Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program bringing
you news, views, information,
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analysis and
up-to-date information regarding
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religious liberty
in the United States
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but around the world also.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on the
program is Dr. John Graz,
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not the first time I must say.
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No, and it's always a pleasure
to be with you, Lincoln.
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Thanks for
coming on the program.
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You're the Secretary General
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of the International
Religious Liberty Association.
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Yes.
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And that should be the
cue I think on this program.
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I said the United States
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but let's look
at religious liberty
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and the global scene on this.
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I'm sure like many people
you've been seeing headlines
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lately about
Russia and the Ukraine
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and the Crimean Peninsula.
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Does that resonate with
you at all from history?
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Oh, yes, of course.
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Because you know
during long time,
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the countries of
Ukraine and Russia
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have been very close and
during the Sovietic time,
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they were really close
and you had a lot of leaders
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of the Soviet Union
who came from Ukraine.
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And it means from
our side, from the west,
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it was more or
less the same countries
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but it was two
different countries
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and we see today
that they have a problem
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and they will
have still problem,
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they had already problem at
the level of religion, you know?
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We have in Ukraine,
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a lot of religious
freedom we can say...
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Since the fall of
the Soviet Union, yes.
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Yeah, there is no one church
which is dominating Ukraine
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but you have several
different Orthodox Church,
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you have the Catholic Church
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and you have
many evangelicals now.
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It means that you
have this possibility
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to built a pluralistic
society but the other side
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you have also a lot of
people coming from Russia,
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they still speak Russian.
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And they have
been so much associate
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with the history of
Russia that now it's difficult
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to cut when a part of Ukraine
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would like to
join the European side,
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you know, it
creates some tension
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and this is the challenge
they have to solve now.
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There's no question that
it's a very dynamic political
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and even a religious situation
but what resonates with me,
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I remember my history
lessons a few years ago.
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The biggest war
before World War I
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was the Crimean War.
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Yeah, yeah. Where--
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Between the west
and the Russian, yeah.
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Well, it was the Great
Powers, that was France...
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England.
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England, Russia and
the Ottoman Turkish Empire
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battled viciously there,
the difference between it
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and the World War, it
involved all the major powers
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but the sphere of
battle was very narrow
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around the Crimean Peninsula
and a couple of the provinces
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of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
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but it was a bloody battle that
lasted three years ending in,
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I think, 1856 as I remember.
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But what really
impressed me on that and I--
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you know, I went by my
memory but I when refreshed it,
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every source
that I looked up says
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that the proximate cause of
the Crimean War was religion.
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It was a religious war
involving the great powers.
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So to me now that the
agitation begins there again,
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you have to ask the question,
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what role does
religion play this time around?
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Yeah, probably, you know,
the religion there play a role,
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it's not probably on
the first on a front line.
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No, it's not the
main issue this time.
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But it's clear that,
you know, in Ukraine,
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you have the
Russian Orthodox Church
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and of course the
Russian Orthodox Church
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is connected with Russia,
with the patriarch and so on.
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And you have the independent
or Ukrainian Orthodox Church
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which are more on
the side of the west.
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I mean that it
makes things complicated
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and you have also
now the evangelical
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because of the president,
you know he's a former Baptist
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or former Baptist
pastor if I remember well.
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It means in some part
people ask the question,
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what is the position of the
evangelical in this conflict?
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And as a church we
have to be very careful
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because we have
connection on both sides
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and to be careful to say that,
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you know, the church
is not involved in politic
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but we pray for peace.
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And we pray for good
relation between people
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'cause, why, you know,
in most of the country,
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in Europe
countries, you have minorities,
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ethnical minorities,
linguistic minorities
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and it means you have
potential conflict everywhere.
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If you don't know how to
deal with the differences,
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you will spend your
time fighting each other
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and that's another way.
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And that's been the great
success of the European Union
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that they've managed for a
few years to sort of set aside
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or to accommodate
these bubbling differences.
