Webinar: Ukraine’s Law Banning Russian Orthodox Church and Affiliated Organizations: Legal and Juridical Aspects

October 29, 2024, 11am – 2:30pm EST / 4pm – 7:30pm CET (Zoom)

Hosted by ICLRS Blog “Talk About: Law and Religion”

and Orthodox Christianity Studies Center – Fordham University

Registration link

The workshop (webinar) will discuss legal aspects of Ukraine’s recent law No 3894 banning the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and religious organizations affiliated with the ROC. The workshop will consist of six units each of which starts with two short inputs (5 minutes), then 20 minutes moderated discussion. After three units, there will be a 20 minutes break.

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FoRB Podcast: The Russian World Narrative and the Russian Aggression in Ukraine

In Episode 3 of The FoRB Podcast, Dmytro Vovk and Merilin Kiviorg invite Catherine Wanner and Thomas Bremer to discuss the Russian world (Russky mir)—a narrative utilized by the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church to justify Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine and to portray Russia as an “anti-Western civilization.” They touch on the ideological origins and content of the Russia world, the Russian Church’s involvement in the war, political and legal responses to the Russky mir narrative by Russia’s neighboring states (Ukraine and Estonia), and debates over these issue in the United States and Europe. 

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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and the Image and Likeness of God

Nathaniel Wood is the associate director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University, where he serves as managing editor of The Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies and the blog Public Orthodoxy.

The Vatican declaration Dignitas Infinita bears witness to the somewhat ambiguous relationship between human dignity and human rights. The text itself affirms what became the prevailing understanding in the latter part of the twentieth century, enshrined in seminal documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: namely, that rights “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” Although this treatment of dignity as the basis of rights bears Catholic influence through the contributions of figures like Jacques Maritain, the documents themselves tend to employ a minimalist concept of dignity. By strategically avoiding philosophical or religious specificity, the documents gain broad support from those who hold to various conceptions of dignity, allowing signatories to affirm human rights based on their own culturally specific conceptions.

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