Summer History & Heritage — #1 (June 11)
We will have some summer posts (perhaps 6 to 8 of them) based on our June, July, & August Christian Almanac and Tabletalk readings, and whatever else this teacher happens to be reflecting on in the summer months. The posts will appear on the H&H blog on the Veritas website.
Students are encouraged to continue their Almanac & Tabletalk readings (a worthwhile scholarly habit to maintain or develop), but there is no penalty for failing to do so—only a reward for faithful, if informal and relaxed, labor. Students need not write about what they read, as they do during the regular school year; the teacher will supply the writings (Q&Aand summaries).
When we return to school in the fall, Lord willing, we will be greeted with the first 25 things we have to learn via the Summer 2012 History & Heritage Test (bright yellow booklet). Weʼll take the first few history classes on this exam.
For now, please consider our first summer entry. Itʼs based on John Laughlandʼs “Putin and the Westʼs Suicide” in the May 2012 issue of Chronicles magazine. Laughland is director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris; his many books include A History of Political Trials: From Charles I to Saddam Hussein.
What Russia Can Teach Us — (John Laughland; Chronicles, May 2012)
The excerpt below is instructive in light of our recent discussion of the ideology of secularism (see Spring 2012 H&H Test, Q. #4). Apparently Russia, in spite of or perhaps because of her horrendous near-century of communism, is not as committed to total separation of church and state as modern America and western Europe.
“The town of Penza lies 12 hours southeast of Moscow by train.I had barely heard of it before I went there last December. The townʼs broad streets were busy yet strangely silent because of the thick carpet of snow that dampened all sound. On the river Sura, fishermen sat huddled in the dark over holes they had cut through the ice.
“Penzais much like other provincial Russian towns: Laid out on a grid, its streets are full of the modern clutter of shop awnings, while the people are well dressed. There is a comforting sense of normality. One thing, however, distinguishes Penza and its region (which is one of the 83 units of the Russian Federation) from every other political entity on the Eurasian continent. Some years ago the regional authorities decided to adopt as their official logo a 12th-century icon of the Holy Face. Jesus Christ therefore flutters from administrative buildings all over the place.
“The decision to do this was not unaccompanied by controversy, but it went ahead. It is a decision that is completely unimaginable in the West. American separation of Church and state and rampant secularism in Europe (to be more precise, hatred of Christianity)make such a choice unthinkable in countries like Britain, where a British Airways employee is still being persecuted for wearing a small crucifix on a chain round her neck, or Italy, where the European Court of Human Rights recently banned crucifixes in Italian classrooms. (The ruling was overturned on appeal, but only in the name of a politically correct appeal to ʻItalian culture,ʼ as if the crucifix were some sort of tribal totem.)
“Penzaʼs adoption of the Holy Face may be unique in Russia, but it is nonetheless indicative of a state of mind in that vast country that is the opposite of the mind-set of the West. To be sure, abortions proceed in Russia at a terrifying rate—about one million per year, which is proportionately over twice the rate of even an aggressively abortionist country like Britain, and which goes a long way to explaining Russiaʼs low birthrate—and therefore it would be foolish to imagine that Christianity somehow penetrates all Russian souls. . .”
Russia may have her problems; who wouldnʼt after 70 years of vicious tyranny? But the disdain for that land on the part of Brussels (the European Union) and Washington, D.C., says Laughland, isnʼt really because of a lack of human rights or democracy. Rather, itʼs Russiaʼs independent streak, her seeming interest in a return to her Christian roots, and of course her determination to obstructAmerican-led (NATO) intervention in eastern Europe and the Middle East.
For obvious reasons, todayʼs Russia seeks a multipolar world where various powers have their spheres of greater influence and may check and balance one anotherʼs ambitions. Western Europe and the U.S. do not appear to share that goal.
Another thing about Russia that hardly commends her to the secular elite in America and the West: her antipathy to public policies legitimizing homosexuality. St. Petersburg recently banned homosexual advocacy and Moscow wonʼt allow gay-pride parades.
Such stubbornness, opting for religious tradition over an expansion of rights, says Laughland, infuriates “the guardians of political correctness in the West, in exactly the same way that Mrs.Thatcherʼs laws against the promotion of homosexuality [in Britain] did in the late 1980ʼs.” (The present Conservative prime minister in London, however, favors so-called gay marriage.)
