The Russian Orthodox Church on Friday slammed the draft preamble for a planned European Union constitutional treaty, accusing it of anthropocentrism and ideological bias.
"The draft preamble is deplorably inaccurate historically. In pointing out the sources of the cultural, religious and humanist legacy of Europe, the draft completely ignores the historical period from the 4th to the 18th century, when Christianity exercised a dominant influence on the development of European countries," the Moscow Patriarchate said in a statement made available to Interfax.
This "means rewriting history based on definite ideological criteria. And from Russian history we know only too well what the diktat of a single philosophy means."
Reference to the influence of Enlightenment philosophies on European civilization is further "evidence of the ideological bias of the draft," the statement said.
"In our opinion, those ideas played an important role in individual countries, but they are not universal or generally accepted. Mentioning ideas of the Enlightenment is no more neutral ideologically than mentioning a religion.
"Approval of anthropocentric humanist formulas in the preamble to the basic law of the EU may lead many religious Europeans, including Orthodox Christians, to take a negative attitude toward the process of unification."
The Russian church expressed hope that its opinion would be taken into account in finalizing the text of the preamble, which is scheduled for one of the next few days.