Moldovan society has been witnessing controversial discussions about the visits paid by groups of priests from the Republic of Moldova to the Russian Federation. Some of the people and institutions involved in these discussions finds these visits inappropriate and even dangerous, especially in times of war, while another part states that they are ordinary, necessary and useful actions, no matter when they are paid. The dispute is still not resolved, because, apparently, the two sides overlooked the main criteria by which these and other similar actions can be weighed, which would allow us to understand whether they represent good or evil, promote good or evil. These criteria were treated by the experts invited to IPN’s public debate “War, Religion and Church”.
Igor Boţan, the permanent expert of IPN’s project, explained that war is an armed conflict between two or more states that involves military actions of significant magnitude and duration. Usually, the beginning of war is marked by the aggression of one state or group of states against another. According to Article 1 of the UN Resolution of 14 December 1974, “aggression” is the use of the armed force of a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence of another state.
According to him, religion is a form of social consciousness, a worldview, a set of moral norms and a type of behavior determined by the belief in the existence of a supernatural world and supernatural beings, whether spirits, gods or God.
The history of religions is a branch of knowledge that studies the processes of development and change of religions that take place over time. The purpose of this branch is to analyze the origins, development, and activities of different religions, as well as their impact on human history. “As for the 10 commandments, they were given to the chosen people – to ancient Israel. They were separated from the Mosaic Law, which contained over 600 commandments and represented the terms of an agreement, the covenant between God and ancient Israel, which was to receive God’s blessing if they obeyed this Mosaic law. The purpose of the law was to prepare the Israelites for the coming of the Messiah. Three of the commandments are affirmative sentences, and three contain negations, including an extremely important one – “Thou shalt not kill.”
Alexandru Lupușor, lecturer at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Moldova State University, said that war is one of the forms of violence and perhaps one of the most horrible one in terms of the effects it produces. “There is a particular difference between a history of wars and recent wars, and World War I brought a completely different type of war. Some recent discoveries show that even in ancient Egypt, the belligerent forces sought to find justifications for the wars fought, invoking divinity, which certifies things that can also be seen at the Greeks. In the opinion of those forces, it was not enough to be victorious in a war. The important thing was to have a justification, an alibi, which often invoked spiritual powers,” stated Alexandru Lupușor.
The university lecturer also said that wars were fought for various reasons: there were either subjective human causes or they fought for territories. “The moral factor was also invoked, including particular virtues, such as honor, glory. Things changed towards World War I, from simple things, such as the military uniform that in the 17th-18th centuries was quite colorful, and at the beginning of World War I the French troops understood that they were an easy target precisely because of the color of the uniform. Philosophically speaking, the causes of war were found either in the human nature, related to the cosmic life, which is the war was seen even as a disastrous force, a kind of determinism, which today is complemented by a kind of neuro-biological determinism and there are particular coordinates in human nature, at neuro-biological level, which make the human to behave aggressively and such behavior manifests itself also in larger groups, such as nations, states,” said the university lecturer.
Oleg Serebrian, writer and diplomat, noted that religious wars were among the bloodiest and most destructive ones in Europe, especially in Germany and France, especially in the 16th century. The civil war in Russia was one of the bloodiest episodes of the 20th century. Even those who praised war or wrote about war as a necessary evil, rather described it as necessary, but yet evil. No one spoke of war as about something good. In the middle of the 20th century, there were thinkers who considered that the war was a kind of ‘purifier’ of society as it led to a demographic decrease, to the maintenance of demographic growth over centuries, along with hunger, then, a kind of physical rehabilitation of society, but such manifestations are quite rare,” he said.
In literature, Oleg Serebrian also says, war occupied a special place in the 19th century, even if it was permanent in literature. “The first literary monuments, for example, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are about war. A number of works praise the struggle and heroism in religious wars, in particular. In the new literature, the atmospheric novel presents the period of war, the period of peace and the period of how society reacts – War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is a relevant example of this,” said the writer. He believes that the demonization of war in literature occurred in the context of World War I.
The public debate entitled “War, Religion and Church” was the 315th installment of the project “Developing political culture through public debates”. IPN Agency implements the project with the support of the German Foundation “Hanns Seidel”.
