Secular squatters on Biblical land

Jeff Fountain

Human dignity and rights needed to be set free from religious foundations. Only a secular basis can maintain their continued existence free from religious violence and tensions.

At least, that was the learned opinion one of Holland’s best-known atheists as expressed in a seminar last week in The Hague. Dr Margriet Krijtenburg, who spoke in Dublin at a recent State of Europe Forum, was presenting her doctoral thesis on Robert Schuman to an invited audience, and had invited her supervising professor, Paul Cliteur, to be one of her respondents.

As in Dublin, Margriet had described Schuman’s conviction that the Christian faith had a significant role to play in restoring unity in Europe and in Europe’s future. Concepts such as human dignity and solidarity were, in Schuman’s understanding, intrinsically linked with a Christian concept of humanity.

Margriet’s professor agreed that the identification of such values as the freedom of expression, of religion and of assembly had laid foundations for the unique European project. But fortunately, he said, those values had been set free from their religious roots and redefined within a sustainable secular framework. Such a framework protected human dignity from religious intolerance and offered it a tolerant pluriform context.

A few days after attending this seminar, an engagement near Den Bosch gave me the opportunity to visit the former Nazi concentration camp in Vught while in the neighbourhood.

Some 31,000 Jews, political prisoners, resistance fighters, students, Jehovah’s Witnesses, tramps, black marketeers and criminals were thrown together into Kamp Vught, some for short periods, others longer. Almost all of the 12,000 Jewish internees, over a third of the camp population, were later murdered in extermination camps in Poland.

A reconstructed cell remind visitors of the so-called “bunker drama” of January 15, 1944. In response to a protest by prisoners, the camp commandant ordered 74 women to be locked up together in one cell in a space of nine square metres, without ventilation. When the doors were finally opened after 14 hours, ten of the women had died.

Most sobering, however, was a memorial to the 1,800 Jewish children taken away from the camp on June 6 and 7, 1943, to a “special children’s camp” -- or so the parents were told. Some parents were allowed to accompany the children. After a three-day train ride to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, almost every person perished.

The cold metal monument carried those names and ages of 1,269 of the children that are known. I stood there transfixed and emotionally disturbed reading the ages of these little defenceless human beings. I sought out the ages of my own three grandchildren: three months, two years and four years.



At the base of the monument was a sculptured teddy bear, a truck and other toys. In the trunk of my car was a wrapped present for my grandson celebrating his second birthday. What if he had been born 70 years earlier, to Jewish parents?

What was the source of the evil that had led to this vile crime? Was it not a denial of the Biblical truth that the dignity of every human is rooted in the understanding that life is a gift of the Creator? and that each one of us has been created in His image, Imago Dei?

Had not the “freeing from religious foundations”, the rejection of the Biblical view of humanity, by Hitler and his henchmen caused this European tragedy? Was it not this very tragedy that had led Schuman and others to formulate the European Convention on Human Rights, to which every member nation of the Council of Europe had to agree? Was it not their aim to render such “state gangsterism” impossible, to prevent for ever the atrocities of Kamp Vught, Dachau and Auschwitz?

How quickly we are forgetting this most important lesson of modern times! No, Professor, it is not “fortunate” that in the minds of millions of Europeans today human dignity has been freed from its historical and transcendent foundations. For there are no other foundations. We can’t invent foundations or roots. A process of materialistic evolution in which only the fittest survive can never result in protection and rights for the weak and vulnerable.

As (non-believer) John Gray, formerly of the London School of Economics, wrote in his 2007 book Straw Dogs: humanists are simply Christians in disguise. If there is no God, there is no basis for human dignity and human exceptionalism. Humanism is the creed of those who have “given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational belief in humans”.

The truth is, many Europeans are squatters living in a house built on Judeo-Christian foundations -- but they don’t want to pay the rent.

Jeff Fountain and his wife Romkje are the initiators of the Schuman Centre for European Studies in The Netherlands. This article has been republished here with permission from the Centre’s website.

Noted Atheist Dead at Age 62

Christopher Hitchens is dead.

The prolific journalist, well-known public intellectual and noted contrarian, who is perhaps most famous in the eyes of many Americans for his best-selling exegesis against religion, passed away Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer in Houston, Texas. He was 62.

Read more here.


Dr. William Witt has written an excellent piece on Hitchens.  Read it here.

For information on Christians who have debated Hitchens, go here.

Joel Marks: Amoralism Minus the Firey Prose

Sauntering beyond good and evil

In a race to the bottom of ethics, an American philosopher may have got there first.

 
 

By Michael Cook

“The religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality.”

This startling syllogism comes from Joel Marks, a retired professor at the University of New Haven and a scholar at the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale University. Last week he wrote a column in the New York Times blog for philosophers, The Stone. At the Times, they like edgy topics like does truth matter, is religion relevant, and can we have morals without God? In Professor Marks – someone who answers No to all three -- they found the edgiest theory of all – that there is no difference between right and wrong.

Does anyone at the Times appreciate how dangerous this theory is?

Running a death camp, discriminating against homosexuals, and raising battery hens are not right, says Professor Marks. But they are not wrong, either. Moral viewpoints are fundamentally just preferences, expressions of how we would like the world to be. It is impossible to argue that killing chickens (a favourite ethical conundrum for Professor Marks) is either immoral or moral. He simply doesn’t like it.

Amoralism takes the decline of moral thinking a step further than moral relativism. A moral relativist asserts that his moral preferences can be justified by some standard, however weak. For the amoralist (Professor Marks’s word, not mine), there is no standard at all.

Professor Marks is not alone. His soul mate is Richard T. Garner, an emeritus professor at Ohio State University, who has also abandoned “the trackless jungle of morality”. He is the author of a book called Beyond Morality. Reassuringly, both men believe that the bonds of custom and habit are enough to build and maintain a harmonious society. My hunch is that there are a lot of amateur amoralists out there waiting for a philosopher to put their intuitions into words. Perhaps his op-ed will give the theory a push ahead.

Amoralism is a fairly recent development in Professor Marks's thought. As an atheist, he used to defend a Kantian view of morality to distinguish between right and wrong. However, a few years ago he had an “anti-epiphany” in which he realised that believing in morality was just as unreasonable as believing in a divinity:

“It was the Godless God of secular morality, which commanded without commander – whose ways were thus even more mysterious than the God I did not believe in, who at least had the intelligible motive of rewarding us for doing what He wanted.”

So, should we lock Joel Marks up before he does a Columbine?

No. Professor Marks is a cool, humorous, laid-back sort of guy. He wants less violence, not an excuse to run amok. Realising that right and wrong are irrelevant will lead people to be less aggressive when their preferences conflict, he thinks.

But how do we reach agreement without the pole star of morality? Professor Marks is an optimist. While rational argument will probably prove fruitless for parties who do not share common principles, there are other ways in a democratic society. His point of view could be imposed “by sheer force of numbers”, he says in a column in Philosophy Now. Or he could use “advertising campaigns and celebrity endorsements”.

“I retain my strong preference for honest dialectical dealings in a context of mutual respect. It’s just that I am no longer giving premises in moral arguments; rather, I am offering considerations to help us figure out what to do. I am not attempting to justify anything; I am trying to motivate informed and reflective choices…. But this won’t be because a god, a supernatural law or even my conscience told me I must, I ought, I have an obligation. Instead I will be moved by my head and my heart. Morality has nothing to do with it.”