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You know history
and you remember a lot,
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almost every 25 years
in Europe, you had a war,
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that was a cycle and it
lasted, lasted all the time
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and when the
European dominated the world,
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the wars became world wars
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and it mean
that it was terrible,
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but because, you know,
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Europe tried to build
a community of interest,
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they learn how to talk instead
to fight, to talk together
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and they have to
talk a lot just to find
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an agreement between them
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but it helps, they're
very, very positive sides
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because at the end, you know,
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the worst thing which
can happen it's the war
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and you spent more
money fighting than talking.
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You know, you
organize a lecture,
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conferences to make
peace, it takes time,
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you know nothing, maybe
you don't get any result
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but at least you have peace.
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When you start the
war, that's terrible.
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People die, people are killed,
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you destroy things and
that the worst you can have.
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I follow things
very close like you do
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and I saw a photograph
recently in the Washington Post.
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It was when Russia
through its paramilitary proxies
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have taken over
the naval base, well,
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not only they
earned the naval base
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but they took
over Crimea as a whole
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and the military bases there.
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And there was a photograph
of the Russian paramilitaries
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and standing next to them
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was an Eastern
Orthodox Metropolitan
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and immediately I
knew what was going on
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as often in the
past the eastern orthodox
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have thrown in their lot
with the Russian separatists.
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Oh, yeah, you know,
they-- politics and religion
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have not been separated.
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You know, during the war in
Yugoslavia, you had the same.
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You know, on one
side you have the Catholic
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on other side, the Orthodox,
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and the Muslim
on the other side,
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it means and sometimes
which is shocking for us,
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you know, the
priest blessed the gun
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and blessed the
cannon and so on,
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that's
something we should avoid.
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Really when the churches
are so much involved in politic.
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But you know--
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I'm glad you made that
point because on this program
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we're constantly
speaking of this,
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of course in the US
from a constitutional
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civil background,
this inhibition against
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joining church and state, it's
called the separation of church
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and state with
the first amendment.
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But US Constitution
and governance aside,
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it's just a
logic of world affairs
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that whenever you allow
religion to become immersed
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with politics, these rivalries,
these ethnic differences,
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it gets explosive
because it's a very unhealthy
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marriage of church
and state in that sense.
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But, you know, religion has been
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so much part of their history
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and sometime that was difficult
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to make a distinction.
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Sometime, you know,
the nation did not exist
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but the church
existed and the church gave
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more or less
help to have a nation.
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It means they've
been always very close
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and the concept of separation
is almost to say we don't exist
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or but if you
recognize that you have history
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in the country, you play
inference that's more difficult
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for you to accept,
you could be separate.
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Or more difficult is
accept-- you can be separate
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and did
not-doesn't get any privileges
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because at the end
that is the matter of power.
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And that's what's being
played out in Russia right now,
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the Eastern Orthodox
Church is wanting the privileges
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they had in the Tsar's times.
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Let me get it back
again and I made a comment
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about the Crimean War
and I'll bring it up again
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and then we'll move on.
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But the Crimean
War as I understood it
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and I've reviewed
it again was against
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the backdrop of
the Ottoman Empire
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which had ruled a large
part of the now Muslim world
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and indeed into Europe itself
for several hundred years.
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They were a
great threat to Europe
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at the time of Martin
Luther in the mid 1500s.
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In fact you can easily
argue that the reformation
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was for Luther was only enabled
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because they were
so afraid of the Turks
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coming up with Muslims,
that he was allowed to survive
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and the reformation flourished.
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But 300 years
later in the mid 1800s,
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the Ottoman Turkish
Empire was still large
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but weak, and
against that backdrop
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there were
complaints from the Middle East
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between all of the
major Christian factions
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that they were being
harassed by the Turks.
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You remember that from history?
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And then there was a competition
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between the Eastern
Orthodox, between the Catholics
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and the Protestants
who were going to defend
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the Christian
interests in the holy place.
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And so Russia
came in as the champion
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and they attacked Turkey.
