Keston Newsletter No. 23, 2016

Bishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic University

The Ukrainian Catholic University

by Robert Brinkley

This talk was given at the Keston AGM the territory of the former Soviet Union, on 7 November 2015 by Robert Brinkley, indeed between Poland and Japan. a member of Keston’s Council of Man- When I became British Ambassador to agement and a former British Ambassa- Ukraine in 2002, I soon got to know dor to Ukraine. UCU. The then Rector, Fr Borys Gudzi-

Since 2013 I have been a member of the Ukrainian Catholic University’s (UCU) Also in this issue: . . governing body, the Senate, which Anniversary of Fr Men’s Murder . . . p.13 means that – at least at UCU – I can Musicians & Religion Persecuted . . p.18 answer to the title ‘Senator’! I am Nursing in Lithuania ...... p.25 proud to be associated with and to repre- My Week in Ukraine ...... p.33 sent this dynamic young institution, Catholic-Orthodox Relations . . . . . p.37 which is the only Catholic university on Home News ...... p.41

Keston Newsletter No 23, 2016

ak (now a bishop), showed me around indoctrination and propaganda, have the university building in Lviv. On my given this term a pejorative nuance. first visit I was particularly struck by the The Christian heritage is dominant in the little one-room museum commemorating Ukrainian religious tradition. It has a the martyrs of the Ukrainian Greek Cath- documented history of more than one olic Church in the 20th century. Items thousand years. In 988 Prince Vo- like a suitcase with a false bottom to lodymyr the Great – whose statue can be hide sacred vessels and vestments re- seen in London opposite Holland Park minded me of similar things I had seen tube station – established Christianity in as a boy at Stonyhurst in the collection its Eastern (Byzantine-Slavic) rite as the of artefacts from the underground Eng- state religion of Kyivan Rus’. The Ky- lish Catholics of the 16th century. But at ivan Metropolitanate was created as a UCU I came face to face with much single hierarchical structure for the East- more recent history, still within living ern Slavs. This Baptism of Rus’ oc- memory of people who had grown up in curred before the Great Schism of 1054 the underground church. that divided the Christian East and West.

It also came over 150 years before Mos- In this talk I shall first set the context by cow was founded, in 1147. The Rus’ sketching the history of the Ukrainian church was an integral part of the Patri- Greek Catholic Church. Then I will archate of Constantinople and followed trace the development of UCU within the traditions of the Byzantine East, even that context, before I describe UCU as it though it remained in full communion is today and its vision for the future. with the Latin West. Even after the The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Schism of 1054, the Kyivan Metropoli- Church tanate remained open to mutual relations with its Western neighbours and seldom For this first, historical, part of my talk, I entered directly into the disputes be- have drawn on the work of Dr Oleh tween Constantinople and Rome. Turij, now a Vice-Rector at UCU.

First, a word about terminology. It is true that the arguments between the Ukrainian Catholics of the Eastern rite Christian East and West were keenly felt call their church the Ukrainian Greek in the Ukrainian lands from the very Catholic Church. You may be more beginnings of its Christianisation. This, familiar with the term ‘Uniate’. This has however, was much more evident after a negative connotation for modern Greek the lands of the former Kyivan Rus’ lost Catholics, rather as the term ‘Papist’ has their national independence and most of for the Catholic Church as a whole. As I its territory passed under the domination will explain, the Union of Brest of 1596, of the neighbouring nations of Hungary, which the hierarchy of the Kyivan Poland and Lithuania. The majority of Metropolia established with the See of the ruling élite in these countries was Rome, is only a part of the identity of Roman (Latin) Catholic and the faithful Catholics of the Eastern rite. But centu- of the Eastern rite suffered discrimina- ries of Russian imperial repression of the tion. With the support of the civil au- Uniates, followed by decades of Soviet thorities Latin parallel hierarchical struc-

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tures arose in the 14th century alongside desire to bring the church out of a seri- the ancient episcopacy of the Kyivan ous internal crisis and because of their Metropolitanate. This spread the Latin concern about the aggressive challenges influence and catholicised and polonised of the Protestant Reformation and Post- portions of the local population. Tridentine Catholicism (the Counter- Reformation) in the Polish-Lithuanian Though geopolitical conditions discour- Commonwealth. aged it, the Rus’ hierarchy made serious efforts at restoring Christian unity. Rep- This model of church reunion was con- resentatives from Rus’ took part in the firmed at the Council of Brest in 1596 – Western councils in Lyon (1245) and the beginning of the institutional exist- Constance (1418), and the Union of ence of the church reunited with Rome Florence (1439) was positively received and known as Uniate or Greek Catholic. in the Ukrainian and Belarussian lands. Not all the hierarchs and faithful of the Kyivan Metropolitan Isidore was himself Kyivan Metropolitanate supported this; one of the creators of this union. Politi- some were dissatisfied with the Roman cal struggles and religious prejudice, vision of union and insisted on maintain- however, prevented the desired union ing canonical dependence on the Patriar- from occurring. chate of Constantinople. They demand- ed the ordination of a parallel hierarchy Refusal to accept the Union of Florence, (1620) and its official recognition by the together with other factors, led the secular authorities of the Polish- Church of Moscow to separate from the Lithuanian Commonwealth (1632). The ancient Kyivan Metropolitanate, and in result was the confessional division of 1448 it announced its autocephaly (self- the Rus’ Church into two jurisdictions. governing status). In 1589, taking ad- vantage of the subjugation of Greek Throughout the following centuries bit- Orthodoxy to Turkish domination, the ter polemics took place, and continue to Church of Moscow became a Patriar- this day, between supporters and oppo- chate. This supported the plans of Mos- nents of the Union of Brest. Socio- cow’s secular leaders for political rule economic, ethno-cultural and national- over the lands of the ancient Kyivan political conflicts manifested themselves state and also advanced its claims to the in the form of religious disputes. As a leading role as the ‘Third Rome’ in the result, in 1654 the central and eastern Christian world. regions of Ukraine passed under ‘the high hand of the ruler of Moscow, which The episcopate of the Kyivan Metropoli- had a single faith’. The Orthodox Ky- tanate at the end of the 16th century, ivan Metropolia was soon under the however, had a very different orienta- authority of the Moscow Patriarchate tion. Its synod decided to pass under the (1686). From this time on, the Russian jurisdiction of the See of Rome, provid- civil and ecclesiastical authorities used ed that its traditional Eastern rite was all their efforts to root out any distinctive preserved and its own ecclesial and eth- features of the Ukrainian Orthodox tradi- nic-cultural existence was guaranteed. tion, to unify the religious life of the This came about because of the bishops’ faithful and to transform the Church

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itself into an instrument for russifying serving the cultural and religious inde- the Ukrainians. pendence of the Ukrainian population.