What he doesn’t take into account is the human capacity for evil – although it’s not clear what he would call it. He assumes that people’s choices will generally coincide with what we deem “moral”. But this is far from being the case, as one chilling paragraph from his Philosophy Now column suggests:

“Even though words like ‘sinful’ and ‘evil’ come naturally to the tongue as a description of, say, child-molesting, they do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God and hence the whole religious superstructure that would include such categories as sin and evil. Just so, I now maintain, nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality. Yet, as with the non-existence of God, we human beings can still discover plenty of completely-naturally-explainable internal resources for motivating certain preferences. Thus, enough of us are sufficiently averse to the molesting of children, and would likely continue to be so if fully informed, to put it on the books as prohibited and punishable by our society.”

In other words, the only thing which prevents child sex abuse is social consensus. If that changed, paedophilia could become legal.

Preposterous?

Not quite. A recent symposium in Baltimore brought together a number of eminent psychiatrists and psychologists to redress the marginalisation and stigmatisation of paedophiles. The keynote speaker, Fred Berlin, of Johns Hopkins University, argued in favour of acceptance of and compassion for “minor-attracted persons” -- while at the same time rejecting adult-minor sexual activity. An expert from the University of Texas argued that diagnostic criteria for mental disorders should not be based on concepts of vice since such concepts are subject to shifting social attitudes and doing so diverts mental-health professionals from their role as healers.

The aim of the symposium was to pressure the American Psychiatric Association into changing its standards on paedophiles in the new edition of its bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If they succeed, the odds on the legalisation (with due safeguards) of paedophilia will shorten.

It is to Professor Marks’s credit that he is completely honest about his conversion to amoralism. In his theory the consequences of a world set adrift from religion are laid bare. Didn’t Dostoevsky write, “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"?

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Atheists Unwilling to Debate Christian Apologists

ATHEIST philosophers are being accused of “running shy” of debating with a Christian philosopher from the United States who is to tour the UK in the autumn to argue that faith is rational.

Polly Toynbee, the Guardian columnist and president of the British Humanist Association, had agreed to debate the existence of God with the Research Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology, California, Dr William Lane Craig, at Westminster Central Hall in October, during Professor Craig’s “Reasonable Faith” tour.

Earlier this month, however, Ms Toynbee said that she would not be taking part in the event. “I hadn’t realised the nature of Mr Lane Craig’s debating style, and, having now looked at his previous per­formances, this is not my kind of forum.”

Professor Craig said: “These are academic forums, where one con­centrates on the arguments and counter-arguments, the truth of the premises in those arguments and objections to them, and not on personality or ad hominem attacks.”

Professor Craig has previously debated with atheist philosophers such as Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, who described Professor Craig as “the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.

The humanist philosopher Pro­fessor A. C. Grayling also refused to debate with Professor Craig, and denied ever having done so, despite the debate between the two on the problem of evil at the Oxford Union in 2005. Professor Grayling later said: “I was wrong about debating [with] Lane Craig — but Lane Craig is wrong about everything else in the universe; so I guess I don’t do too badly in the deal.

Read it all here.

Related reading:  The New Atheists Are Old Atheists Recycled

The New Atheists are Old Atheists Recycled

Dr. William Witt, a theologian, has written an excellent piece on Dawkins and Hitchens.  Here is the beginning:

Recently I have been reading some books written by folks like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who have been labelled the “New Atheists,” and I am going to let you in on a secret. The secret is that these books are not about what you might think they’re about. Given the publicity that the New Atheists have been getting, you might think there must be some new knockdown argument that these people have worked out, and the New Atheists finally have proof that there is no God. But what I’ve discovered when I read the New Atheists is that they’re just the Old Atheists recycled. They have no new arguments.

There is some discussion of how science can explain everything we need to know, but any first year under-graduate philosophy student should be able to tell you why this is just not the case. There is also some discussion about problems that have supposedly been raised by contemporary biblical scholarship, but, again, any first year student in biblical studies at a decent seminary [like Trinity School for Ministry, where I teach] has a more sophisticated understanding of the Bible and contemporary biblical scholarship than these folks exhibit. There is also usually an account of some of the horrible things that Christians have done in the name of God, but anyone who has studied any church history at all knows about things that make their stories seem tame. After all, it was Christians who wrote books like Fox’s Book of Martyrs, not atheists. It was Roman Catholics who made Joan of Arc a saint, not Enlightenment freethinkers. The names of Thomas More and Thomas Cranmer, the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders, the hanging and drowning and burning at the stake of Anabaptists by just about everyone, and the pogroms against the Jews, shows that the committing of atrocious acts of Christians against one another and against those of other religions, has been an equal opportunity sport.

This is well worth reading.  Read it all here.

 

 

Atheist Students Think Science is on Their Side

As its membership rapidly increases, the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) of ASU, an atheist student organization, works to build a community of people to make Jonesboro a better place through charity work.

SSA President and ASU senior T.J. Burgess said "We've seen a dramatic increase in interest and attendance at our functions and it's a very exciting time for us."

Burgess wants ASU students to understand the SSA is not a typical group of atheists and that stereotypes do not apply to them.

"We have members who are agnostic, atheists, humanists, skeptics and students who are just looking for answers about life but don't follow old traditions when it comes to all the pitfalls of organized religion," Burgess said.

The SSA is a group of students who believe in a moral world and want to make Jonesboro a better place through participation in charity work of many kinds.

Building a community for those people at ASU who identify themselves as non-religious is paramount to Burgess.

"What we're trying to do is promote logical thinking and educate ourselves and others about religion, nontheism, antitheism, all while building understanding and tolerance. Atheism is the search for fact, not truth," Burgess said.

The members of the SSA stress that religious people have been incorrectly and unfairly defining atheism and agnosticism for far too long and the best way to combat those inaccuracies is to participate in their organization.

Members of the SSA said it is a place where people can share ideas freely without the fear of punishment from a church or a God that will eternally condemn you to Hell.

Free thinking and critical inquiry about everything from science to nature to the existence of God is all up for debate in the SSA.

"We are a group of students on campus who are here saying ‘We are not Christian, we do not believe in any gods, and we are capable of making the world a better place through charitable work, and we are the Secular Student Alliance." Burgess said.

SSA member Pamela Masterson said students don't have to believe in a higher power to be a moral person, and a moral compass isn't found only in the Bible.

"We are moral people and we are atheist," Masterson said. "If you want to be a good, moral person, you don't need the Bible. We live morally because we choose to do so."

The SSA welcomes all students to its meetings to express their points of view and join in an effort to make Jonesboro a better place.

"I think inevitably we all have similar goals in many important ways, especially with Christians in that we also want to volunteer in charity work and help the poor," SSA member Melissa Lawson said.

"There's no reason why we can't work with people of different faiths in helping to better the world around us."

The SSA is willing to work with a diverse group of student organizations on charity work and to be a productive part of the ASU student body.

Their focus, instead of in a higher power, is one of logic, reason and science.

Read it all here.
 
This is from my local paper, the area in which I have been an educator for many years in both public and private schools. Unfortunately, most of these students have never had a genuine exposure to scientific evidence touching on religion and the Bible. Therefore their assumptions are for the most part unexamined and untenable.

Robert Spitzer: Evidence for God

SEATTLE — Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer wants to challenge the minds of college students who “are being bombarded with specious arguments that attempt to dissuade them from belief in God.”

But he is not limiting this outreach to students. The whole culture, he believes, has been inundated by misinformation. With recent discoveries providing “implications of transcendence in astrophysics, philosophy of mathematics and metaphysics,” Father Spitzer hopes to intrigue the minds of those who have been so disillusioned.

“No other decade in history has revealed more or better evidence for God,” he says.

Father Spitzer, who retired in 2009 as president of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has taught philosophy and metaphysics for 28 years. He founded the Magis Center for Faith and Reason in Irvine, Calif., and just published New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy.

The book is a response, in part, to the appearance of several new books in the popular press “championing agnosticism or atheism,” he says, which are adding to that confusion.

