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This text initially appeared on a brand new web site in regards to the Christian renaissance in Russia, known as Russian Religion. Their introductory video is at finish of this text.
Introduction by Chris Banescu
As a survivor of the Communist Holocaust I’m horrified to witness how my beloved America, my adopted nation, is regularly being reworked right into a secularist and atheistic utopia, the place communist beliefs are glorified and promoted, whereas Judeo-Christian values and morality are ridiculed and more and more eradicated from the general public and social consciousness of our nation.
Underneath the decades-long assault and militant radicalism of many so-called “liberal” and “progressive” elites, God has been progressively erased from our public and academic establishments, to get replaced with all method of delusion, perversion, corruption, violence, decadence, and madness.
It’s no coincidence that as Marxist ideologies and secularist rules engulf the tradition and pervert mainstream pondering, particular person freedoms and liberties are quickly disappearing. As a consequence, People really feel more and more extra powerless and subjugated by among the most radical and hypocritical, least democratic, and characterless people our society has ever produced.
These of us who’ve skilled and witnesses first-hand the atrocities and terror of communism perceive totally why such evil takes root, the way it grows and deceives, and the type of hell it’s going to in the end unleash on the harmless and the devoted. Godlessness is all the time step one in the direction of tyranny and oppression!
Nobel laureate, Orthodox Christian creator, and Russian dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag” tackle, given when he acquired the Templeton Prize for Progress in Faith on Could of 1983, defined how the Russian revolution and the communist takeover have been facilitated by an atheistic mentality an a protracted technique of secularization which alienated the folks from God and conventional Christian morality and beliefs. He rightly concluded: “Males have forgotten God; that’s why all this has occurred.”
The textual content of his Templeton Deal with is offered under. The parallels with the present disaster and ethical decay in American society are placing and horrifying. Those that have ears to listen to, allow them to hear!
“Males Have Forgotten God” – The Templeton Deal with
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Greater than half a century in the past, whereas I used to be nonetheless a toddler, I recall listening to plenty of older folks supply the next clarification for the nice disasters that had befallen Russia: Males have forgotten God; that’s why all this has occurred.
Since then I’ve spent well-nigh fifty years engaged on the historical past of our Revolution; within the course of I’ve learn tons of of books, collected tons of of non-public testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my very own towards the trouble of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But when I have been requested immediately to formulate as concisely as attainable the principle reason behind the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our folks, I couldn’t put it extra precisely than to repeat: Males have forgotten God; that’s why all this has occurred.
What’s extra, the occasions of the Russian Revolution can solely be understood now, on the finish of the century, towards the background of what has since occurred in the remainder of the world. What emerges here’s a technique of common significance. And if I have been known as upon to establish briefly the principal trait of the complete twentieth century, right here too, I might be unable to search out something extra exact and pithy than to repeat as soon as once more: Males have forgotten God.
The failings of human consciousness, disadvantaged of its divine dimension, have been a figuring out consider all the main crimes of this century.
The failings of human consciousness, disadvantaged of its divine dimension, have been a figuring out consider all the main crimes of this century. The primary of those was World Warfare I, and far of our current predicament might be traced again to it. It was a conflict (the reminiscence of which appears to be fading) when Europe, bursting with well being and abundance, fell right into a rage of self-mutilation which couldn’t however sap its energy for a century or extra, and maybe ceaselessly. The one attainable clarification for this conflict is a psychological eclipse among the many leaders of Europe on account of their misplaced consciousness of a Supreme Energy above them. Solely a godless embitterment may have moved ostensibly Christian states to make use of poison gasoline, a weapon so clearly past the bounds of humanity.
The identical type of defect, the flaw of a consciousness missing all divine dimension, was manifested after World Warfare II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation of the “nuclear umbrella.” It was equal to saying: Let’s solid off worries, let’s free the youthful technology from their duties and obligations, let’s make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let’s cease our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and allow us to dwell as an alternative within the pursuit of happiness. If hazard ought to threaten us, we will be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care. The pitifully helpless state to which the up to date West has sunk is in giant measure on account of this deadly error: the assumption that the protection of peace relies upon not on stout hearts and steadfast males, however solely on the nuclear bomb…
As we speak’ s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to previous centuries, would have known as forth the cry: “That is the Apocalypse!”
But we’ve got grown used to this type of world; we even really feel at dwelling in it.
