Adopted on February 4, 2011, by the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church As is emphasized in the Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights, freedom is one of the manifestations of God’s image in human nature (II. It is wrong however to use this freedom to oppose God who created man (Gen. 1:27) and who rules the world through His Providence (Acts 17:28).

This freedom should not be used to blaspheme God or to talk slanderously about His Church and people. Such resistance to the Creator destroys the order of the universe established by Him and leads to much distress and suffering in the life of the creation. Blasphemy and slander: the Church’s view In the Church’s tradition, blasphemy is understood as an outrageous or disrespectful action, statement or intention about God or a sacred thing.

The sin of blasphemy is mentioned in the Old Testament books (for instance, Lev. It is repeatedly mentioned in the New Testament (for instance, Mk. 7: 21-23; Jn. Paul describes blasphemers as those who made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim. 1:19), understanding blasphemy not only as an outrage against God or His holy name but also any act of falling away from the faith. As an expression of the desire to outrage or profane the Creator, blasphemy is one of the gravest moral crimes. Open and persistent opposition to the Creator renders a person incapable of repentance and distorts the godlike constitution of the human personality.

The Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights points out that ‘modern law normally protects not only people’s life and property but also symbolical values, such as the memory of the dead, burial places, historical and cultural monuments and national symbols.

Blasphemy involves such sins as sacrilege, profanity and defilement of things sacred. One of the forms of blasphemy is slander against the Church as the Body of Christ, a pillar and buttress of the truth (1 Tim. At the same time, slander as deliberately false accusation of non-committed or immoral action is a sin against the truth destructive for the universal order established by God.

In other cases, the notion of slander repeatedly found in the texts of Orthodox tradition is understood as a sin against one’s neighbor (Rom. 12:20; 2 Tim. It is necessary to distinguish between slander and criticism of negative occurrences in the life of the earthly Church, which need to be reformed and overcome from the point of view of Christian teaching. As any sin, blasphemy destroys in man the ability to love God, thus darkening the image of God in him. ‘Just as he who believes the sun to be dark does not humiliate this star but presents a clear proof of his blindness and just as he who calls honey bitter does not diminish it sweetness but reveals his infirmity, just as those who condemn the deeds of God Blasphemy does not humiliate the magnificence of God He who blasphemes inflicts wounds on himself’ (St.

John Chrysostom, Homily on Psalm 109). A slanderer deprives himself of the joy of love for the other. ‘A slanderer injures the one he slanders, for he commits a grave sin.

He injures those who listen to him, for he gives them a pretext for slander and condemnation and thus brings them to pursue the same lawless cause he himself is involved in. Just as many people get infected from one infected person and die so many Christian souls get infected from one slanderer and die’ (St.

Tikhon of Zadonsk, The Spiritual Treasure Collected from the World). Blasphemous words and actions are often caused by a low level of one’s religious culture and lack of knowledge about religious life and deficiency of spiritual experience. Willful blasphemy or slander as provocation called to discredit Christian teaching or to do damage to the Church of Christ represents a special case. Imperfections in the life of the earthly Church are used by her antagonists to justify blasphemous actions and slanderous accusations which become instruments of a public campaign aimed to propagate socially important decisions contradicting Christian morality and to have anti-church ideas rooted in the mass consciousness.

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However, blasphemy and slander are used more often as a means of struggle against religion justified by references to freedom of conscience, expression or creative work. Notions of blasphemy and slander in the secular law The legislative systems of societies, in which a vast majority of people belong to one religious tradition and in which the high value of religion is evident, have developed norms aimed to oppose the public dissemination of blasphemy. Such legislation, rather wide-spread in the past, continues to exist in many countries with various political systems. The use of such norms in a legal system deserves to be given a positive assessment and every possible support if this does not lead to discrimination.