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Once they did that,
England, Protestant England--
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no, first of all
then Catholic France,
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they wanted to be the
champion for Christians,
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England I think thinking
more as a world power equation
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but happening to
be Protestant decided
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no, we will take
the upperhand so England
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led the alliance of
Turkey strangely enough
00:10:25.88\00:10:31.49
and France in attacking Russia
to stop the Eastern Orthodox
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influence into the Muslim area
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so it was a purely
religious conflict.
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And it's
resonated with me lately
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because I've been
reading historical analysis
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of the Pope of Rome
and Hitler and Mussolini
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and so on in World War
II and there's no question
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that the pope at that
time Pacelli, cardinal Pacelli
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had an interest
in supporting Hitler
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because he's so the
excursion into Russia
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is not just removing communism
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but removing
his religious rival,
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the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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You know you're
right, that's so difficult
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to make a distinction, you know,
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especially when you have a
long tradition in countries
00:11:13.98\00:11:17.34
where religion
has always been part,
00:11:17.37\00:11:20.64
an important partners
and also something, you know,
00:11:20.67\00:11:23.68
the idea that if you're
all together with one religion,
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you are stronger than
if you have a division.
00:11:28.14\00:11:31.19
And especially if your
minority is alive with some
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other countries where
you have the majority.
00:11:35.32\00:11:38.52
A religious minority
is seen as a beachhead
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for another country, for
another national interest.
00:11:40.60\00:11:42.44
It makes things more complicated
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and this is
what we have to learn
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when we defend
religious freedom.
00:11:45.09\00:11:46.63
We have to learn the
history of every country
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and to try to
understand how we can promote
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religious freedom
in such a context.
00:11:51.38\00:11:53.96
Absolutely and it's a very
good point that it doesn't--
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religion is not in a
vacuum in this world of ours
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and while we work towards
separation of church and state,
00:11:59.36\00:12:02.28
we need to acknowledge
00:12:02.31\00:12:03.62
the dynamic that
it plays in society
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and with
governance and with history.
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And many of these countries--
United States doesn't think
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more than a couple
of hundred years back
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but many of these countries
what happened 400 years ago
00:12:11.80\00:12:15.07
is as present
as today, you know,
00:12:15.10\00:12:16.58
they're fighting that
war at least in the dynamic
00:12:16.61\00:12:18.68
of their present politics,
it comes up all the time.
00:12:18.71\00:12:21.57
It goes back to the
origin of the humanity,
00:12:21.60\00:12:25.12
you know, if you go to
Egypt, if you go to Babylon,
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you had always a strong
influence of the religious
00:12:27.49\00:12:31.40
category of religious leaders,
00:12:31.43\00:12:33.73
and sometimes they were
able to change even the pharaoh
00:12:33.76\00:12:36.73
in Egypt, we saw
that with Akhenaten,
00:12:36.76\00:12:39.67
you know, where the power
of the religious institutions,
00:12:39.70\00:12:44.06
it's something that
government cannot neglect
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and of course
sometime it's linked,
00:12:46.84\00:12:48.89
it's so mixed with
the history of the people,
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with the culture
of the people that,
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if you say that I
leave, I quit this religion
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is like if you said
that I quit my country.
00:12:57.49\00:12:59.87
Yeah, but we always need
to have a program on that,
00:12:59.90\00:13:03.15
Akhenaten's change
from the ancient gods
00:13:03.18\00:13:07.13
and when he left, they
expunged his record totally.
00:13:07.16\00:13:10.34
Yeah.
00:13:10.37\00:13:11.41
There was a
program against Akhenaten's
00:13:11.44\00:13:13.99
new one god worship but
that is a curious anomaly
00:13:14.02\00:13:17.57
and it'd be
interesting to know what role
00:13:17.60\00:13:19.47
did the knowledge
of the one true God
00:13:19.50\00:13:20.94
play in that shift in Egypt.
00:13:20.97\00:13:24.42
This is perhaps a good time
to take a break so stay with us,
00:13:24.45\00:13:28.60
we'll be back shortly to
discuss at greater length
00:13:28.63\00:13:31.47
what's happening
in the world today,
00:13:31.50\00:13:32.84
what is the state of religious
liberty internationally.
00:13:32.87\00:13:35.31