Faith for an Ideological Age
Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 61(3-4), 265-287. doi: 10.2143/JECS.61.3.2046975 © 2009 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. FAITH FOR AN IDEOLOGICAL AGE THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF SEMYON FRANK AND FRANK BUCHMAN PHILIP BOOBBYER* INTRODUCTION The challenge of secular ideology in recent centuries has given rise to various forms of religious humanism that have sought to synthesise a Christian per- spective with social and political concerns. In the mid-20th century, religious thinkers sought alternatives to fascism, communism and materialistic capital- ism, as well as calling for reconciliation and reconstruction in a war-torn world. Two contrasting, yet at the same time intriguingly similar figures, the Russian philosopher, Semyon Liudvigovich Frank (1877-1950), and the American spiritual leader, Frank Buchman (1878-1961), are the focus of this study. Although from a Jewish background, Semyon Frank was a convert to Orthodoxy. One of Russia’s so-called “legal Marxists”, he became a promi- nent intellectual opponent of revolutionary socialism, and was amongst the elite group of thinkers exiled from the USSR in 1922 on the so-called “phi- losophy steamer”.1 In exile he warned of the threats to Western democracy from both communism and materialism, and formulated, particularly in the 1940s, a social and political philosophy rooted in religious principles.2 Frank Buchman, the founder of the movement known as the Oxford Group and then Moral Re-Armament, came from a very different background. Born into a Lutheran, Pennsylvania Dutch family, he was shaped by the culture of East Coast American evangelism, as well as the Keswick movement.
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