Increasingly, these features of the state When the Western Ukrainian lands and church politics of Russia were evi- passed under Austrian rule, the Greek dent in dealings with the united (Uniate) Catholic hierarchy received the support Church. Each time the Tsarist Empire and the protection of the imperial gov- extended its power in the adjacent ernment. It was under this Habsburg Ukrainian land, it began repressions rule that the former Uniates began to be against the Uniates and forced their con- officially called Greek Catholics. The version to Russian Orthodoxy (1772, civil authorities encouraged the for- 1795, 1839 and 1876). mation of an ecclesiasti- The close connections of cal administrative struc- the Russian Orthodox ture for the Greek Cath- Church with the imperial olics. In 1771 the inde- power and Great Russian pendence of the Muk- national interests led to achiv eparchy in Trans- dissatisfaction among the carpathia was declared Orthodox clergy and laity and in 1807 the Metro- of Ukraine and the birth of politanate of Galicia in Ukrainophile movements Western Ukraine was at the end of the 19th cen- restored. tury. The educational reforms After the 1917 revolution of the Habsburg rulers a movement arose in fa- Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky Maria-Teresa and vour of autocephaly for Joseph II gave Ukrainian Orthodoxy. But attempts to Ukrainians access to education in their proclaim autocephaly in the 1920s and native language. Greek Catholics were 1940s were severely opposed by the given equal legal status with the faithful Moscow Patriarchate and repressed by of the Latin rite and their spiritual lead- the Soviet authorities. ers were provided with a minimal mate- rial subsistence. This led to the close The Western section of Ukraine, howev- integration of the Greek Catholic Church er, remained a part of the Polish- with the national political structure and Lithuanian Commonwealth, and with the social life, and the active participation of support of the civil authorities by the end the clergy in the Ukrainian national of the 18th century the Church united movement. with Rome encompassed all the faithful of the Eastern rite. Though the Polish At the beginning of the 20th century the secular and ecclesiastical élite attempted Greek Catholic Church in Galicia was to transform the church union into an led by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky instrument for full latinisation, the from 1901 to 1944. He was born 150 Church played the leading role in pre- years ago. His spiritual leadership coin-

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cided with two world wars and seven This reflected another notable aspect of changes of political regime (Austrian, Soviet religious policies. After Stalin Russian, Austrian again, Ukrainian, made a corrective manoeuvre during Polish, Soviet, Nazi and Soviet again). World War II, the legally functioning Nevertheless his tireless pastoral work, church structures became instruments his concern for education and culture, his used to further the political goals of the defence of the national and social rights atheist regime. A special place was re- of his people, his charitable activities served for the Russian Orthodox Church. and his ecumenical efforts made Shepty- Having achieved a modus vivendi with tsky the undisputed leader and moral the Communist authorities, the Russian authority of Ukrainian society. The Orthodox Church had certain ad- Church itself became an influential so- vantages. The attempts at autocephaly in cial institution in Western Ukraine. Ukraine were paralysed, the Russian Orthodox Church extended its canonical Under Soviet rule, the premeditated per- territory and increased the number of its secution of religion and the propagation churches and faithful at the expense of of atheism became an integral part of the the liquidated Ukrainian Greek Catholic bloody tragedy in Ukraine. Eager to Church. It also brought some Orthodox solidify its totalitarian rule, the Com- dioceses and churches under the jurisdic- munist regime could not tolerate the tion of the Moscow Patriarchate that had existence of a structure that proclaimed never before belonged to it. The influ- other values. The war on religion be- ence of the Russian Orthodox Church in came the government ideology. Church world Orthodoxy and in the Christian buildings were ruined, burnt down and Oikumene in general was strengthened. profaned. Priests and faithful, Orthodox, Catholic and representatives of other With the crisis of Soviet power and Gor- denominations and religions were shot or bachev’s perestroika at the end of the arrested and deported to the Siberian 1980s, however, all these ‘advantages’ Gulag. Churches and other religious showed their other side. The Russian communities were persecuted or driven Orthodox Church was discredited in the underground, like the Ukrainian Auto- eyes of a portion of its clergy and faith- cephalous Orthodox Church at the begin- ful and it became the object of criticism ning of the 1930s and the Ukrainian by dissidents and the national- Greek Catholic Church in 1946 in Gali- democratic movement. With the emer- cia and in 1949 in Transcarpathia. gence of the formerly banned Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from the under- Having largely decapitated the Ukrainian ground and the creation of communities Greek Catholic Church through murders of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Ortho- and deportations, in 1946 the Soviet dox Church in 1989, the Russian Ortho- authorities arranged for a fake ‘synod’ to dox Church began to lose its former be held in Lviv, which declared that after monolithic status. At the same time the 350 years the Union of Brest was re- unprecedented rise in religiosity in the voked and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic new conditions of freedom was accom- Church would ‘re-join’ the Russian Or- panied by increasingly bitter conflicts in thodox Church. Ukraine, which seriously complicated

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international ecumenical relations. The could hardly believe the numbers who declaration of Ukrainian independence were training to become priests. Today in 1991 created a new national-political the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church context for the activities of all the has four to five million faithful and near- churches in this territory. ly 4,000 parishes.

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Greek Lviv is the only Christian place I have Catholic Church was officially forbidden been where Divine Liturgy is broadcast after the Second World War and harshly over loudspeakers to the overflow of persecuted, it preserved its hierarchical faithful standing outside the church in all structures in the underground and dias- weathers. The Muslim world does not pora. For over 40 years it was the larg- have a monopoly on the use of loud- est banned religious community in the speakers to amplify religious ob- world. In December 1989 it requested servance! official legalisation. In spring 1991 Cardinal Lubachivsky, then the head of Since Ukrainian independence the the Church, returned from exile to his Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has see in Lviv. again strongly promoted the revival of Ukrainian national culture and language. Today the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Pro-Western and pro-European, as a Church is the largest of the Eastern rite result of its experience in emigration as Catholic churches. Bishop Borys Gudzi- well as underground, it actively support- ak, of the Eparchy of Volodymyr the ed the Orange and Euromaidan revolu- Great for Ukrainian Catholics in France, tions, ensuring regular prayers and litur- Benelux and Switzerland, said recently: gies on the Maidan and working with other churches, except for the Ukrainian ‘when our church came out of the Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriar- underground in 1990 [it] had been chate). It coined the name ‘revolution of decimated by decades of intense dignity’ for the 2013-2014 uprising, Soviet persecution. The ranks of our articulating the moral aspect of the pro- clergy had been reduced to only 300, test against Yanukovych’s corrupt and mostly elderly priests with an aver- brutal regime. age age of 75. Today, our church in Ukraine … has grown dramatically, History of UCU with more than 3,000 priests with an average age of 38. Our seminaries Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky took are producing hundreds of new the first step towards creating a Ukraini- priests every year and vocations are an Catholic University when he founded strong. This year, for instance, at the the Lviv Theological Academy in 1928. Holy Spirit Seminary adjacent to the The first rector was Fr Josyf Slipyj. The Ukrainian Catholic University, there Soviet authorities closed the Academy in are 179 seminarians.’ 1944, but its alumni formed the back- bone of the underground Ukrainian Indeed, when the Prior of Ampleforth Greek Catholic Church during the Com- Abbey visited that Seminary in 2014, he munist persecution.