Dostoevsky warned that “nice occasions may encounter us and catch us intellectually unprepared.” That is exactly what has occurred. And he predicted that “the world will probably be saved solely after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.” Whether or not it actually will probably be saved we will have to attend and see: this can rely on our conscience, on our non secular lucidity, on our particular person and mixed efforts within the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it surely has already come to cross that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all 5 continents of the earth…
By the point of the Revolution, religion had just about disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its well being was threatened.
In its previous, Russia did know a time when the social superb was not fame, or riches, or materials success, however a pious lifestyle. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the primary centuries. The Orthodoxy of that point knew the right way to safeguard its folks beneath the yoke of a overseas occupation that lasted greater than two centuries, whereas on the identical time heading off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders. Throughout these centuries the Orthodox religion in our nation turned a part of the very sample of thought and the character of our folks, the types of day by day life, the work calendar, the priorities in each endeavor, the group of the week and of the yr. Religion was the shaping and unifying power of the nation.
However within the seventeenth century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an inner schism. Within the 18th, the nation was shaken by Peter’s forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economic system, the state, and the army on the expense of the spiritual spirit and nationwide life. And together with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the primary whiff of secularism; its refined poisons permeated the educated lessons in the middle of the nineteenth century and opened the trail to Marxism. By the point of the Revolution, religion had just about disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its well being was threatened.
It was Dostoevsky, as soon as once more, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution should essentially start with atheism.” That’s completely true. However the world had by no means earlier than identified a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Inside the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and on the coronary heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving power, extra elementary than all their political and financial pretensions. Militant atheism shouldn’t be merely incidental or marginal to Communist coverage; it isn’t a facet impact, however the central pivot.
The 1920’s within the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans have been shot, one in every of whom, Veniamin of Petrograd, had been elected by the favored vote of his diocese. Patriarch Tikhon himself handed via the fingers of the Cheka-GPU after which died beneath suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished. Tens of hundreds of monks, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to resign the Phrase of God, have been tortured, shot in cellars, despatched to camps, exiled to the desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets of their outdated age with out meals or shelter. All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to their deaths for the religion; cases of apostasy have been few and much between. For tens of hundreds of thousands of laymen entry to the Church was blocked, and so they have been forbidden to convey up their kids within the Religion: spiritual mother and father have been wrenched from their kids and thrown into jail, whereas the youngsters have been turned from the religion by threats and lies…
For a brief time period, when he wanted to assemble energy for the wrestle towards Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a pleasant posture towards the Church. This misleading recreation, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the assistance of showcase publications and different window dressing, has sadly tended to be taken at its face worth within the West. But the tenacity with which hatred of faith is rooted in Communism could also be judged by the instance of their most liberal chief, Krushchev: for although he undertook plenty of important steps to increase freedom, Krushchev concurrently rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession with destroying faith.
However there’s something they didn’t anticipate: that in a land the place church buildings have been leveled, the place a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, the place the clergy is totally humiliated and disadvantaged of all independence, the place what stays of the Church as an establishment is tolerated just for the sake of propaganda directed on the West, the place even immediately individuals are despatched to the labor camps for his or her religion, and the place, throughout the camps themselves, those that collect to wish at Easter are clapped in punishment cells–they might not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian custom would survive in Russia. It’s true that hundreds of thousands of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an formally imposed atheism, but there stay many hundreds of thousands of believers: it’s only exterior pressures that preserve them from talking out, however, as is all the time the case in instances of persecution and struggling, the notice of God in my nation has attained nice acuteness and profundity.
It’s right here that we see the daybreak of hope: for irrespective of how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, it doesn’t matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it’s doomed by no means to conquer Christianity.
The West has but to expertise a Communist invasion; faith right here stays free. However the West’s personal historic evolution has been such that immediately it too is experiencing a drying up of spiritual consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody spiritual wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Center Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of energy from inside is a menace to religion that’s maybe much more harmful than any try to assault faith violently from with out.