New Proofs presents “a brief synopsis of the considerable evidence for theism, provided by physics and philosophy during the last few decades, [creating for] readers … the strongest, rational foundation for faith that has come to light in human history,” he says.

The Magis Center is also producing a documentary God and Modern Physics. The film will interview prominent astrophysicists who “will reveal their research pointing to a beginning of the universe and supernatural design of its cosmological constants,” according to a recent Magis publication. The Magis Center also will offer Web-accessible videos, a high-school curriculum on the subject and Web-based college courses.

At a July 12 Seattle presentation, hosted by the Discovery Institute, Father Spitzer emphasized that his talk was specifically about “what contemporary astrophysics and cosmology is saying about God, creation and the superintelligence of God.” The book is not limited to that, though.

“What can science do, and what can it not do?” Father Spitzer asked. “Science is not like metaphysics. It is not like philosophy. It does not approach things deductively, but rather inductively from empirical facts.”

Read it all here.
 
Father Spitzer is right.  Evidence of God as revealed in the beginning to the ancient Afro-Asiatics (whose record we have in Genesis) is turning up in every discipline where serious inquiry is being made.

Dawkins Aid for Haiti

Richard Dawkins has started up a charity called “Non Believers Giving Aid” so atheists can give to relief efforts in Haiti in a way which promulgates their atheism. Because as I’m sure you know when Haitians receive relief they’re very interested in whether it came from a believer or a non-believer.

Dawkins, who has been saying for years that religion is the “root of all evil,” is now oddly intent on proving that atheists can be as good as Christians. Recently, atheists seem intent on proving they can be good without God.

I always get a kick out of evangelizing atheists and how they’re so desperate to prove that they’re as good (and usually better) than us religious types. Dawkins writes on the charity’s website: “When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.” While we should all applaud Mr. Dawkins’ altruistic efforts to help his fellow man I’m just not sure he’s making the point he thinks he’s making.

If Dawkins is running this charity to show up religion and helping Haitians is only a secondary consequence then we could hardly claim that what he’s doing is good by most definitions. Because if that’s true then it would seem that the greatest value of Haitians lives to Dawkins is how they make Dawkins look.

But let’s give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt because us religious types like to do that. If he’s helping people because he wants to help people then I almost hate to tell him that he’s kind of supporting some of our arguments. While Dawkins argues that he can be good without God, I think he’s actually only proving that Richard Dawkins can be good while not acknowledging God.

I have to wonder from what philosophical grounding does Dawkins’ altruism emanate? Why is other human life worth anything if there is no God? From what philosophical groundwork is he basing his good works on? Dawkins, it would seem to me, hasn’t defined his terms and is only borrowing our definition of “good.” Because without our definitions he’d have to ask the question, “What is good without God?” And that’s something I haven’t seen answered yet.

In fact, I think Dawkin’s efforts to do good is one of the best arguments for innate knowledge of right and wrong.

I almost hate to inform Mr. Dawkins that his little plot is actually helpful to believers as we believe that no matter what you espouse verbally each man has written on his soul the ability to tell right from wrong. And while Dawkins denies it, his actions indicate otherwise. There is a moral sense which you can ignore but your choosing to ignore or embrace it has no effect on its existence, much like God Himself.

But we’re glad for the help anyway. Thanks.

From here.

Religion: Fitting Us for Survival?

In a recent issue of the leading journal Science , Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled "On the Origin of Religion." Explaining religion without God is quite the growth industry these days among evolutionary psychologists. Some argue that religion exists because it increases evolutionary fitness (survival of the fittest). Others argue that it makes no difference to fitness. It is merely a glitch in our thinking that doesn't kill us off.

They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong. Let's see.

Read it all here.

Ekaterina Mikhaylovna's Story

Father Mikhail Vorobyov, “Orthodox Faith” No 18 (374), 2008
Translated 22 March 2009, by Vladimir Berezansky, Jr.

The Sub-deacon's Confession

Two years ago I was asked to hear the last confession of and bring communion to an old woman who was preparing to die. Once we had arrived at the house where she lived, the relatives who were accompanying me began finding excuses not to proceed. In shy voices, they said things like: “You know, Father? she was a smoker.”

“Well,” I answered, “that is certainly not the greatest of sins.”

The thus comforted relatives then led me further, but some time later they stopped again.

“Father, she was for her entire life an atheist; she cursed the Church, and she couldn’t stand the sight of priests.”

Well, now. This was a far more serious obstacle. Quite often, people who’ve begun to believe quite recently wish for anything whatsoever to save their loved ones. They do this more often than not in a clumsy manner; and their lingering doubts or belief-on-condition that’s led them away from the Church. But neophytes can be persistent. They are capable of biding their time, and when a non-believing relative ends up in an impossibly hopeless situation that makes the rendering of any resistance equally impossible, they run straight to the priest and convince him to receive, to christen and commune this poor dying soul. For such circumstances, there exists a special “Mute Confession” rite. The priest himself lists the sins, hoping against hope in that circumstance that the person who lost his ability to speak will nonetheless comprehend the subject of the priest’s words, hear them, understand their meaning and, perhaps, repent in his heart. The depths of Divine Compassion are truly endless. It is possible to agree on a Mute Confession, but only in those instances where the person presented to the confessor is in fact a believer and, when he was in good health, received confession regularly. And here we have an atheist – an atheist smoker, at that …“Perhaps I should leave,” I said. “There’d be no point in observing such a formalistic offering of the Eucharist. After all, just one little sin …”

“No, no Father,” the family relative insisted, “She herself requested that a priest – and, specifically, that you – be summoned. She still has full possession of her mental faculties, and her memory is intact. She is, after all, just about eighty years old. And you know, she never went to church, but she always sent along lists of the departed that were to be remembered – it’s just that the list was always of one and the same name. So, please, could we get started?

I entered the room. It turned out that the woman facing death’s door was a physician who had been well-known in the city. She was surrounded by a few relatives of the same vintage, and seated in an armchair stuffed to overflowing with pillows. It was obvious that only in such a position could she breathe and speak. The room itself radiated with clinical cleanliness and modesty of décor. The interior was a throw-back to a film inducing Soviet-era nostalgia – Nikita Mikhalkov’s “Five Evenings” perhaps. 1950’s vintage furniture radiated like new: a reading table lamp with a green lampshade, covered with a lace kerchief next to the earliest vintage Soviet television set, a KVN, looking for all the world as though it had just left the conveyor belt.

Greeting me, the aged atheist asked me to read the prayer before confession. I was more than a bit surprised at her evident familiarity with our rite that this request indicated. I then asked that we be left alone, but the old woman wanted to have her confession heard by everyone present. Such an unorthodox request made me profoundly uncomfortable, but I decided not to contradict the wishes of someone preparing to die. I decided that I could most likely cut off her confession if it began to stray into delicate matters not fit for public discussion. Having coughed enough to clear her lungs, she finally began:

“I was sub-deacon to Bishop George, the last bishop of Volsk.”This information shocked me profoundly. My thoughts raced to the Blessed Marina, who allowed herself to be taken for a Monk, Marin; to the female Cavalier Durova, about whom a film, “The Hussar’s Ballad,” was made. But the old woman sensed what I was thinking and continued:“Please don’t think I’ve lost my mind. I remember everything quite well. I was indeed sub-deacon to Bishop George (Sadovsky) in 1933 – 1936, when he served in Volsk.”

This grandmother, it turns out, was in full control of her senses. What’s more, she had a tremendous memory. She remembered that when she was a 12-year old girl, she loved to attend church services. In the second half of the 1930’s, there was only one Orthodox Church in Volsk, which had previously belonged to the Old Believers who worshiped without priests. The Soviets had taken this church from them and given it to the Orthodox community following the closure of all the other churches in that city.

