Religious scholar: DESS experts – ardent OCU propagandists and yoga specialists

Ihor Kozlovsky, a member of the DESS expert committee, with Dumenko. Photo: facebook.com/georgiy.gulyaev

Religious scholar Mykola Mitrokhin on his Facebook page commented on the composition of the expert commission of the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), which was engaged in determining the degree of dependence of the UOC on the Russian Orthodox Church.

According to him, the so-called DESS experts are ardent OCU propagandists and specialists in kundalini-yoga.

"In the predictable ‘expertise’ prepared by the DESS on the degree of the UOC's dependence on Moscow, the most interesting thing was the list of experts. All of them turned out to be ardent and much-admired admirers and propagandists of the UOC. But not all of them are specialists in Orthodoxy (but in kundalini-yoga, yes). Such a theme as "religious security" has been developing in the academic environment of Ukraine for the past ten years. This is a version of ‘scientific atheism’ and ‘independent Ukrainian Orthodoxy’, as well as ‘national-spiritual development’. Well, the expertise is the triumph of such an approach. It would be funny if the authorities did not see it as a formal reason to ban the country's largest religious organization for being independent and for not wishing to turn churches into propaganda points," said Mitrokhin.

As earlier reported, the UOC Legal Department demanded that the biased members of the commission for reviewing the UOC's Statute be removed.

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