Imperceptibly, via many years of gradual erosion, the that means of life within the West has ceased to be seen as something extra lofty than the “pursuit of happiness, “a objective that has even been solemnly assured by constitutions. The ideas of fine and evil have been ridiculed for a number of centuries; banished from widespread use, they’ve been changed by political or class concerns of quick lived worth. It has change into embarrassing to state that evil makes its dwelling within the particular person human coronary heart earlier than it enters a political system. But it isn’t thought of shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the persevering with landslide of concessions made earlier than the eyes of our very personal technology, the West is ineluctably slipping towards the abyss. Western societies are shedding increasingly more of their spiritual essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their youthful technology to atheism. If a blasphemous movie about Jesus is proven all through america, apparently probably the most spiritual international locations on the planet, or a significant newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what additional proof of godlessness does one want? When exterior rights are utterly unrestricted, why ought to one make an inside effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?
Or why ought to one chorus from burning hatred, no matter its foundation–race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in actual fact corroding many hearts immediately. Atheist academics within the West are citing a youthful technology in a spirit of hatred of their very own society. Amid all of the vituperation we overlook that the defects of capitalism characterize the essential flaws of human nature, allowed limitless freedom along with the varied human rights; we overlook that beneath Communism (and Communism is respiration down the neck of all average types of socialism, that are unstable) the equivalent flaws run riot in any individual with the least diploma of authority; whereas everybody else beneath that system does certainly attain “equality”–the equality of destitute slaves. This keen fanning of the flames of hatred is changing into the mark of immediately’s free world. Certainly, the broader the non-public freedoms are, the upper the extent of prosperity and even of abundance–the extra vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred change into. The up to date developed West thus demonstrates by its personal instance that human salvation might be discovered neither within the profusion of fabric items nor in merely getting cash.
This intentionally nurtured hatred then spreads to all that’s alive, to life itself, to the world with its colours, sounds, and shapes, to the human physique. The embittered artwork of the 20th century is perishing on account of this ugly hate, for artwork is fruitless with out love. Within the East artwork has collapsed as a result of it has been knocked down and trampled upon, however within the West the autumn has been voluntary, a decline right into a contrived and pretentious quest the place the artist, as an alternative of trying to disclose the divine plan, tries to place himself within the place of God.
Right here once more we witness the one end result of a worldwide course of, with East and West yielding the identical outcomes, and as soon as once more for a similar purpose: Males have forgotten God.
With such international occasions looming over us like mountains, nay, like complete mountain ranges, it might appear incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the first key to our being or non-being resides in every particular person human coronary heart, within the coronary heart’s choice for particular good or evil. But this stays true even immediately, and it’s, in actual fact, essentially the most dependable key we’ve got. The social theories that promised a lot have demonstrated their chapter, leaving us at a lifeless finish. The free folks of the West may moderately have been anticipated to understand that they’re beset · by quite a few freely nurtured falsehoods, and to not enable lies to be foisted upon them so simply. All makes an attempt to discover a method out of the plight of immediately’s world are fruitless except we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: with out this, no exit will probably be illumined, and we will search it in useless. The assets we’ve got put aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the duty. We should first acknowledge the horror perpetrated not by some exterior power, not by class or nationwide enemies, however inside every of us individually, and inside each society. That is very true of a free and extremely developed society, for right here particularly we’ve got absolutely introduced every part upon ourselves, of our personal free will. We ourselves, in our day by day unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose…
Our life consists not within the pursuit of fabric success however within the quest for worthy non secular progress. Our complete earthly existence is however a transitional stage within the motion towards one thing increased, and we should not stumble and fall, nor should we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Materials legal guidelines alone don’t clarify our life or give it path. The legal guidelines of physics and physiology won’t ever reveal the indeniable method during which the Creator continually, day in and day trip, participates within the life of every of us, unfailingly granting us the power of existence; when this help leaves us, we die. And within the lifetime of our complete planet, the Divine Spirit absolutely strikes with no much less power: this we should grasp in our darkish and horrible hour.
To the ill-considered hopes of the final two centuries, which have diminished us to insignificance and introduced us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear dying, we are able to suggest solely a decided quest for the nice and cozy hand of God, which we’ve got so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Solely on this method can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unlucky twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them proper. There may be nothing else to cling to within the landslide: the mixed imaginative and prescient of all of the thinkers of the Enlightenment quantities to nothing.
Our 5 continents are caught in a whirlwind. However it’s throughout trials resembling these that the best items of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will probably be ours alone.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”. Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 Could 1983 (London).
Supply: The Voice Crying within the Wilderness
A video introducing Russian Religion
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