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In 1939 Sheptytsky had ordained Slipyj the 1960s and 1970s Slipyj developed as Archbishop, with the right to succeed international branches of the university him as head of the Ukrainian Greek in Europe and the Americas, including Catholic Church. This was done in se- what is now the Ukrainian Institute in cret because of the Soviet presence in Holland Park in London. Slipyj was Galicia following the Molotov- made a Cardinal, and his life was the Ribbentrop Pact. Sheptytsky died in inspiration for Morris West’s 1963 novel The Shoes of the Fisherman about a Ukrainian who becomes Pope.

In 1992, soon after the declaration of Ukrainian independence, faculty and alumni of the university in Rome began planning the revival of the Lviv Theo- logical Academy. This is the moment to introduce the third significant figure in the history of UCU – Borys Gudziak. Born into a Ukrainian-American family in Syracuse, New York, in 1960, he stud- ied theology in Rome in the early 1980s and got to know Josyf Slipyj. In 1993 Fr Gudziak, by now in Lviv, was appointed Chairman of the Commission for the Revival of the Lviv Theological Acade- my. He was Vice-Rector from 1995 to Cardinal Josyf Slipyj 2000, Rector from 2000 to 2001, then Rector of UCU until 2013 when he was 1944 and Slipyj succeeded him. In 1945 appointed a bishop and became President Slipyj was arrested, with the other of UCU. He still chairs the UCU Senate, Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops. He but is no longer in day to day charge of was deported to Siberia, where he spent the University. 18 years in the Gulag and his health deteriorated. So the Academy was re-established in 1994, with a broad student body of male In 1963 the Soviet government finally and female lay people and religious, as allowed Slipyj to go into exile, probably well as seminarians. In addition to the believing that he was weakened and core subjects of philosophy and theolo- would not live long. In fact he lived gy, the curriculum put an emphasis on a until 1984, and died at the age of 92. In broad classical education with attention 1963, the year he was freed, he attended to language learning and the use of pri- the Second Vatican Council and founded mary sources. In 1995 the first summer the Ukrainian Catholic University in schools in English and theology began. Rome. This offered a small seminary In 1998 the theological programme of programme and summer schools for the Academy received recognition from students from the Ukrainian diaspora. In the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic

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Education and in 1999 the first class In 2007 the Synod of Bishops of the graduated. Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church decid- ed to hold an annual church collection In June 2001, during his visit to Ukraine, for UCU. Apart from the financial bene- Pope St John Paul II blessed the corner fits, this helped to create a sense of par- stone of UCU’s new building. The fol- ticipation in the ‘UCU project’ for a lowing year, the university was ceremo- larger church community. nially inaugurated as the first Catholic university on the territory of the former Students and staff from UCU were ac- Soviet Union. Also in 2002, the univer- tive in the Revolution of Dignity from sity was legally registered in Ukraine November 2013 to February 2014. and received recognition for its under- Bohdan Solchanyk, a 29 year old UCU graduate history programme from the history lecturer, was one of the unarmed Ministry of Education. demonstrators killed by government snipers on 20 February 2014, the last day The UCU press, founded in 2003, has of the protests. At that time I was in earned respect in Ukrainian academic Lviv for an UCU Senate meeting, and I circles for publishing original scholarly attended the very moving Panakhyda works and Ukrainian translations of (service of mourning) for him in one of important Western works in the fields of the city’s main churches. It was packed, philosophy, theology, humanities and the with the congregation overflowing onto social sciences. the street.

Since Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of Since the Euromaidan UCU has again 2004, UCU has been increasingly in- organised many visits to Lviv by young volved with important social issues such people from Eastern and Southern as the reform of education in Ukraine, Ukraine. Its project ‘From East to West’ freedom of speech and ethical issues. brought almost 2,000 students from UCU enabled thousands of young people those regions to spend a weekend in and students to come to Lviv from East- Lviv to familiarise themselves with its ern Ukraine during Christmas 2005 and culture and people, and to discuss the 2006. In 2006 Ukraine’s Ministry of future of Ukraine. Education finally accredited UCU’s theology programme. That summer The development of UCU in Lviv can be UCU was at last able to award govern- summed up in three phases: ment-recognised degrees in theology to its graduates. (In the Soviet Union the- Phase 1: 1992-2002 ology was not recognised as an academic  Renewal of the Lviv Theological subject, and it took some years to over- Academy come this legacy.) The university also  Establishing identity and values had its first history graduates in summer 2006. That autumn UCU started a Bach-  Return of theology to Ukraine elor’s degree programme in social peda-  Creation of research institutes gogy, giving a Christian emphasis to  Laying the foundations of interna- social work. tional cooperation

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 Forming the team  Global (fund-raising) campaign  The building on Sventsitskoho for the development of UCU Street UCU today and in future  Creation of the Ukrainian Catho- UCU is all that its name suggests – lic Foundation in North America Ukrainian, Catholic and a university. It

describes its mission like this: Phase 2: 2002-2008

The Ukrainian Catholic University is  The Lviv Theological Academy is an open academic community living transformed into UCU the Eastern Christian tradition and  Opening of the humanitarian fac- forming leaders to serve with profes- ulty with various teaching pro- sional excellence in Ukraine and grammes internationally – for the glory of  State recognition of theology in God, the common good and the dig- Ukraine nity of the human person.  New building for the Philosophy and Theology Faculty on Khu- UCU is open to representatives of all torivka Street churches and confessions. Students and lecturers include Greek Catholics, Or-  Opening of the Emmaus Centre thodox, Roman Catholics, Protestants for the support of people with and Jews. Over 2,000 students are en- special needs rolled in UCU’s educational pro-

grammes. Its library houses the largest Phase 3: 2008-2015 collection of theological literature in

