Freedom and Responsibility: A Search for Harmony - Human Rights and Personal Dignity

This is a remarkable personal vision of a 'multi-polar' future for the world by the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. Two antagonistic systems are ranged against each other, onr liberal, secular and humanistic, the other religious and traditionalist. Rather than a struggle to the death between competing value systems, he proposes instead the way of co-existence, grounded in mutual respect for moral categories that are common to all.

Patriarch Kirill (b. 1946), as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is one of Russia's leading theologians and preachers, a prolific author, and well-acquainted with the wider Christian world. He has been a prime mover in the definition of the Russian Church's stance towards the modern world, including the key Council documents, Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church (2000) and Russian Orthodox Church's Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights (2008), the latter included in the present volume.