights is over’, he said, and added: ‘… from the point of view of democracy, it is important to provide an opportunity for representatives from different philosophical and moral views to participate in the development of the institution of human rights’ (Ryabykh 2010b ). The representative of the Moscow Patriarchate made a call for the inclusion of religious voices into a post-secular type of deliberation over human rights (I have developed this interpretation at length in Stoeckl 2014 , chapter 5).…”

“…While I do not discuss the domestic situation here for reasons of space, it is important to recognise that traditional values have become increasingly politicised inside Russia in terms of antiliberalism, antiwesternism and Russian exceptionalism. See Agadjanian ( forthcoming ) and Stoeckl ( 2014 , 92–102).…”

Four genealogies of postsecularity

“…Habermas et al 2010;Mrówczynski-Van Allen et al 2016), put theology into the centre of postsecular processes of 'translation' between secular and religious arguments. To this field we may add sociologists of religion who study theological discourses from the angle of postsecular theory and examine how church doctrine and secular realities intersect (Stoeckl 2014a;Dillon 2018).…”