BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Is Estonia really the least religious country in the world ?

Estonians, and especially the young, have turned their backs on organised religion, but belief in neo-paganism is thriving.

Estonia and the Czech Republic are the two nations that often claim to be the least religious in Europe. And they seem to be proud of their unbelief. According to the census of 2000, 29% of the total population considered themselves as adherents of some religion. Almost 14% of them were Lutherans (in the 1930s the percentage of Lutherans was over 80), and about 13% Orthodox Christians divided between two churches: one under the canonical jurisdiction of ecumenical patriarchate and the other under the jurisdiction of Moscow patriarchate.

A Eurobarometer poll in 2005 found that only 16% of the Estonian population believed in God. With this number, Estonia hit the bottom of the list. However, at the same time more than half the population (54%) believed in some sort of spirit or life force. Thus it could be claimed that 70% of the Estonian population are believers, at least in some sense of the word. Professor Grace Davie's description of the British religiosity as"believing without belonging" seems to fit to the Estonian context as well.

The churches are on Sundays mostly empty and the ignorance of religion is widespread. According to the available statistics and surveys, the membership of religious associations in Estonia remains under one fifth of the total population.

Non-Estonians (mainly immigrants of Russian stock) are considerably more religious, and this becomes even more evident among the younger generations. Surveys show that young Estonians in general have become estranged from every form of religion that could be considered as traditional or as religion at all.

Orthodox Church of Estonia offended by Moscow Patriarchate

The head of the Orthodox Church of Estonia, Metropolitan Stephanos, said that public speeches by the visiting Metropolitan Hilarion, of the Moscow Patriarchate, contained a “tone of disdain” toward Estonian history and inhabitants.

Metropolitan Hilarion recently visited Estonia and raised the issue of local church property with the foreign minister. The Orthodox Church of Estonia, an autonomous church committed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, claimed that property issues have already been solved in agreements with the government.

 “Any new agreement would presuppose recognition of the autonomy of the local Metropolitan by the Moscow Patriarchate,” wrote a statement by the Orthodox Church of Estonia. “The aim of one Orthodox Church on the Estonian territory is our common goal, but it should not mean engulfing of the local Church as in 1945.”

Estonian Lutheran Church protests Mormon use of deceased records

The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church is lambasting the Ministry of the Interior for allowing the Mormon Church access to records that may be being used to re-baptize deceased Estonians.

Estonian Lutherans are not happy with the state’s cooperation agreement with the U.S.-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that allows the copying of Estonian state archives to Mormon databases, the Baltic Reports website reported last week.

The arrangement has been in place since the early 1990s, with the ministry receiving millions of Estonian krooni from the Mormon Church in exchange for the access. The ministry, Tallinn City Archive and Estonian Historical Archives signed a contract with the Genealogical Society of Utah, a nonprofit run by the Mormon Church that is dedicated to preserving the records of the families to help people connect with their ancestors by facilitating easy access to historical records.

Money was not the only benefit to Estonia, as the Mormon Church did all the legwork to digitalize the data and make it available for Estonians to trace their ancestry and find out about their family’s past.

State archivist Priit Pirsko told the Postimees newspaper that the state had started an online archive but concluded that “the Mormons’ technological capability is tens of times greater, so we made them a proposal to exchange digital copies.”

Only a return to Christian values will save secularist post-Soviet Estonia

TALLINN – Like many of the Soviet satellite states that found independence after the collapse of Soviet communism, Estonia is suffering from a deeply “confused” social and moral state, with its shift from a “communist form of open materialism to the capitalist form of subtle materialism.” Estonia is a micro-experiment in Europe’s extreme secularization, and is reaping the demographic consequences, a young Estonian pro-life advocate and teacher told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) in an extensive interview.

Estonia’s economic prosperity has led to its social fabric being eaten away by rampant divorce, abortion and suicide; only a return to its Christian roots will save the heavily secularized country, said Maria Madise, 29, a Catholic convert and founding member of the pro-life organization Institute for the Culture of Life in the capital Tallinn.

Madise is in the vanguard of a movement that is manifesting all over Europe: young people who have rejected the Marxist-inspired social and cultural revolution of the 1960s and are working to restore traditional Christian culture.

She told LSN, “What the Estonian general moral and social attitudes are reluctant to adopt – but hopefully will eventually – is that the remedy for the past lies not in hedonistic indulgences, that are inducing now another sort of deadly culture, but in rediscovering the faith and re-establishing the institution of the family.

“Freedom can, of course, destroy as well as to elevate a soul, depending whether the path of virtue or vice is taken.”

The First Anniversary of the Death of Patriarch Aleksei Rediger ...

This Saturday, we will mark the first anniversary of the death of Patriarch Aleksei Rediger of Moscow and all the Russias. On 4 December, the feast of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, Patriarch Kirill served a Pannikhida at the tomb of the late First Hierarch at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow.

This is a memorial service, usually performed on Friday evenings, on the eve of Ancestors’ Saturdays, or on days that the whole Church commemorates the reposed in general. On the morning of 5 December, Patriarch Kirill will return to the same church to celebrate the liturgy, then, he will serve a Pannikhida at the grave of Patriarch Aleksei in the right side of the cathedral.

On this day, all Orthodox churches and monasteries will serve memorial liturgies for the repose of the soul of the late Patriarch Aleksei. Many parishes will hold commemorative events and exhibitions devoted to the departed patriarch.

The clergy and the faithful will remember Patriarch Aleksei, the First Hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate during the most recent period in Russian history, a time that saw the revival of church life in the Motherland.

Today, the Museum of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour opened a new exhibition about the life and ministry of the reposed First Hierarch. It will present his personal belongings, and, on Saturday, viewers of TV Pervy Kanal (First Channel) will see the documentary Путь патриарха (Put Patriarkha: The Path of the Patriarch), dedicated to the memory of Patriarch Aleksei. In the film, figures such as Metropolitan Amfilohije Radović of Montenegro and Primorsky, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and Patriarch Aleksei’s assistant, Nikolai Derzhavin, and TV presenter Aleksei Svetozarsky, who did holiday broadcasts from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, shall give their recollections of the late First Hierarch.