Message of the Living Church Sobor
Sobor of the Living Church, Message. August 6, 1922
The Holy Sobor urges all churchmen to abandon all attempts to use the Church for temporal political schemes, for the Church belongs to God and must serve Him only. There must be no place in the Church for counterrevolution. The Soviet Government is not a persecutor of the Church. In accordance with the constitution of the Soviet Government, all citizens are granted genuine religious freedom of conscience. The decree regarding the separation of the Church from the State guarantees such freedom. The freedom of religions, equally with anti-religious propaganda, affords the believers an opportunity to defend by argument the merits of their purely religious convictions. Hence, churchmen must not see in the Soviet authority the antichrist; on the contrary, the Sobor calls attention to the fact that the Soviet authority is the only one throughout the world which will realize, by governmental methods, the ideals of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, every faithful churchman must not only be an honorable citizen, but also fight with all his might, together with the Soviet authority, for the realization of the Kingdom of God upon earth.
Source: Paul B. Anderson, People, Church and State in Modern Russia (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), pp. 80-81.