Events

BRITISH-LITHUANIAN SOCIETY 

Talk by

Xenia Dennen

Chairman of Keston Institute, Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism

“Tolerance or Tyranny: The Moscow Patriarchate’s Empire Building”

Thursday 8^th October 2009

6.30 pm for 7.00 pm

Lithuanian Embassy, 84 Gloucester Place, London W1U 6AU

Russia today is a pluralist society with an extraordinary variety of religions and beliefs.  Yet the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) continues to hanker after the pre-revolutionary world with its “symphonia” of church and state, and would ideally like the Russian Federation to be monolithic with only one de facto established church, i.e. itself. However, during fieldtrips for Keston’s Encyclopaedia on religion in Russia today, Xenia Dennen and her colleagues have discovered what is happening on the ground, how in Russia’s Far East, for example, the Moscow Patriarchate’s supporters are in a minority in areas where Protestantism, Buddhism and Shamanism are in the ascendant.  In its efforts to build up its empire, conflicts have arisen at home and abroad - in Estonia, Moldova, France and on our doorstep in London.  Is this church administration going to learn the ways of tolerance or will it continue to be a tyrannical structure which crushes any sign of dissent?  As a recent victim, an Orthodox priest in western Russia, has stated:   ‘What for a cat is fun, is death for a mouse’.

Xenia Dennen worked with Canon Michael Bourdeaux from 1967 and helped found Keston Institute with him in 1969, while at the same time working for Professor Schapiro at the LSE in the politics department. She is now Keston’s chairman and travels frequently to Russia on fieldtrips, gathering information for Keston’s Encyclopaedia about the contemporary religious situation.  She is a B-LS member.

For Society members only. For membership form email: avilcinskas@aol.com                                                                           

Font Size - Large
Font Size - Small
Print Screen