“I attended church during the winter in a fur hat with floppy ear flaps, and I looked very much like a boy. What’s more, my hair was closely cropped,” explained Ekaterina Mikhaylovna Ivantsova. “The women of the parish insisted that I take off my hat. They would say ‘You’re a boy. You can’t enter a church wearing a hat.’ And there were no real boys around. In order to serve an episcopal liturgy, it was necessary to find at least four sub-deacons who, in the old days, were always boys. And here there were only two old men and a nun from the already destroyed Vladimir Monastery. So His Grace chose me to be his fourth sub-deacon. I went up to the altar, carried out a candle, held his episcopal staff, and helped with vesting the bishop. Vladyka loved me very much and he always tried to give me whatever food he could during those years of famine. He always saved a big piece of blessed bread for me. Attending to him and being at church was, for me, always a great joy.”

Ekaterina Mikhaylovna lived in those days in Nagibovk, and she would cross the city to attend services. She remembered that Vladyka suffered from serious problems with his legs. Now she understands that this was most likely due to trophic ulcers [трофическиеязвы]. He acquired this condition during his incarceration, and it was very difficult for him to stand during lengthy services. Someone made soft boots for him; and toward the end of an all-night vigil service, they would be soaked in blood.

“Vladyka George had beautiful vestments that the nuns of Belev had sent. He had served there previously. Just before Pentecost in 1936, I was supposed to bring green vestments that had just been sent. As I turned the corner to enter the church, a nun met me, weeping. She told me there would be no service today because Vladyka had been arrested.”

The burden of such torment on a twelve-year old girl was unbearable. She cried unceasingly for several days. She would climb a tree that stood in front of the city NKVD [precursor to the KGB] to see over the fence and occasionally catch site of Vladyka, when he was being led from an interrogation room. But then they sent him to Saratov.

“Nuns told me that a child’s prayer travels to God much faster. I prayed as best I could. I prayed with all my strength both day and night. Summer vacation came, and nothing stopped me from praying for entire days on end. Oh, how I prayed! But next month, news arrived in Volsk that Bishop George had been shot. And then,” the woman broke down in tears, “I lost my faith. I understood that a God who did not hear or did not wish to answer a child’s prayers could not exist. And so I have lived my entire life without faith. The emptiness that took its place in my soul was not simply the opposite of the Living God. I was offended by the now non-existent God. Offence at the Church and its clergy who, out of stupidity or ambition, deceive people. And when they opened the church in Volsk again during the War, I turned the other way whenever I passed by those open doors. And if I should hear the echoes of services being chanted, I would become ill for several days.”

Lord! What a monstrous mistake, I thought, how misguided! Bishop George lived until 1948. But the old woman continued:

“Recently I learned that all my prayers had indeed gone straight to God, and that Bishop George had not been shot. If I had known that then … I would have gone to him where he was in the camps, in exile. I would have lived nearby, cleaned his clothes, brought food to him … My life would have been completely different. And that is the great sin of my life, for which I now repent before dying. Forgive me, Father!”

Ekaterina Mikhaylovna died that evening. On the third day, I served her funeral service thinking about how surprising human fate can be, and how God is merciful, returning such lost souls to Him.

Atheism is all about ME

Father Dwight Longenecker over at Standing on My Head has this to say:

The Daily Telegraph reports on the 'coolest atheist T Shirts' here. What strikes me about these slogans is how lame they are. Really, can't they do better than that? Each one really says, "Hey, I'm a sophomore in college now! See how smart I am?"

What is most frightening about most contemporary atheism from Dawkins down to the dumbest hedonist who wishes he had read Dawkins is how these folks really have refused to do their homework. Dawkins has now been picked apart, challenged and refuted by a good number of equally intelligent authors from a range of different Christian traditions, but it doesn't seem anyone is really bothering to do the homework.

The reasons for atheism are complex. Mostly it is simply human rebellion against God and his moral code. Atheists and a huge section of our modern society hate God because they want to live their lives without any restrictions.

Read it all here.

David Bentley Hart's New Book

David Bentley Hart is visiting professor, Theology Department, Providence College, and author of several books, including In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments and The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Hart is a Christian in the Orthodox Church. He is the younger brother of the Anglican priest Robert Hart of The Continuum. (The third Hart brother is a Roman Catholic priest. The conversation around the table when the three brothers are together must be interesting!)

Here is a review of David Bentley Hart's new book Atheist Delusions:

Currently it is fashionable to be devoutly undevout. Religion’s most passionate antagonists—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others—have publishers competing eagerly to market their various denunciations of religion, monotheism, Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. But contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon profound conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history or even outright historical ignorance: so contends David Bentley Hart in this bold correction of the distortions. One of the most brilliant scholars of religion of our time, Hart provides a powerful antidote to the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, bringing into focus the truth about the most radical revolution in Western history.

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

From here.

Dawkins Pays for Atheist Camp for Kids

The evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, who stepped down from his post at Oxford University last year, has subsidised the five-day camp in Somerset.

Camp-goers will be given lessons in rational scepticism, as well as sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology.

There will be more familiar camp activities such as trekking, tug-of-war, canoeing and swimming but children will also be taught to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy.

The retreat is for children aged eight to 17 and will rival traditional faith-based breaks run by the Scouts and church groups. It will teach that religious belief and doctrines can prevent ethical and moral behaviour.

Read it all here.

Atheist Gets Good Review from Rowan Williams

Atheist author, Phillip Pullman, gets good reviews from Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Read it here.

(It would only be fair for Rowan to give equally good reviews for the writings of solidly orthodox Christians!)

David B. Hart Looks at Atheists' Claims

David B. Hart looks at the claims atheists make about Christianity in his book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolutions and its Fashionable enemies.

Here is a good review of Hart's book by Derrick A. Peterson:

Don't let the bombastic title fool you (it appears to be a play on both Dawkin's The God Delusion and the latter part of the title of Schliermacher's famous On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers and so is actually a rather sly title despite its prima facie inflammatory nature). This is by no means a standard book of apologetics. You will find here no trenchant rehashing of the so-called arguments for God's existence (cosmological, axiological, ontological), theodicy, or the well worn cart paths of the wearisome and quixotic Evolution vs Creationism debates. Rather what Hart attempts to do (and does beautifully) is to show that the assumptions of the "New Athiests," (e.g. Dennet, Dawkins et all) and the common mythology of atheism amongst laypersons and professionals pervading our contemporary atmosphere--namely that the history of Christianity is one of completely violent, doctrinaire aggression, suppression of scientific inquiry, fideistic stupidity, the abnegation of freedom and self thinking, and all in all the historical quintessence and amalgamation of nearly all the maladies and vicious shortcomings of Western history--are completely false.

To complete this task Hart sets forth a history of Christianity that shows, e.g. that Christianity was not some great and malicious interruption to the ideals of Classical and Hellenistic science in the so-called Dark Ages, but in fact preserved and expounded upon classical ideas, and even--interestingly enough--mediated to Islam via Syriac Christianity's copious translations of Aristotle the Aristotelian scientific heritage that eventually became re-integrated into the Western world. Or, for example, the notorious case of Galileo and his condemnation by Pope Urban the VIII is wonderfully narrated with the historical precision it deserves to show (rightfully, and finally in a way that will reach the popular consciousness) that this was an anomaly in the general historical relationship between science and the Church; that it was not in fact a battle between the incandescent purity of the reason of scientific legitimacy versus the stalwart bastion of traditional fideistic dogmatism of the church but rather the asinine conflict between two supremely egotistical men; that, if one looks at it, Galileo despite his brilliance could provide no empirical evidence for his Copernicanism (which, up to that point had created no stir in the church and found both admirers and detractors...in fact Pope Paul the 3rd, to whom Copernicus' book was dedicated quite liked it) and so, ironically (as Hart wonderfully puts it), it was the CHURCH that was demanding evidence from GALILEO, who was in many ways blindly devoted to the hypothetical system of Copernicanism despite the lack of empirical evidence for his heliocentricism as would be provided later by, say, Tycho Brahe; and, quite humorously, that the eventual success of heliocentricism in the likes of Kepler and Newton was not the eventual success of some Classical Greek scientific spirit obfuscated by some Christian decline, but its final and ultimate defeat by a new system of science which superceded the old Aristotelian prejudices due to the influence of Christianity.

