Liberal Christianity is dying, Russian Orthodox Bishop says

Geneva/Switzerland, | 17.02.2008 | APD | Ecumenism

Russian Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative to the European Institutions, said on February 15 that liberal Christianity is on its way to extinction.

"Liberal Christianity will not survive long and political correctness within the Christian environment is destined to die," Hilarion said during the Central Committee meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at Geneva, Switzerland.

The Orthodox Bishop also criticized the words of the Anglican primate, Rowan Douglas Williams, regarding the "inevitability" of introducing the "Shariah" (Muslim Law) in the United Kingdom.

"I would like to warn you about the perils of liberal Christianity," a trend, he said, that has sharply divided the Christian community in the last decades.

"Today we can't talk about Christian morality because the standards of 'traditional' and 'liberal' Christians are dramatically different and the abyss between these two branches of Christianity is growing," he added.

"We are hearing from some Christian leaders that marriage between a woman and a man is not the only possible option for the creation of a Christian family, that there can be other type of couples and that the Church should be 'inclusive' by recognizing such lifestyles and grant them a solemn blessing," Hilarion also said.

The Orthodox bishop also said that "we have heard that the human life is a negotiable value, to the point that it can be aborted in the mother's womb." "What has happened with Christianity? In a confused and disoriented world, “Where is the prophetic voice of Christians?" he asked.

Finally in a veiled criticism to the Anglican primate, Hilarion said that "it is not our duty to defend Shariah, promote alternative lifestyles or secularized values. Our mission is to announce what Christ himself announced".

In January this year, at a meeting celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ecumenical Council of the Churches of Austria (ÖRKÖ), Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, emphasized the importance of retaining traditional Christian moral standards in the contemporary liberal West. "An internally devastated Christianity deprived of inner strength by the renunciation of its ancient traditions cannot resist the pressures of the present age", he said.

"Under the influence of liberal ideas and secular moral standards, we must fear that we may lose the spiritual and moral standards that have sustained the Christian church over many centuries. When one or another Christian community revises the theological or moral basis of Christianity in order to make itself more 'contemporary' or more 'politically correct' this is a direct route to the loss of its spirituality", Bishop Hilarion emphasized. In his words, "Christians only have strength if they follow the precepts of Christ, not when their build their lives upon the whims of the secular world".

Bishop Hilarion, born in 1966, is a member of the Executive and Central Committees of the World Council of Churches (WCC), of the Presidium of ‘Faith and Order’ Commission, as well as of numerous bilateral theological dialogues.

The Orthodox Theologian and Bishop of Vienna and Austria is also a permanent member of the Joint International Commissions for the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, between the Orthodox Church and the Anglican Church, between the Orthodox Church and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

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