Atheism and Orthodoxy in Modern Russia

A fascinating article by Metropolitan Hilarion of Russia (thanks Stuart). An excerpt:

It is clear, when one looks at the pre-revolutionary period, that there was a huge gap between the Church and the world of educated people, the so-called intelligentsia, and this gap was constantly growing.

But on the eve of the revolution it became more and more clear that atheism had also invaded the mass of ordinary people. Berdyaev wrote at that time that the simple Russian baba, who was supposed to be religious, was no longer a reality but a myth: she had become a nihilist and an atheist. I would like to quote some more from what this great Russian philosopher wrote in 1917, several months before the October revolution:

"The Russian nation always considered itself to be Christian. Many Russian thinkers and artists were even inclined to regard it as a nation which is Christian par excellence. The Slavophils thought that Russian people live by the Orthodox faith, which is the only true faith containing the entire truth... Dostoevsky preached that. the Russian nation is a bearer of God... But, it was here that revolution broke out, and it...revealed a spiritual emptiness in Russian people. This emptiness is a result of a slavery that lasted too long of a process of degeneration of the old regime that went too far, of a paralysis of the Russian Church and moral degradation of the ecclesiastical authorities that lasted too long. Since long ago the sacred has been exterminated from the people's soul both from the left side and the right, which prepared this cynical attitude towards the sacred that is now being revealed in all its disgust."

 

Comments

[Michael Bauman (not Dr.)]

Met Hilarion's concluding paragraph:

"The second danger is that of militant Orthodoxy, which would be a post-atheist counterpart of militant atheism. I mean an Orthodoxy that fights against Jews, against masons, against democracy, against Western culture, against enlightenment. This type of Orthodoxy is being preached even by some key members of the hierarchy, and it has many supporters within the Church. This kind of Orthodoxy, especially if it gains the support of the State, may force Russian atheism to withdraw temporarily to the catacombs. But Russian atheism, will not he vanquished until the transfiguration of the soul and the need to live according to the Gospel have become the only message of the Russian Orthodox Church."

With appropriate cultural/poltical changes made, the message fits with we Christians here in the U.S. No matter what we try to do in the culture wars if we fall into the trap of making Chrisitianity an ideology (far easier that one might think) we will loose. To paraphrase: atheism and nihlism will not be vanquished until the transfiguration of the soul and the need to live according to the Gospel have become the only Christian message.