This is only a small piece of the books recovering of Christian history, but overall Hart's thesis is that the Christianity transformed the ancient world: it brought dignity to human beings, liberated us from fatalism, subverted the cruelest aspects of pagan society, emphasized learning and self control, and elevated charity above all virtues. In fact, to summarize, no Christianity means the disappearance of most, if not all of the positive force of Western history (a lofty thesis, to be sure). But the book is so much more than even this corrective.

Hart is not only a scholar of profound depth, but he also has a sharp sense of humor that saturates his beautiful writing style with a glamor and a fluidity of reading that few academics of his stature can achieve. There were moments when I actually laughed out loud at some of Hart's hilarious observations, and overall I could hardly put this book down.

I strongly recommend this book. Not only is it an innovative and historically accurate (though as Hart himself admits, not exhaustive) account of Christianity, and not only does it provide an excellent introduction to Hart apart from his much more difficult (but also amazing) Beauty of the Infinite, but it is a ripping good read in its own right. An indispensable read for Christians (and atheists!) of all levels of learning.

Dostoevsky's Orthodox Convictional Theology

Pastor Dima (Dimitru Sevastian) is the Dean of Theology at the Theological College of Moldova (TCM), and also a Pastor at Bethany Evangelical Baptist in Chisinau, Moldova. He has his MDiv from TCM, and is currently pursuing his doctorate of divinity. This paper is one he delivered recently at a bible conference in Prague. It is part and parcel of his extensive research and work toward his doctorate.

Dostoevsky’s implicit mission to Russian society as a lived out Russian Orthodox Convictional Theology

Introduction
The purpose of this research is to point out some common practical elements in the mission of Baptist and Orthodox Christians in an Orthodox context. My intention is to explore Dostoevsky’s implicit mission in order to suggest some ways in which Baptist and Orthodox Christian can work together in responding to the Missio Dei. The focus is being the theology[1] in terms of lived out convictions[2].

To understand Dostoevsky’s mission, one must ‘hear’ his story, which is linked with the story of the people and with the greater story of God.[3]

Dostoevsky was a journalist as well as a novelist. That’s why in the first section of this paper I am going to examine his perception of the situation of his time as a form of ‘mission as witness.’[4] In the following three sections I intend to explore three elements in Orthodox Church mission: love, life and unity[5] as they are evident in the life of Dostoevsky.

1. Perception of his time situation as ‘mission as witness’
‘The perception of the situation often begins by defining the threat’ and by ‘the questions of the desirability and speed of the presumably needed social change in the community’.[6]

The situation itself
The 19 century finds Russia in a rather complicated condition. The emperor is reigning autocratically, answerable only to the Lord God.[7] Not being a man of outstanding morals, Nikolai I abuses his given power, going into violence and immorality.

Just like a squire managed lives and desires of peasants, so was tsar with his servants. He would pay attention… not only to young beauties at his palace – ladies and maids, but to girls he accidentally met while walking. If he liked someone during his walks or in theatre, he would tell it to an adjutant on duty. And, this girl would be under his control. If she hasn’t been involved in any improper activities, then her husband (if she was married) or parents (if she wasn’t married) would be told about enormous honor, which they received… No one ever resisted Tsar’s desires … In this strange country, to sleep with an emperor was considered as a great honor…for parents and even for husbands…[8]

The social situation was very complicated as well. Serfdom-based forms of exploitation were pushed to an extreme, turning a serf into a slave. The Rule of landlords always meant excessive abuse of serfs, endless outrages upon the personhood of serfs, and implied the most impudent, shameless, unprecedented exploitation of serf labor.[9] The gap between the landlord and the slave was so great that the landlord seemed to consider himself made from another material than common folk.[10]

A secret police force was formed to keep everything under tight control. Police controlled all the literature, which made the existence and development of publishing in Russia practically impossible.[11] The Tsar and the head of the secret police became the ultimate censors.[12]

French author Marquis Astolf de Custin compared the vast Russian Empire with a prison where the emperor has the key.[13]

Violence in the name of love - a proposed solution to change the society
As a reaction to this existing police-feudal régime we see the appearance of the first secret society starting as early as the first quarter of the 19th century.[14] The members of this society wanted to overthrow the absolute power of the emperor and destroy the existing feudal customs.[15] On the verge of the years 1830-1840 we see the appearance of such ideological currents as “Slavophile” and “Westernism”.[16] Whereas the slavophiles wanted to transform the country by implementing reforms,[17] the westernizers dreamed of a revolution similar to the one in France.[18] The mid 1840's see the appearance of other, more radical socialist circles, members of which were convinced that autocracy and social injustice are the main obstacles in the way of the people’s wellbeing. Thus their main purpose became getting rid of these obstacles, even resorting to violence.

Literary critic V. Belinsky was one of the leaders of the westernist movement. He was a convinced atheist. In his understanding, Russia's transformation would be impossible without eliminating Christianity.[19]

In that time Dostoevsky, also deeply concerned for the lives of his countrymen, became close to Belinsky and often visited some of the illegal, antigovernment meetings. Belinsky preached his socialist-atheist way with such passion that Dostoevsky couldn’t resist. Accepting the socialist teachings of Belinsky, Dostoevsky saw his Christian convictions being shattered. He describes this time as the time of “losing Christ”.[20] “We were infected with the ideas of theoretical socialism of those days!” – Dostoevsky would recall.[21] For his involvement in the antigovernment movement, Dostoevsky was sentenced to capital punishment, which was later replaced with 4 years of penal labor (katorga).

Returning to faith in God as the only way to transform society
In penal servitude, Dostoevsky went through something that he calls “the regeneration of his convictions”.[22] What could have taken place to change his convictions so completely? Dostoevsky himself answers this question by saying, “I accepted Christ in my life, whom I got to know as a child in my parent’s house and whom I have almost lost, when I in turn became a European liberal.”[23]

Dostoevsky began to understand clearly that Russian society's greatest problem was its departure from God. Thus the problem lay not in the social but in the spiritual realm. The social realm is a result of the people's spiritual condition.

Another problem, which could make matters worse, was the intrusion of the socialist atheist teaching mentioned above. From his own experience, Dostoevsky knew the danger and destructiveness of this socialist way, offered by many as the way to reform society. In his letter to M. Pogodin, Dostoevsky writes that ‘socialism and Christianity are antonyms’.[24] The danger of this way, in Dostoevsky’s opinion, was its negation of God and establishment of a new atheistic society.

By means of his novels, articles, and personal correspondence, Dostoevsky warned about the consequences of entering this dangerous path. The tragedy of Rasskolnikov, the main character of the novel Crime and Punishment, shows how easily one can be infatuated with this teaching of “violence for the sake of love”.

Dostoevsky not only warned about the dangers, but also proposed a way to transform society, and openly called the people to come back to God. At the same time he realized how hard it is for a person to pass through this process of doubt and disbelief. In his works Dostoevsky shows this inner struggle which takes place in a person who is on the path of returning to God.

