ORTHODOX LEADER ALEXANDER SHCHIPKOV TO OVERSEE MATTERS OF RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND SOCIETY IN PLACE OF ARCHPRIEST VSEVOLOD CHAPLIN
Interfax-Religiia, 5 January 2016
Patriarch Kirill appointed the famous Orthodox publicist Alexander Shchipkov to be the acting first deputy chairman of the synod's Department for Relations of Church and Society and News Media, the synodal department informed an Interfax-Religiia correspondent on Tuesday.
A. Shchipkov's responsibilities will include matters of cooperation with government bodies and nongovernmental organizations.
Until recently, these tasks were within the sphere of responsibility of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who for a period of almost seven years directed the synod's Department for Relations of Church and Society, but who was removed from this position by a decision of the synod on 24 December 2015.
A. Shchipkov was born on 3 August 1957 in Leningrad. He is a sociologist of religion, a political scientist, a specialist in the area of government-religion relations, a class 3 state advisor, the director of the Moscow Center of Social Research, and a member of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church.
He is the author of the books What Russia Believes In, Cathedral Yard, Christian Democracy in Russia, The Church's Territory, The Religious Dimension of Journalism, and The Bronze Age in Russia: The View from Tarusa. He is the author of academic monographs Traditionalism, Liberalism and Neo-nazism in the Area of Critical Politics; National History as Public Agreement; and The Dialectics of Economic and Religious-Ethnic Russian Traditionalism. He is the compiler of philosophical collections Turning Point (about the justice of tradition) and Gallows (about Russian identity). (tr. by PDS, posted 6 January 2016)
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