Abstract:
Conflicts over religious symbols in the public sphere, gay marriage, abortion or gender equality have shown a disruptive potential across many societies in the world, and they have become the subject of political and legal debates in international institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council and transnational civil society. These conflicts emerge out of different worldviews and normative conceptions of the good, and they are frequently framed in terms of competing interpretations of human rights. In this presentation I will look at one newcomer voice in conflicts over rights and values in the international sphere - the Russian Orthodox Church - and I will ask which lessons we can draw from the Russian Orthodox Church's role as international norm-entrepreneur for a "postsecular" type of political liberalism.