The Diary of a Writer contains an interesting article describing this path. Dostoevsky answers a certain Gradovsky, who is considered by others to be a Christian, on Gradovsky's statement that faith is not related to social ideals and that faith in God cannot transform society. Dostoevsky's first utterance: “It is funny how you understand Christianity!”[25] He goes on to explain that growth in Christian faith changes Christians themselves and these changes have an effect upon people in society. He was convinced that even without the abolition of serfdom, slavery would disappear because the landlord and the serf would become brothers.[26] (Rasskolnikov's sufferings would awaken a new life in him.)

Thus the call of Dostoevsky is towards return of people to faith in God.

2. Love of God as the foundation of missions
According to David Bosch, God’s love expressed in the sacrifice of Christ is the foundation for mission, in an orthodox understanding. The followers of Christ are to display this same love beyond the limits of the flock.[27]

Dostoevsky doesn’t simply call others to the imitation of Christ, but he himself lives as a compassionate person who loves the people. He learned to be compassionate to the poor and needy from his childhood, when he lived in the house of his father in Moscow, in the hospital for the poor.[28]

Being near helpless people, he would go out of his way to help. When still in his teens he once gladly brought water to a peasant lady who accidentally spilled it and had no one to carry it to her child in their village 15 kilometers away.[29]

A. Saveliev, who served as an officer in the engineering school when Dostoevsky was a student, expressed his observations of Dostoevsky’s compassion to the poor:

The feelings of compassion remained in Fyodor Michailovich during his times of studies. They witnessed life of poor peasants in a Staraya Kikenka village. The picture of terrifying poverty, absence of providence, poor clay ground and unemployment was unveiled. The main reason for this situation was a neighboring wealthy property of earl Orlov. Striking poverty, pitiful houses and masses of kids without good nutrition used to increase the level of compassion in young people’s hearts towards peasants of Staraya Kikenka. Dostoevsky and Berezhesky along with their friends used to make fund raising for needs of poorest peasants.[30]

Later Doctor Rizenkampf, who lived in the same apartment with Dostoevsky, spoke on the writer's sacrificial spirit:

Fyodor Michailovich had such type of personality that everyone enjoyed, yet these kinds of personalities were in need themselves. He had been robbed unmercifully, though due to his kindness and trust, he wouldn’t want to get into details or rebuke servants that used his carelessness.[31]

O. Miller states that when in Dostoevsky and Rizenkampf rented an apartment together, ‘this co-habitation with the doctor practically turned out to be a new source of constant expenses. Each poor person coming to doctor for advice he was ready to accept as a dear guest. Often he would come to a point of extreme need of money.’[32] “The new day with the lack of money, new loans, often times with exorbitant interest rates, just to borrow enough money to be able to buy sugar, tea, etc.”[33]

Doctor S. Yanovski knew that Dostoevsky was well paid, but also knew that he was constantly in need of money. Yanovski posed the question, “Where did his money go?” And supplied the answer himself:

I can answer this question correctly, since Fyodor Michailovich was open to me more than to others when it used to come to finances: he distributed almost all of his funds to those who were any poorer than him; sometimes distributed funds to those, who were not poorer than him, but they would receive his money due to his endless kindness. He never gambled, did not have a clue about the rules and even hated card game. He was a decisive enemy of wine and carouse.[34]

The testimony of Dostoevsky's brother Andrei serves as a good illustration for Yanovski’s words. “When there was the first case of cholera and a patient had an attack on the street, brother Fyodor immediately” ran to the patient to give him medication and after that was massaging him when he had convulsions.[35]

Another story came from A. Dostoevskaya, wife of the writer. She tells about Fyodor Michailovich's compassion to poor and sick people:

Having heard about poverty of one widow, who remained with three children of 11, 7 and 5 years after husband’s death, Dostoevsky out of pity has hired her as a servant with all of her children … Fedosya with tears in her eyes shared with me, while I was still a bride, about Fyodor Michailovich’ kindness. According to her, at nights whenever hearing a child coughing or crying, he would come to him/her cover with a blanket, calm him/her down, or at least wake mother up.[36]

Dostoevsky would never turn away those asking for alms. “There were cases” – his wife would say – “when my husband would not have petit cash and he was asked for alms close to our stairs, then he would bring the beggars in and in our apartment they would be given the money.”[37]

He would not pay back evil for evil, but would forgive his offenders. In 1879 some drunk peasant on the street had hit Dostoevsky over the back of his head with such power that he fell on the pavement, resulting in a bloody gash. In the police station Fyodor Michailovich asked the officer to release the offender, as he had forgiven him. However the protocol was already completed and the process could not be reversed. Dostoevsky said to the judge that he forgave the offender and asked for his release. The judge acceded to Dostoevsky’s request, however still fining the peasant 16 rubles for “creating noise and disorder on the street.” Dostoevsky waited for his offender at the exit and gave him 16 rubles to pay the fine.[38]

According to A. Dostoevskaya, Fyodor Michailovich was a man of limitless kindness. He would display it not only to those close to him, but to anyone whose misfortune or crisis he would hear came to his notice. He would not have to be asked, he would offer his help himself.

Having influential friends, my husband used their influence in order to help others. He placed many old people in elderly homes, children to orphanages and helped losers to find their place in society. He had to read and correct many other writings, listen to honest confessions and offer advices on very personal issues. He did not feel sorry about his time or his strength, trying to help to his neighbor. He has helped financially, in case he lacked funds, he would sign bills and had to later pay them off. Sometimes, Fyodor Mikhailovich’ kindness contradicted family interests, and often I would get upset about his unlimited kindness, yet I could not help but delight seeing him rejoice whenever having opportunity to help others.[39]

Dostoevsky was especially concerned for children and paid attention to cases of child abuse that he heard about. He followed closely the trials of parents accused of child abuse.[40]

Towards the end of his life Dostoevsky became a spiritual leader for a great many people. Every day he would receive letters from all across Russia and would agree to see visitors asking for spiritual advice, seeking mentoring, or looking for direction for their lives. This activity of Dostoevsky was similar to the social ministries of staretzes in the monastery, similar to the elder Ambrosi whom he saw in the Optina monastery, or staretz Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov.[41]

Dostoevsky lived so sacrificially because his convictions were deeply founded in Christ's suffering and resurrection. In addition, he was convinced that this was the only way for the Russian society he loved so much to be transformed. Staretz Zosima in the novel The Brothers Karamazov admonishes Aliosha Karamazov to go into the world and to love the people even in their sins. The sacrificial love of Dostoevsky comes from the conviction that “there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, attractive, wiser, more courageous, and more perfect than Christ, and not only nothing, but I say with a jealous love, that there can never be”.[42]

3. Life as the goal for mission
According to Bosch, “For the Orthodox Church - love is the foundation of mission and life is the goal of it. Christ came not first of all to free the man from their sins, but to restore them in their godly image and to give them life”.[43] People are called not to simply get to know Christ; they are called to “share the glory of Christ”. “It is a continuing state of worship, prayer, thanksgiving, adoration, intercession as well as meditation and consideration of the triune God and God’s infinite love.”[44]

We have now many examples of the prayer life of Dostoevsky, of his meditations and ponderings about God and biblical characters.