Ukraine.  Start of building of new campus  Development of professional A new campus is being built, overlook- education ing Lviv’s Stryisky Park. In 2012 the  Certificate programmes (in addi- Collegium opened. This is not simply a tion to existing bachelor’s and hostel or hall of residence but a commu- master’s degree programmes) nity of students, staff and visitors, as well as home to Redemptorist sisters and  Vatican accreditation of the theo- a small Emmaus community for disabled logical faculty residents. Liturgy and prayers are said  Research programme on ‘Kyivan every day in the chapel. Bishop Borys Christianity’ often talks of two important points of  Renewal of activity of UCU affil- reference for UCU: the martyrs and the iates in Rome, London and Bue- marginalised. He describes the residents nos Aires with learning disabilities as ‘our profes-  Broadening the geography from sors of human relations’. The American which students come author George Weigel, in his book Evan- gelical Catholicism, names UCU as an

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UCU’s new campus by Stryisky Park example of a flourishing campus minis- works hard to raise funds from a range try and of missionary Catholicism in of donor organisations and private action. philanthropists. Just over a third of its income comes from Ukrainian Catholic In 2013 a multi-purpose academic build- Educational Foundations in the United ing was opened, which now houses the States and Canada, another third from Humanities Department (history students European foundations, about a tenth in particular), alongside the Lviv Busi- from donors in Ukraine and the remain- ness School, the Institute of Leadership der from tuition fees and payment for and Management – which provides train- services. The cost of educating a student ing for non-governmental organisations, for one academic year at UCU is about the School of Bioethics and the School £2,100. But tuition fees are set at only of Ukrainian Language and Culture. It about a quarter of this, to enable students also contains a canteen and café which of all backgrounds to attend UCU. have become popular with visitors from outside, as well as members of the UCU UCU has developed a strategy with its community. vision for the next five years:

At the heart of the new campus is the 2015-2020 Church of St Sophia. The church build-  Opening of new academic pro- ing is almost complete and a competition grammes to serve society is under way for the interior decoration.  Development of teaching and Next to the church, work has started on research in theology building the new library and information centre.  Doctorate school  Innovations in teaching approach- You may be wondering how all this is es financed. UCU receives no funding  UCU centre in Kyiv from the government of Ukraine – which  Creation of a student careers cen- has given it valuable independence in tre the face of government pressures over the years. It operates thanks to the sup-  Creation of an alumni association port of benefactors. The University  Attracting state financing.

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UCU’s vision for 2020  A university with a broad aca- demic menu and teaching pro- This is summed up in three words: wit- grammes which are topical ness, service and association. It envisag- (responding to ‘the signs of the es: time’), unique (from the aspect of  A university, whose identity as a differentiation) and innovative Ukrainian, Catholic and academic (moving in the direction of a clas- environment is guaranteed sical university). through spiritual formation, the  A university in which the teaching synergy of faith and reason and process is oriented towards the daily practice of association, knowledge, habits and values and service and witness of its lectur- guarantees a high ‘added value’ of ers, staff, students and alumni in teaching for the student on the various spheres of social and programme; teaching programmes church life in Ukraine and the built on the principle ‘ad fon- world. tes’ (using the sources), which  A university with a high corporate have a mandatory theological and culture: the absence of corruption; humanitarian core and systematic academic pastoral work, not only approaches foreseeing the study for internal needs, but also exter- of the English language (to B2 nal; service to the poor and inclu- level) and the education of lead- sion of the marginalised in the life ers. of society; hospitality and an at-  A university in which the profes- mosphere of communication; an sor is a personality, a first-class orientation towards beauty in expert at an international level in human relations, teaching pro- his or her field, capable of leading grammes and the results of work his or her own academic school, in all areas; a creative approach in of securing grant-funded projects, management, whose basic charac- of being an authoritative expert teristics are responsibility, effec- for wider society, and of taking an tiveness, transparency, collegiali- active part in the academic socie- ty and lack of bureaucracy. ties of Lviv, Ukraine and the  A financially stable university, for world. which the proportion of non-  A university which attracts the fundraising income for operation- best students and finds the best al activity is at least 50%. lecturers and workers for respon-  A modern university with national sible positions with a worthy sala- and internationally competitive ry. status within its (subject) profile,  A university which cooperates with research schools and the closely with employers to form in status of a leader in online teach- students the habits necessary for ing and the use of information the world of work in various technologies in the teaching pro- spheres of social, political and cess. economic life.

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 A university with a modern cam- for UCU has been transformed. Parlia- pus, which meets the needs of ment has adopted a new higher educa- students for accommodation and tion act, giving more freedoms to private teaching resources, and makes universities. UCU has a high reputation UCU a leader in campus life. with the new authorities and among Ukraine’s active civil society. UCU’s Conclusion leaders, including Bishop Borys Gudziak and Vice-Rector Myroslav Marynovych, The struggle continues in Ukraine be- who was imprisoned by the Soviet au- tween the old and the new: between the thorities for standing up for human corrupt, authoritarian and amoral legacy rights, are widely regarded as moral of the Soviet Union and the transparent, authorities for the whole Ukrainian na- accountable ways of free societies, tion. UCU now has friends and alumni which respect human dignity. For in high places. The Finance Minister, Ukraine today those two poles are exem- Natalie Jaresko, was a UCU Senator. plified by Russia on the one hand and The previous Economy Minister, Pavlo the European Union on the other. Sheremeta, has returned to UCU to run a Ukraine has made much progress, but new Master’s course in public admin- the struggle is far from over. UCU has istration. no doubt where it stands in this struggle. Indeed it is recognised on all sides as a UCU is still a young, small and growing protagonist for a modern Ukraine, free- university, based in Lviv rather than ing itself of corruption. It sets high mor- Kyiv. It has to work hard to raise suffi- al as well as academic standards. cient funds, to broaden its student base, which is mostly from Western Ukraine, The Yanukovych government regarded and to reinforce academic standards and UCU as a foe. The Minister of Educa- the teaching of English and other foreign tion dragged his feet on accreditation of languages. It must be careful not to take UCU’s degree courses and other issues. on too much. But these are the problems Bishop Borys Gudziak was put under of growth and success. UCU is right to pressure when a member of his family in have high ambitions, and in only 20 Ukraine was harassed. The Security years it has made remarkable progress. Service of Ukraine (the SBU) came round to give him a warning, which he I am fortunate and proud to be associated parried by informing the international with UCU, and glad of this chance to tell media. It was not an easy time. Since you about it. If any of you have an op- last year’s Euromaidan revolution the portunity to visit Lviv, I encourage you situation in Ukraine and the environment to go and see UCU for yourself.

