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Welcome or not, Russian Orthodoxy is back in public schools “..Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of religion to public life, localities in Russia are increasingly decreeing that to receive a proper public school education, children should be steeped in the ways of the Russian Orthodox Church, including its traditions, liturgy and important people. The lessons are typically introduced at the urging of church leaders, who say that the enforced atheism of communism left Russians out of touch with a faith that was once at the core of their identity. The new curriculum reflects the nation's continuing struggle to define what it means to be Russian in the post-communist era and what role religion should play after being brutally suppressed under Soviet rule. Yet the drive by a revitalized church to weave its tenets into the education system has prompted a backlash, and not only from the remains of the Communist Party. Opponents assert that the Russian Orthodox leadership is weakening the constitutional separation of church and state by proselytizing in public schools. They say Russia is a multiethnic, pluralistic nation and risks alienating its large Muslim minority if Russian Orthodoxy takes on the trappings of a state religion. The church calls those accusations unfounded, maintaining that the courses are cultural, not religious... The dispute came to a head recently when 10 prominent Russian scientists, including two Nobel laureates, sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin, protesting what they termed the "growing clericalization" of Russian society. In addition to criticizing religious teachings in public schools, the scientists attacked church efforts to obtain recognition of degrees in theology, and the presence of Russian Orthodox chaplains in the military... In Imperial Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church wielded enormous influence as the official religion, and virtually all children took a Russian Orthodox course known as the Law of God.One of the scientists who signed the letter to Putin, Zhores Alferov, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000, said he feared that the country was returning to those days. He recalled that his own father had to study the Law of God under the last czar, Nicholas II.... Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, leader of the church, has repeatedly asserted that to appreciate the arts, literature, heritage and history of Russia, children need to know about Russian Orthodoxy. He described the scientists' letter to Putin as "an echo of the atheistic propaganda of the past..."
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