While everyone is focusing on point 8 of the upcoming Pan-Orthodox synod (the inter-confessional relations), an equally important issue is being completely overlooked, but it is just as important, if not even more important – point 10. In essence, the adoption of this point would mean re-defining the mission of the Church towards an earthly end, making her part of the implementation of the “global justice” agenda (social, economic, climate, political and religious justice). This is a dangerous chiliastic ideal and a definitive step towards preparations for an Earthly Kingdom of God, which is a heresy. Although the “social justice” topic has been extensively covered in many of our previous articles, we are going to touch-base on a few ideas presented in the manifest.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/90425.htm

The document starts by stating the goal of positioning the Orthodox Church as the pillar for achieving “peace, justice, freedom, brotherhood and love between peoples and the removal of racial and other discrimination“, in other words the perfect society. The document tries to argue that the “hope of peace, justice and love is not a utopia“.

It continues:

“For Christ’s peace is the ripe fruit of all things united in Christ: the revelation of the dignity and majesty of the human person as the image of God, the manifestation of the organic unity of the human race and the world in Him, the commonality of the principles of peace, freedom and social justice and, ultimately, the offering of the fruits of Christian love among people and the nations of the world. True peace is the fruit of the triumph on earth of all these Christian principles. At the same time the Orthodox Church believes it her duty to encourage all those who genuinely serve the cause of peace (Rom. 14:19) and show the way to justice, fraternity, true freedom and mutual love between all the children of the one heavenly Father as between all peoples who make up the one human family. She suffers with all people who in various parts of the world are denied the benefits of peace and justice. 

…The consequence of this evil are the imperfections and shortcomings which predominate in modern-day life: secularization, violence, moral laxity, negative phenomena such as narcotic and other forms of dependency that can be seen in certain young people, racism, the arms race, war and the social catastrophes that result from it, discrimination against certain social groups, religious communities and whole peoples, social inequality; the limitation of human rights in the field of freedom of conscience, in particular religious freedom, disinformation and the manipulation of public opinion; economic backwardness, the disproportionate redistribution or complete absence of the essentials of life, the hunger of millions of people, the forced deportation of populations and the trade in human beings, the uncontrolled use of genetic biotechnologies and the end of human life – all of this causes infinite anxiety in the life of modern-day humanity. 

… The ecological crisis, harnessed to climate change and global warming, makes it incumbent upon the Church to do everything within her spiritual power to aid the protection of God’s creation from the consequences of human greed.”

The Church sets her objectives to eradicating of all these iniquities and injustices here on earth (which are inherent to the fallen world we live in), and leading to an idealistic society where corruption, sickness, injustice, inequality etc will all be a thing of the past …

A prophetic warning on the same topic can be found in a letter of Blessed Seraphim Rose from 1971:

http://orthodoxaustralia.org/2016/05/03/letters-of-fr-seraphim-rose-078-25-march-7-april/