Robert Brinkley served as a British diplomat for 34 years. After two postings in Moscow, both during the Soviet period and following the fall of Communism, he served as British Ambassador to Ukraine, 2002-2006. Following that post- ing, he served as High Commissioner to Pakistan, 2006-2009. Since leaving government service in 2011, Robert Brinkley has taken on chairing the BEARR Trust as well as the steering committee of the Chatham House Ukraine Forum.

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Anniversary of Fr Alexander Men’s Murder Memorial Conference

by Alastair Macnaughton

Woe to you! for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and consent to the deeds of your fathers; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. (Luke 11: 47-48)

For the last three years amidst a struggle with cancer I have been translating Fr Alexander Men’s In Search of the Way the Truth and the Life.

In 1976 I was part of a group organised by the University of Leeds which sent students to Leningrad, Minsk and Voro- nezh. For three months I was based at INIAZ, the Institute of Foreign Lan- Fr Men’s grave guages in Minsk, Belarus. Then 15 years later, in 1991 two weeks before Vintage 2000, chap. 11). In 1991 much Mikhail Gorbachev was put under house water had passed under the bridge since arrest, I was lucky enough, with my wife 1976. There was lots of laughter as we and young family (aged 9, 7 and 5) to recalled the conditions at INIAZ in those spend a week living with a Baptist fami- early days. My friends were not at that ly in Minsk. In a flat on the outskirts, stage believers, though in 1976 they had reached by bumping our car across a once accompanied me to the only Pente- field track at the abrupt end of a boule- costal church in Minsk. They asked me vard, we had a reunion with a couple of whether I had heard of Fr Alexander friends from INIAZ. It was one of those Men and related how influential he had cross-cultural meetings where blindfolds been in the Soviet Union, amongst be- fall away, lights come on and all sorts of lievers and non-believers alike. They things fall into place. There needs to be a also spoke about his murder just a year special word for this sort of meeting: before. epiphany or transfiguration, or even ‘taste of heaven’ perhaps. I put this kind Fifteen years later one of these friends of meeting in the same bracket as Isaiah sent me a web-link which enabled me to Berlin’s visit to Anna Akhmatova amidst read his works on-line. I found myself the grim life of Leningrad in the 1940s. printing out a chapter or two at a time, (see Michael Ignatieff: Isaiah Berlin, and taking this to read on train journeys.

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My then church Adult Education work could. One of these of course was the for the dioceses of Durham and Newcas- translation. A high point came when in tle provided me with plenty of opportu- the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, nities to travel. As a classicist I was recovering from another major crisis and particularly interested in volume 4 of In doing a bit of translation, I reached Fr Search of the Way the Truth and the Men’s statement in volume 1 that Life: Dionysus, Logos, Fate about Greek healthcare has more often than not been religion and philosophy from the Coloni- inspired by and derived from Christian al Period to Alexander the Great. Alex- faith. Rather than science being atheistic ander Men’s ability to imagine and to and separate from faith and medicine etch out clearly the philosophical search- detached from spirituality, our ings of the Greeks I found inspiring – healthcare today in large part is due to whether Anaxagoras, the pre-Socratic, earlier peoples’ Christian faith. This wondering at the nature of the universe passage was like a shining light as I lay as he walked high up on the Acropolis, in my hospital bed. Two years later, by or the immense legacy of Plato, not least God’s grace, and thanks to superb NHS on the civilising aspects of Alexander medical care, I am still active enough to the Great’s rule – Fr Men’s work was be translating, and, thanks be to God, fresh, inspiring and colourful. I found was even able to go to Moscow in Sep- myself translating short paragraphs on tember 2015. I hope that volume 1 The the prophets and putting them in presen- Wellsprings of Religion will soon be tations for Old Testament seminars. published by the St Vladimir Seminary Press. Completely by accident, I discovered in 2012 that there was to be a conference I was excited to be attending the Mos- about Fr Men in Moffat, Scotland. I had cow conference. I had learnt a year about four days warning and had to before that, despite my being treated for change commitments so as to get to a terminal cancer, it was my duty to attend few hours of it. I came away all fired thanks to a summons from Ekaterina up: there was so much interest in Alex- Yurevna Genieva, the Director of the ander Men, here in Scotland, in the Bor- Russian State Library of Foreign Litera- ders, too! A month or so later a thought ture, herself a friend of Fr Men, and a occurred to me: this great work In witness of the veiled threats on his life Search of the Way the Truth and the Life during his last few days. The conference did not exist in English (except for the was organised by the library and by the 7th volume, Son of Man) and perhaps I Alexander Men Foundation at the splen- might try to translate more of it, or even did new Dubrava Cultural Centre at the whole thing. Then I was 59, and it Semkhoz, near Fr Men’s home and the seemed this would be a good retirement site of his murder. The ceremonies in- project! Three months later I was diag- volved an impressive range of speakers nosed with Stage 4 Cancer in the bowel from different countries, including Jew- and the liver. It was very uncertain how ish and Muslim representation. long I would live. By August of 2013 I had retired so as to be free to fight the Metropolitan Yuvenali and a large illness and pursue whatever other goals I crowd watched as flowers were laid at

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I have learned gradual- ly, at conferences with visitors from the said library to Scotland, and at this conference in Moscow, that although on the one hand it is a vote of confidence in Russia and its literature that people like me want to translate works into English, on the other hand there is a reserve – that foreigners want to read Fr Men in their own language is not Metropolitan Yuvenali blesses the crowd celebrated.

the site where Fr Men was attacked. At the conference there was a stream of Newly built alongside was the Church of secondary literature or ‘readings’ about the Beheading of St John the Baptist – Alexander Men, but very little oppor- owning as it were the tomb of the proph- tunity for the text to speak for itself. It et. The Moscow Patriarchate used the was almost as though the legacy was occasion to launch volume 1 of its forth- being kept carefully locked away. I was coming complete works of Alexander told that the Church of SS Cosmas and Men. In my view it was a pity that this Damian in Moscow had been entrusted edition began with volume 7, Son of with promoting the legacy, while at the Man, which Fr Men saw as the climax to same time many other parishes told their his seven volume In search of the Way people to stay away from there because the Truth and the Life. The three days of the Alexander Men legacy was the work events went with a swing, though I of the devil! picked up signs of embarrassment and attempts to cover up the question of who My main impression of the conference commissioned the murder. was that although many attended who genuinely appreciated Fr Men’s life and One conference speaker pointed out that work, the Moscow Patriarchate and the Fr Men urged the church to move away State were in charge so as to keep the from its comfort zone, the great Russian hound of heaven on a leash. Church- stove at home, into the future; away state collaboration and its history was from its security, tradition. A leading explored by Michael Bourdeaux in Kes- cleric rose to his feet to argue ‘a lot of ton Newsletter No 22 (pp.17-19): people think the hierarchy were against Fr Alexander but in fact it was the mid- ‘[…] most of the bishops and senior dle-ranking laity!’ clergy exhibit an unswerving dedica-