One of Dostoevsky's early memories is a daily prayer with his nanny before going to bed, when he was 3 years of age. “I put all my hopes in Thee, Mother of God, keep me in Thy care”. This prayer Dostoevsky loved so much that it became part of the prayers which he read to his children at bed time.[45] Also from his early years Dostoevsky listened to bible stories. Remembering those years, Fyodor Michailovich wrote in 1873, “in our family we knew the Gospel almost from earliest childhood.”[46]

In his student years, Dostoevsky displayed a conscious eagerness to talk about God, despite the laughter of his comrades. Soloviov testifies,
Fyodor Michailovich behaved modestly; executive responsibilities and tasks performed meticulously, but were very religious, diligently performing the duties of an orthodox Christian. In his possession you could see both the Gospels and “Die Stunden der Andacht” (Hour of prayer). After lectures of Scriptures by Poluektov Fyodor Michailovich would talk at length to his Scriptures teacher. This was so sharply contrasting with everyone else’s way of life that his friends called him Fotius Monk.[47]

This is an important testimony that from his earliest childhood Gospel reading was not just a form. It made its way deep into his heart, and he loved it. In Dostoevsky’s letters to his brother Mikhail he said “To learn nature, soul, God, love… this is learned with the heart and not with the mind.”[48]

From the time of Dostoevsky’s marriage with Anna Grigorievna we have a number of references to his prayers. We have a letter in which Dostoevsky writes to his wife, “I prayed with tears about you this night”.[49] When the firstborn was due Dostoevsky prayed all night. As the birth of another son, Fyodor, approached, he prayed all day and all night.[50] When his two-year-old daughter Liubovi broke her hand and the bones did not knit well, she had to undergo surgery. “Anya, we shall pray and ask for the help of God, the Lord will help us!” remembers A. Dostoevsky – “we got on our knees and probably never have we prayed with such zeal as in those moments.[51]

Meditating about Christ and desiring to imitate Him in His self-sacrificial spirit, Dostoevsky said to writer D.V. Averkiev, “To understand your existence, to be able to say, I am! – that’s a great gift, but to say I am not, to humble yourself for the sake of others, to have this power is probably much greater”. To which Averkiev objected, “this certainly is a great gift, but no one has it or had ever had except for one, who was God”. To which Dostoevsky answered, “Yes, but also man.” For Dostoevsky Christ was not only God but also man, open to pain and called to go through it.[52]

The book of Job made an especially strong impression on Dostoevsky, with its story of an innocent sufferer, uncomplainingly enduring the difficult tests God sent to him: the death of his close ones, bankruptcy, leprosy, poverty. For that he was healed, restored to his wealth, became again the father of a large family and “died in late years filled with days”. Later he will say to his wife in 1875, “I am reading the book of Job and it creates in me a morbid excitement, I stop reading and walk about the room for about an hour, on the verge of crying…this book, Anya, is strangely one of the first that made a deep impression on me, and I was almost a baby back then!”[53]

The image of Christ who suffered and was resurrected and the image of Job suffering and his ‘resurrection’ to new life served as a model and inspiration for Dostoevsky's walk by faith.

4. Unity and mission
Dostoevsky was part of Russian Orthodox society. A constant love towards Russia and the Russian people, and steadfast Christian ideals, were among Dostoevsky's chief characteristics. Together they gave him a dream of the ‘reconciliation of nations’ in Christ with the help of Orthodox Russia.[54] Dostoevsky's thoughts and dreams on universal reconciliation, fascinating him throughout his life, came to their fullest expression six months prior to his death in his speech in honor of Pushkin, delivered on 8 June 1880. In the end he says with assurance,
Future Russian people will understand all and every single person that this is what it means to be a true Russian: to try to finally reconcile European disagreements once and for all, to show the way out for European boredom in our Russian soul, universal and all unifying, to encompass in it with brotherly love all of our brothers, and finally may be to reach a concluding agreement of all the nations on Christ’s gospel law.[55]

According to Dostoevsky, a divine harmony that would resolve all contradictions would be possible if people would live the life of Christ. He himself understood that this dream bordered on fantasy, yet nonetheless he strived to fulfill it, providing an example for others.

Conclusion
In the center of Dostoevsky’s mission is the image of Christ suffering and resurrected. He warned people of the danger of turning away from Christ, and called upon them to follow Him through the difficulties and hardships to “resurrection for new life”. With all that he would display a personal example of life in Christ in his relationships with Him and the people around.

I am aware that this study does not cover all the elements of Dostoevsky’s implicit mission. I hope that this research of Dostoevsky’s implicit mission to Russian society as a lived-out Russian Orthodox Convictional Theology will help us, as Baptist believers, in our mission to secularized people in European contexts where an Orthodox religious presence predominates.

However what was most evident in Dostoevsky’s life, day by day, was the love of God evident in him and through him because his convictions were grounded in Jesus.

NOTES
[1] According to James Wm. McClendon’s definition, the theology is “discovery, understanding, and transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is”. McClendon, James Wm. Jr. Ethics. Systematic TheologyVolume1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986), p. 23.
[2] Convictions are firm beliefs that guide the person. They don’t change so easily, but if we change them, then the person changes as well. (See McClendon, James Wm. Jr. & James M. Smith, Understanding Convictions: Defusing Religious. Revised edition. (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), p. 5).
[3] McClendon, James Wm. Jr. Ethics. Systematic TheologyVolume1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986), p. 356.
[4] Parush R. Parushev and Rolling Grams, Academic Reasoning, Research and Writing in Religious Studies. A Concise Handbook (Librix.eu Tribun EU, 2008), p.19.
[5] David J Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigms Shifts in Theology of Mission (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1991), pp. 207-209.
[6] Lina Andronovienė and Parush R. Parushev, ‘Church, State, and Culture: On the Complexities of Post-soviet Evangelical Social Involvement’, Theological Reflections, EAAA Journal of Theology 3 (2004), pp. 194-21.
[7] A. Radzinskij, Alexandr II Zhizn’ I Smert’ [Akexander II Life and Death] (М., Izdatel’stvo АСТ, 2006), p. 81.
[8] Ibid, 75.
[9] A. F. Vvoznyi, Policejskij sjsk I kruzhok Petrashevcev [Criminal investigation and the Petroshavski’s group] (Kiev, KVSH MVD SSSR, 1976), p. 25.
[10] Marquis Astolf de Custin, Nikolaevskaya Rossiya [Nikolai’s Russia] (М., Izdatel’stvo politiceskoj literatury, 1990), p. 301.
[11] Kniga dlya chteniya po istorii novogo vremeni Т. IV [New Time History Handbook. Vol. IV] (М., Tipogragiya t-va I. D. Sytkina, 1914), p. 100.
[12] Radzinskij, Alexandr II Zhizn’ I Smert’, p. 59.
[13] Custin, Nikolaevskaya Rossiya, p. 157.
[14] Istoriya Rossii v XIX veke [History of Russia in XIX century] (SPb., Pusskaya Skoropechatnya, V. 1-2, no year.), p. 69.
[15] A. V. Semionova, Velikaya Francuzskaya revolyuciya I Rossiya [Russia and the Great French Revolution] (М., «Znanie», 1991), p. 8.
[16] Rossiya. Ehnciklopedicheskij spravochnik [Russia. Encyclopedia] (М., Izdatel’skij dom “Drofa”, 1998), p. 132.
[17] Russkoe obshhestvo 40-50 godov XIX veka [Russian society of years 40-50 of XIX century] (М., Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1989), p. 10.
[18] Ibid, 13.
[19] F. M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 21, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1873 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 21, The Diary of a Writer for 1873.,] (L., Nauka, 1980), p. 8.
[20] Ibid, 9.
[21] Ibid, 130.
[22] Ibid, 134.
[23] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 26, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1880 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 26, The Diary of a Writer for 1880.,] (L., Nauka, 1980), p. 152.
[24] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 28, Pis’ma 1873 god.,M. P. Pogodinu 26 fevralya [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 28, Letters of 1873.,to M. Pogodin from 26 February] (L. Nauka, 1985), p. 471.
[25] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 21, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1873 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 21, The Diary of a Writer for 1873.,] (L., Nauka, 1980), chapter 3.
[26] Ibid
[27] Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigms Shifts in Theology of Mission, pp. 208-209.
[28] Ibid
[29] A. М. Rumyanczeva, Fiodor Michailovich Dostoevsky (L., Prosveshhenie, 1971), p. 14.
[30] F. M. Dostoevsky v vospominaniyah sovremennikov v dvuh tomah [F.M. Dostoevsky in reminiscence of his contemporaries in two volumes] (М., Hudozhestvennaya Literatura, 1990), pp. 166-167.
[31] Ibid, 189.
[32] Ibid, 189-190.
[33] Ibid, 191.
[34] Ibid, 235-236.
[35] Ibid, 141.
[36] A. G. Dostoevskaya, Vospominaniya [Memoirs] (М., Pravda, 1987), p. 78.
[37] Ibid, 220.
[38] Ibid, 354.
[39] Ibid, 421.
[40] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 25, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1877 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 25, The Diary of a Writer for 1877.,] (L., Nauka, 1983), pp. 182-187.
[41] N. О Lossky, Bog I mirovoe zlo [God and world evil] (М., Respublika, 1994), p. 19.
[42] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 28, Pis’ma 1854 god., N. D. Fonvizina 20 fevralya [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 28, Letters of 1854.,to N. D. Fonvizina from 20 February] (L. Nauka, 1985), p. 175.
[43] Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigms Shifts in Theology of Mission, pp. 208-209.
[44] Ibid
[45] Lossky, Bog i mirovoe zlo, p. 36.
[46] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 21, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1873 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 21, The Diary of a Writer for 1873.,] (L., Nauka, 1973), p. 134.
[47] F. M. Dostoevsky v vospominaniyah sovremennikov v dvuh tomah, p. 163.
[48] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 28, Pis’ma 1838 god., M. M. Dostoevsky 31oktobrya [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 28, Letters of 1854.,to M. M. Dostoevsky from 31 October] (L. Nauka, 1985), p. 53.
[49] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 28, Pis’ma 1867 god., A. G. Dostoevskaya 8 maya [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 28, Letters of 1867., to A. G. Dostoevskaya from 8 May] (L. Nauka, 1985), p. 188.
[50] Dostoevskaya, Vospominaniya, p.78.
[51] Ibid, 144.
[52] F. M. Dostoevsky v vospominaniyah sovremennikov v dvuh tomah, p. 20.
[53] L.Grossman, Dostoevsky (М., Molodaya Gvardiya, 1962), p. 15.
[54] Lossky, Bog i mirovoe zlo, p. 19.
[55] Dostoevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij v 30 tomakh, tom 26, Dnevnik pisatelya za 1880 god., [The Complete Works in 30 volumes, V. 26, The Diary of a Writer for 1880.,] (L., Nauka, 1984), p. 148.

