Whereas in Russia the Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)
has been concluding concordat-style agreements with various organs of state
gradually over seven years, in neighbouring Belarus
it has just won far more extensive influence in the affairs of a greater number
of state bodies at one fell swoop.
An "Agreement on Co-operation between the Republic of Belarus and the
Belarusian Orthodox Church" was signed on 12 June by Prime Minister
Gennadi Novitsky and Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeyev) of Minsk and Slutsk,
who reportedly hailed it as "a blank cheque to develop co-operation
programmes with all branches of power". (The Russian-language text is on
the Church's official website www.church.by, though not on the website of the
governmental National Centre of Legal Information ncpi.gov.by.) In addition to
several other state bodies, the agreement endorses collaboration between the
Orthodox Church and the Ministries of Education, Culture, Health, Labour,
Information, Internal Affairs, Defence, Natural Resources, and the Ministry for
Emergencies.
Previously the Orthodox Church had publicised agreements concluded with only
two state authorities: the Sentence Administration Committee within the
Ministry of Internal Affairs (August 1999), and President Aleksandr
Lukashenko's former employer, the Belarusian Border Troops (January 2003).
Although he did not sign the document himself, Lukashenko described the
conclusion of a co-operation agreement with the Orthodox Church as "most
timely" during his four-hour state of the nation address on 16 April,
commenting that "the Orthodox Church is the basis of our faith... who will
help it, if not us?" While the co-operation agreements forged by the
Moscow Patriarchate in Russia do not have explicit Kremlin endorsement, the
Belarusian concordat therefore enjoys top-level state approval.
So far the only other former Soviet republic to conclude a concordat with a
local Orthodox Church at the highest state level is Georgia, whose President
Eduard Shevardnadze signed a "constitutional agreement" together with
Patriarch-Catholicos Ilya II on 14 October last year. The provisions in that
document, however, such as exemption from tax and restitution of church
property, broadly correspond to those in existing laws on religion and
lower-level co-operation agreements in both Russia and Belarus.
The new Belarusian concordat goes much further by introducing into the legal
terminology of the state several key concepts vigorously promoted by the Moscow
Patriarchate since the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The most significant is in Article 1, in which the state guarantees the
Orthodox Church "right of ecclesiastical jurisdiction on its canonical
territory". According to the Moscow Patriarchate, this encompasses the
whole of the Republic of Belarus. Commenting to Belarusian news agency Belapan
shortly after the co-operation agreement was concluded, Minsk-based lawyer Dina
Shavtsova suggested that, in practice, this provision would result in "the
Orthodox community causing problems for members of other denominations trying
to build houses of worship in any inhabited area".
In a statement accompanying the signing ceremony, Metropolitan Filaret remarked
that, when freedom of religious belief was proclaimed in the Soviet Union at
the close of the 1980s, "various neo-cultic doctrines proliferated due to
ignorance about religion". Albeit similarly unspecific, such terminology
now carries legal weight in Article 2 of the agreement, which states that
co-operation between the Orthodox Church and state bodies widens the scope for
"the common fight against pseudo-religious structures". While Article
4 maintains simply that the agreement "does not have the aim of harming
the rights of any confessions or citizens," it does not rule this out as
its consequence.
Prime Minister Novitsky has reportedly stated that the agreement does not
restrict governmental co-operation with other religious confessions. Its
terminology, however, underlines the exclusivity of the Orthodox Church's new
role: While the Republic of Belarus is termed throughout as "the
State," the Belarusian Orthodox Church is referred to simply as "the
Church," and both signatories assert that the strengthening of their
mutual co-operation "responds to the interests of the Belarusian
people" as a whole.
Commenting on the concordat, Shavtsova also remarked that the Orthodox Church
was gaining power over the state rather than becoming a state institution. On
the important issue for the state of property restitution, however, the
agreement's provision for general co-operation between the Orthodox Church and
the Ministry of Culture falls short of challenging a tough restriction in the
new law on religion, the like of which would be vigorously protested by the
Moscow Patriarchate if it existed in Russia. According to Article 30 of the
Belarusian law, religious organisations are given preference by the state in
the restitution of religious buildings and their adjoining territory,
"except for those which are used as objects of culture, physical culture
and sport".
Speaking to Forum 18 from Minsk on 23 June, member of parliament Ivan
Pashkevich said that an unpublished draft version of the concordat contained
anti-constitutional provisions such as immunity from prosecution and media
censorship powers for Orthodox clergy. Although these provisions do not appear
in the final version, he said, this made it "much more dangerous,"
since they will be incorporated into subsequent agreements between the Orthodox
Church and individual state bodies which will be closed to public scrutiny.