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Church of the Presentation of the Infant Christ, at Novaya Derevnya, Fr Alexander Men’s parish church tion to the political powers that be many types despite the authorities’ oppo- […] There has been no act of repent- sition – (see her obituary: ance for collaboration with the Soviet http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/ regime.’ obituaries/article4505618.ece http://www.ritmanlibrary.com/2015/07/ Peter Pomerantsev in his book Nothing in-memory-of-dr-ekaterina-genieva/). is True, Everything is Possible (Faber & Faber, 2015) described current policy: The colour and eloquence of Fr Men’s work, the wealth of metaphor and the ‘the brilliance of this new type of gently ironic pun are a constant source of authoritarianism is that instead of delight. Volume 1 shows how faith, at oppressing opposition it climbs in- least on the intuitive level, is needed by side all ideologies and movements; us all for everyday existence. He gently the Kremlin’s idea is to own all removes the chocks that hold atheism forms of discourse.’ and scientific materialism in place. He did not need to come out as a dissident: Be that as it may, Ekaterina Yurevna his writings and his parish-based cate- Genieva liked to say ‘some are just pre- chetical work spoke for themselves. Now tending, there are different levels of en- I am keen to read his Domashnie besedy gagement, but we are glad if they take (Conversations at Home) which are said any interest in the legacy of Fr Alexan- to be his most profound theological der.’ Sadly she died of cancer six weeks work. The ‘at home’ suggests where his before the conference. She was a coura- heart was – in the parish, though, in the geous advocate of good literature and words of Wesley, the world, or at any freedom of expression; in Soviet times rate the Russian-speaking one, fast be- she had resolutely encouraged writers of came his parish.

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Appendix

I have come to the conclusion that people  What is Man? (see Psalm 8 v. 5) outside Russia need to know why Fr Men What is the role of humanity in the is so relevant. On the basis of just vol- universe? ume 1 of In search of the Way the Truth  Where do we (homo sapiens) orig- and the Life, I have listed the following inate? burning questions which Fr Men discuss- es:  Technology, civilization…but what about morality?  How should contemporary believ- ers relate to science?  The poverty of materialism. (‘The person who has not responded to  How does suffering in the world God is a spiritual desert’ Alexan- affect our faith? der Men, volume 1, chap. 4)  How can I pray?  How can we best appraise and  How can we best explain the understand the human search for meaning and the results of sin for the divine? the modern world?  How can we further strengthen  How can we encourage this gener- ecumenical and interfaith relation- ation to read widely (from books ships and activity? or internet) material from many  How are we to understand the countries, churches, religions and Hebrew scriptures and how does cultures? Christianity relate to Judaism?  If nature really is suffused with the  How can we best understand the presence of God, how does that New Testament? affect us?

Alastair Macnaughton has served as an Anglican parish priest in the Black Country, in Nottingham, Northumberland and Newcastle, and recently in Lay Dis- cipleship with the Lindisfarne Regional Training Partnership. He hosted and or- ganised a missionary visit to Northumberland of a Baptist choir from Kobrin, Bela- rus. He learned Russian at school and then developed an interest in Christianity in the former Soviet Union after attending the Communist Countries Prayer Group while at Oxford University in the 1970s.

The Whitley Lecture 2016 The printed version of Joshua Searle’s Whitley Lecture 2016 entitled Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists after the Ukrainian Revo- lution, 2013-14 is available to purchase online. The lecture makes use of some of the sources which Joshua Searle discovered during his period of research in 2013 in the Keston archive, the Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society, Baylor University. This lecture is available here: http://spurgeons-college.myshopify.com/collections/events

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Goskontsert: Soviet Persecution

of Musicians and Religion

by Michael Bourdeaux

The Soviet concert agency, Goskontsert, the worst sense. On 26 January Shosta- was, in effect, an arm of the KGB and, kovich attended an early performance of as such, censored not only music, but the Bolshoi premiere. He arrived to see those who played it and it became an that Stalin and some of his henchmen instrument for persecuting religion. Gos- were seated in the royal box. In letters kontsert was all-powerful. It not only written to a friend, Shostakovich re- prevented some musicians from per- counted the horror with which he forming in public, but also dispensed the watched Stalin shudder every time the ultimate prize – the right to undertake brass and percussion played fortissimo. coveted trips abroad; it heavily cen- sored the repertoire at home and over- seas.

Tikhon Khrennikov Even more terrifying was the way Stalin and his companions laughed at the love scene between Sergei and Katerina. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shosta- kovich was deathly white when he went to take his bow after the third act. A series of attacks on him in Pravda soon followed, in particular an article entitled, Dmitri Shostakovich ‘Muddle Instead of Music’.1

1936 was a bad year for Soviet people, The Great Patriotic War, in which Shos- not least for Shostakovich, who, already takovich played a heroic part as a fire- as a young man (born 1906), had made a man in the defence of Leningrad, saw huge impression on Russian musical life. his rehabilitation. Then the unspeakable His new opera, Lady Macbeth of Tikhon Khrennikov, whose valueless Mtsensk, looked set to astonish the Sovi- music I endured live several times dur- et public. It astonished Stalin, too, but in ing the winter of 1959-60, when I lived

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in Moscow, attacked him again in 1948. Martin Sixsmith, former BBC corre- spondent in Moscow, inter- viewed Khrennikov in his old age and reported him as say- ing:

‘My word was law. People knew I was appointed per- sonally by Stalin and they were afraid of me. I was Maya Plisetskaya as the Dying Swan Stalin’s commissar. When I said No! it meant No. But at least, I can bear this out. On 10 April 1960 under me no composer or musician US Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson was ever executed.’2 invited me to a concert of Soviet- American Music, with an instruction to Sixsmith went on to write: detain Shostakovich in conversation at the following reception (he normally ‘Shostakovich’s widow Irina told me attended such events for ten minutes at that “Dmitri was like the little bird in the outside). If ever I have seen terror the Old Russian folktale – they etched on the face of a man, this was it, stamped on his throat and then told but eventually he warmed to this young him to sing. Fear was his constant and very nervous student and remained companion”.’3 for an hour and a half or more, during which I also interpreted between him and Aaron Copland, whose music had also been played in the concert.

The ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya, was ubiquitous on the Bolshoi stage when I lived in Moscow, despite her father having been shot in 1938. She died in May 2015, aged 89. Prokofiev was terrorised, his Spanish wife Lina barely sur- viving imprisonment. Much later, Arvo Pärt, an Estonian convert to the Orthodox Church, wrote a work entitled Credo in 1968, after which his music was banned for 20 years. Eventually he was forced into ex- ile. As his wife and children were at the airport before flying out with Arvo Pärt their tapes and scores, they were

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humiliated and strip-searched. In exile, Nineteen years after his death he is still he dedicated works to the murdered being discovered. David Pountney pro- journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, and to duced The Passenger at the English Na- the imprisoned financier, Mikhail tional Opera in 2010, to brilliant ac- Khodorkovsky. Tonu Korvits (an Estoni- claim, and he was BBC Composer of the an Protestant) researched Lutheran cho- Week in May 2013. rales, but his work went unpublished until after the collapse of Communism. Wagner might have seemed suitably anti -Semitic, but he was unperformed, pre- sumably because of his Nazi associa- tions, although he himself had been di- rector of the Riga opera house early in his career. The sole production, by the great man of the cinema, Eisenstein, was of Die Walküre in 1940, but the immi- nent Nazi invasion was to put a peremp- tory stop to any further such enterprises and the first complete production of the Ring was not until 2003.

So Goskontsert controlled the repertoire, too. During my year in Moscow argua- bly the greatest composer of 20th centu- ry, Stravinsky had not a note of his mu- sic played, his crime having been his emigration. Many other ‘modernists’ Mieczyslaw Weinberg were also banned. Béla Bartók had emi- There is a strong parallel with Nazi Ger- grated from Hungary; Janáček, who had many, which suppressed music by Jews, died in 1928, had an excessive flavour of Communists and even American jazz. Czech nationalism (which did not apply The worst Soviet example was of the to Dvořák or Smetana, 19th-century na- Jewish Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a bril- tionalism presumably being acceptable). liant Polish composer who fled to Mos- The whole of English music, from Pur- cow to avoid the Holocaust. He married cell to Britten, was a blank, probably the daughter of Solomon Mikhoels, the through ignorance rather than censor- great Soviet theatre director, who would ship. It would be interesting to know the later be executed. After years of sup- process by which the one outstanding pression, during which he survived by exception came about. In 1983 a British teaching, Weinberg was imprisoned in choir trained by Richard Hickox was 1953, during another outbreak of anti- invited to perform Elgar’s Dream of Semitism. To his undying credit, Shos- Gerontius in Moscow with a Russian takovich interceded on his behalf, Stalin orchestra. Doubtless the heroic Evgeni having just died, but he was not musical- Svetlanov, who conducted, was behind ly rehabilitated and he now survived by this. Mahler was unplayed for being writing film music and circus scores. Jewish and there were dozens of others.

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Contemporary Polish music was banned ing an incomprehensible jumble on the as being far too experimental. At the page of the printed programme. same time, the great Russians, from Glinka to (the now-rehabilitated) Shosta- You can take the words out of Bach, but kovich were played ad nauseam. Boro- not the spirituality. When Rostropovich din, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov played a solo cello suite, the audience were constantly seen on stage as well as would sit in rapt contemplation, many no heard in the concert hall. Rachmaninov doubt immersed in the deep Christian was a special case. Although he had left feeling behind it (and Rostropovich later Russia, he was far too great, in Soviet identified himself as an Orthodox believ- eyes, to be ignored, so his symphonies er). were played, though not of course his Vespers.

The most complete and sustained act of censorship by Goskontsert was of Christian music – or at least Christian words set to music. Excluded, there- fore, were all Bach’s vocal music, his Passions, Mass in B minor and canta- tas. I recently heard that Stalin, in his early days in power, had one of Bach’s Passions reset to secular Russian words, but at the moment this remains Mstislav Rostropovich a rumour. Handel’s secular music, including all his operas, was as unper- This led to a huge upsurge of interest formed as his oratorios. There was a wall when the shackles fell off in the late of exclusion shutting out Renaissance 1980s. Our former Ambassador to Kyiv, choral music, masses by Haydn, Mozart, Roland Smith, tells the story of the first Beethoven, Schubert, requiems by performance of Handel’s Messiah in Brahms and Verdi, and a huge amount of Kyiv in 1992 by an American conductor other Christian music of all ages and Roger McMurrin; he then returned re- traditions. The great secular classics peatedly with this whole ‘new’ repertoire featured from time to time, of course – of masses and requiems to great acclaim. symphonies, and string quartets by Bee- thoven, piano music by Chopin and The Tchaikovsky Piano Competition Schumann – but the impression was was frequently the source of conflict. constantly that these all paled beside Leonid Brezhnev had to be consulted Tchaikovsky. I once heard an organ before the prize could be awarded to the recital of Bach’s chorale preludes ren- British pianist, John Ogden. Vladimir dered indecipherable. They are always Ashkenazy recounts that Ekaterina identified by the Christian words of the Furtseva, Minister of Culture, forced him chorale melody, which could not of to play Prokofiev’s Second Piano Con- course be printed in Russia. Instead they certo, despite the pianist’s complaint that were all listed by key signatures, form- his hands were too small for this work.

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Andrei Gavril won the competition, but hugely popular ballet, Spartacus. He was this did not prevent his being interned in let out to Italy to produce 15 performanc- 1977 in a mental asylum, his career re- es of a new ballet by Luigi Nono. The suming again only in 1984. deal was that he would repay 70% of the fee to Goskontsert – but he received all This negative legacy had an effect even the money in cash and on his return to on someone born as late as 1981, for Moscow claimed to have spent it all. example Baiba Skride, the great violinist There was a huge scandal and he never from Riga. In 2013 she said: travelled abroad again.