UK Atheists and Historical Revision

Now Mr [John] Hunt has become the pioneer in a rejuvenated campaign for a way of cancelling baptisms given to children too young to decide for themselves whether they wanted this formal initiation into Christianity.

However, baptism is proving a difficult thing to undo.The local Anglican diocese, Southwark, refused to amend the baptismal roll as Mr Hunt had wanted, on the grounds that it was a historical record.

"You can't remove from the record something that actually happened," said the Bishop of Croydon, the Right Reverend Nick Baines.

Read it all here.

One wonders if Atheists parents don't equally insist that their children receive the proper indoctrination in Atheism. Well, of course they do!

Atheists Seek Overturn of Day of Prayer Law

Bill Ritter Jr. was not the first governor of Colorado to declare the first Thursday in May as a day of prayer.

But he was the first to attend a celebration of the National Day of Prayer at the state Capitol, joining a crowd of several hundred Christians in 2007. His appearance at the event caught the attention of a Wisconsin-based atheist group, which has mounted a campaign its leaders hope will dissuade him and other governors from participating again.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a lawsuit in state court, seeking to stop the governor from issuing any proclamations it says endorse a particular religion and send a message to nonreligious residents "that they are expected to believe in God."

"Everybody has become too comfortable with this interaction of religion and government. Sometimes someone needs to push back," said David Habecker, 63, one of the lawsuit's plaintiffs and a member of the foundation.

Habecker was ousted as town trustee in Estes Park, Colo., in a 2005 recall after he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because he objected to the phase "under God."

The suit is part of a broader campaign by the group to overturn the 1952 law designating a National Day of Prayer and mandating an annual proclamation by the president.

The group also recently filed a federal lawsuit arguing that proclamations encouraging prayer violate a constitutional ban on government officials endorsing religion.

Of particular interest to the foundation, its leaders said, is the role of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a private organization in Colorado Springs that advocates for participation in the annual observance.

The task force -- whose chairwoman, Shirley Dobson, is married to James Dobson, founder of the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family -- comes up with biblical themes and quotes for each day of prayer and lobbies vigorously for governors across the nation to use them, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion.

This year, Ritter, a Democrat, used the quotes suggested by the task force.

"They're working hand in glove with government officials dictating prayer to constituents. That's not what government is supposed to do," Gaylor said.

Read it all here.

The "Charitable" Face of Atheism

The reputation of atheists has not been well-served by the surly attacks on religion by some of atheism's highest-profile torch carriers. From the best-selling atheist manifestos of recent years to Bill Maher's new Religulous movie, the loudest voices of non-belief have exhibited much of the same stridency and flair for polemics as the religious fundamentalists they excoriate.

But if Margaret Downey keeps making progress with her campaign to show a different face of atheism, it's possible to imagine the day when avowing one's non-belief will not be political suicide. (It seems to be just that today, given that only one member of Congress, Rep. Pete Stark of California, has revealed that he does not believe in a deity; in view of polling data suggesting that some 5% to 15% of Americans are atheists and agnostics, it seems certain there are at least a few more non-believing senators and representatives in the halls — and closets — of Congress.)

Downey, having recently finished a stint as president of the Atheist Alliance International, is now organizing a non-believers' unity convention to take place in 2011. She is the poster person for positive atheism, a term she uses for a new face of atheism that emphasizes the good things in which non-believers do believe.

Downey does not move in the ways of the late atheist spokesperson Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who was known for her caustic mockery of religion and its followers. And despite Downey's friendship with the outspoken atheist author Richard Dawkins, of The God Delusion fame (who likens the religious indoctrination of kids to child abuse), Downey is more interested in building bridges than walls.

In an episode earlier this year in the Philadelphia area, where Downey lives, the stage appeared set for an atheist-vs.-Christian billboards shouting match: Downey and colleagues had posted a billboard on Interstate 95 saying, "Don't believe in God? You're not alone," prompting a local Christian congregation to erect signs with a counter-message promoting God. Instead of escalating the billboard battle, Downey and company asked those who put up the pro-belief sign to join forces and volunteer with them for a Philadelphia charity. The people from the Light Houses of Oxford Valley congregation accepted the offer and teamed up with the atheists to spend a half-day sorting and packaging food for the needy.

"My goal is to teach by example that we believe in the importance of helping improve the human condition," Downey says. "We atheists simply add one more 'o' to our belief system — we believe in good."

Read it all here.

Totalitarian Atheism

Rev Reiss was grievously misrepresented by people who seized upon the fact that, although he is a scientist he is also – gulp – a Christian. They accused him of suggesting that creationism should be taught in school as having equal value to evolution. In vain did Reiss protest that he had said nothing of the kind. The Royal Society has got rid of him because his views were open to misinterpretation and thus

While it was not his intention, this has led to damage to the society’s reputation.
So he has been pushed out not because of what he actually said but because other people misrepresented what he had said. Instead of standing up to the bullying Phil Willis, the chairman of the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, who said

I was horrified to hear these views and I reject them totally. They are a step too far and they fly in the face of what science is about. I think if his [Professor Reiss's] views are as mentioned they may be incompatible with his position,

(how dare an MP seek to dictate what a scientist may or may not say!) the Royal Society itself pushed its heretic into the flames.

Far from Reiss damaging the reputation of the Royal Society, it has now done this to itself. Appalling.

Read it all here.