On October 4, 2025, the All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference "Symphony of Ecclesiastical and Secular Law in Russia" was held at the Church-wide Postgraduate and Doctoral School named after Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius in Moscow.
As the rector, Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, noted in his welcoming speech to the conference participants, "at present, the Church is steadily taking its place in the role of the moral educator of society. This is evidenced by regulatory legal acts from the Constitution of the Russian Federation to the Decrees of the President of Russia. Thus, article 67.1 of the Constitution of Russia establishes: "The Russian Federation, united by a thousand-year history, preserving the memory of the ancestors who passed on to us the ideals and faith in God, as well as continuity in the development of the Russian state, recognizes the historically established state unity."
It is obvious to us that the thousand-year history of Russia and the faith in God passed down to us by our ancestors are directly related to the Orthodox Church, in the bosom of which the Russian statehood was formed.
Presidential Decree No. 809 of 09.11.2022 "On Approval of the Foundations of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values" states the following:
"Traditional values are moral guidelines that shape the worldview of Russian citizens, passed down from generation to generation, underlying the all—Russian civic identity and the country's unified cultural space, strengthening civic unity, and finding their unique, distinctive expression in the spiritual, historical, and cultural development of the multinational people of Russia" (paragraph 4).
"At the same time, Orthodoxy plays a special role in the formation and strengthening of traditional values" (paragraph 6). It is important to note here that this is not a historical role, but a modern one!
"The Russian Federation considers traditional values as the foundation of Russian society, allowing it to protect and strengthen Russia's sovereignty, ensure the unity of our multinational and a multi-religious country, to preserve the people of Russia and develop human potential" (paragraph 7).
The aforementioned provisions of the Russian Constitution and Presidential Decree 809, as well as a number of previous normative legal acts that emphasize the special role of Orthodoxy, attest to the special place of the Russian Orthodox Church in such areas as education and enlightenment, science and culture, family relations and others.
At the same time, it should be noted that the Church began to regain this role relatively recently, after 70 years of fighting against it and atheistic propaganda. It is this Soviet legacy that explains why the teaching of church law in secular universities was banned and eventually forgotten. The positivist approach that prevailed in secular law denied ecclesiastical law even the right to be considered as such.
However, today the situation has changed, and the Church has once again become an important public institution. Every year, more and more Orthodox Christians enter the Church, whose rights must be respected and guaranteed by the state. And, of course, these rights are guaranteed today at the level of the Constitution, federal laws and other regulatory legal acts.
However, in practice, any violations of the rights of Christian believers are very difficult to defend, since students at secular universities are not taught how to deal with such violations. But graduates of these universities work in various executive and judicial authorities. This leads to an incorrect qualification of violations, a lack of reaction from law enforcement agencies, where it should be, and its excessive presence, where it should not be in principle.
For this reason, our conference is of great importance, especially given the current position of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russian society, for the further development of Russian legal science and practice, which should study church law or, at least, the mutual influence of church and secular law in the light of the protective role of the state in relation to church law, within the framework of guarantees of the right to freedom of conscience and religion".
Archbishop Savva of Zelenograd, Chairman of the Synodal Missionary Department, Deputy Director of Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, and State Counselor of Justice, 2nd Class, Honorary Employee of the Prosecutor's Office, Co-chairman of the Russian Bar Association, A.V. Kozlov also greeted the participants.
Further, church and secular experts made presentations at the plenary session.
All participants expressed their gratitude for the organization of this conference, and also noted the urgent need to hold such conferences in the future.