‘Growing up in Latvia at the end of Especially revealing is the story of the the Soviet era meant there was a lot great Borodin Quartet, as recounted by of music and performers I just wasn’t Rostislav Dubinsky, founder and first aware of. We only heard Soviet art- violin, in Stormy Applause, the ists like Leonid Kogan and David ‘biography’ of the chamber group. It is a Oistrakh. But when I went to study in brilliant though little-known book, of Germany, it opened up a whole new which Wikipedia says: world for me. I really had no idea there was such a thing as baroque ‘Its insight into the anti-Semitism, music, apart from the Bach solo Par- professional corruption, political arm titas.’4 -twisting, and general fear which permeated the Soviet cultural scene Foreign travel was the highest privilege during the period it describes (1949- for the chosen few, though their families 75) offers a vital complement to the were kept at home as hostages. As late as parallel narrative in Testimony’ [a 1989, the New Y ork Times reported: controversial and unauthorised biog- raphy of Shostakovich]. ‘The horror stories of the tangled bu- reaucracy of Goskontsert, their woe- After interminable squabbles with Gos- ful tales of lost telexes, late visas, kontsert about their repertoire and trial ignored artists, wild goose-chases and runs in the provinces (where sometimes last-minute cancellations make one they slipped in banned works) they were wonder why anyone would bother to eventually given permission to travel bring over any Soviet ballerinas and abroad. Still suspect – and with a Jewish pianists at all.’5 member – they had a minder, who at least had the grace to show them his The answer, of course, is that there was reports before submitting them. Eventu- an array of world-class musicians ready ally the minder no longer travelled with to present to the West some of the great- them, so immediately all four knew that est performances anywhere (Richter, the one of their members must be reporting Oistrakhs, Lev Oborin, the Bolshoi, the back on them. But which one? This was Kirov and many others). not exactly good for the morale of the quartet. Suspicion eventually fell on their Janine Ross recently published a book on cellist, Valentin Berlinsky. Dubinsky Leonid Yakobson, choreographer of the defected to the West in 1976 and told the

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– often-hilarious – story of what went on the first performance in the cathedral behind the scenes of world-class music were beset by many practical problems. making, Soviet style. I need not under- Most were musical, but one was politi- line the well-known stories of how inef- cal. Britten’s deeply symbolical scheme fective Goskontsert was in preventing was to incorporate three soloists of dif- defections: Ashkenazy, Nureyev, Ba- ferent nationalities signifying reconcilia- ryshnikov, Barshai, Mullova, eventually tion: Galina Vishnevskaya (wife of Ros- Rostropovich after he had defended Sol- tropovich), Peter Pears (UK) and Die- zhenitsyn, were only the tip of the ice- trich Fischer-Dieskau (West Germany). berg. German money had partly financed the restoration. Thus, the symbolism, the Christian venue and the perceived religious propaganda through a world- wide broadcast were all too much for the Soviets. They brought pressure on Vishnevskaya to withdraw, but she refused. Britten wrote to the Ministry of Culture on 14 December 1961. How did Vishnevskaya come to pos- sess the text of this letter? The recipi- ent tore it up and threw it in the waste- paper basket, from which a cleaning lady retrieved it and passed it on, so Vishnevskaya & Rostropovich Vishnevskaya could quote it in her On one occasion Rostropovich did some- autobiography. Many years later I was thing more impressive than defecting. able to confirm the text from a carbon On 20 August 1968, the day that the copy in the Britten-Pears Archive in Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, Aldeburgh. The text reads: by an astonishing coincidence he was to play Dvořák’s concerto at a Promenade ‘I have been very sad to hear of the Concert. At the end of a heart-stopping letter from Mr Shashkin, the Director performance he held the score aloft in a of Gosconcert, to the Director of the gesture of open defiance. Does a record- Coventry Festival, indicating that this ing nestle in the BBC archives? visit will unfortunately be impossi- ble. May I ask you to reconsider this My last illustration is the little-known decision? This Requiem is perhaps story of the world premiere of Britten’s the most important work I have yet War Requiem, in which I was involved written, and the dominating soprano on the periphery. part has been planned from the start for Madame Vishnevskaya. When I Benjamin Britten wrote this for the dedi- heard her sing in England this last cation of the new Coventry Cathedral, summer I realised that she had the following the destruction of the great voice, the musicianship and the tem- gothic edifice by a German incendiary perament that I was looking for. bomb during the war. Preparations and Since then, writing the work, she has

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been in my mind planning every was because the performance was to be phrase of the music. I am sure you in a cathedral, restored by the despised will realise in this case how extreme- West Germany, to boot. ly difficult it would be to replace Madame Vishnevskaya, and why I Shostakovich, speaking up for the Ros- am therefore writing to you personal- tropoviches, said he would never forget ly, and ask you to reconsider this this insult to Soviet music. Vishnevskaya decision.’ heard the broadcast (with Heather Har- per, superb as a late replacement) and The Ministry was adamant. Ekaterina said, ‘I sat at home in Moscow, weeping Furtseva summoned Vishnevskaya and bitter tears’. said: ‘How can you, a Soviet woman, stand next to a German and an English- When the cathedral event was in the past man and perform a political work?’ The the religious aspect could be ignored by row went on all winter. By coincidence, Goskontsert, so Vishnevskaya could Vishnevskaya came to London to sing come to London to sing it in the Royal Aida at Covent Garden just before the Albert Hall. I had the privilege in Janu- Coventry premiere of the War Requiem. ary 1963 of singing with the Philharmo- Britten and Peter Pears came to Vish- nia Chorus in this first performance by nevskaya’s hotel room and found her the soloists for whom Britten had written greatly distressed – she had just received the War Requiem. I met Vishnevskaya a final refusal. A Soviet press statement later and she gave me a signed copy of stated that she was having to withdraw her book Galina: a Russian Story, which through illness (no mention of her being I reviewed for the Church Times. This is in good voice at the Royal Opera House now in the Keston Archive. When Vish- at that very time). Astonishingly, the nevskaya died in 2012, I wrote a supple- British press, parrot-like, repeated the lie mentary obituary in The Times.6 It read: and not one journalist investigated. A week before the premiere, after the last ‘I asked her how it could be that a performance of Aida, Vishnevskaya was person who had never written for forced to get on a plane back to Moscow, publication could produce a classic the hostage back home being Rostropo- worthy of its place in the Russian vich. The Soviet authorities seemed canon as literature. The essence of oblivious to the humiliation of such a her reply was: “It was all inside me; famous composer as Britten and of the it just had to come out. Some outside whole Soviet musical establishment. In force guided my pen...” Her book Moscow Rostropovich complained, but undermined the state agency, Gos- was rebutted by the statement that this kontsert’s reputation for all time.’

1. 26 January 1936 2. BBC Music Magazine, March 2014, p.44. 3. Ibid., p.45 4. BBC Music Magazine, August 2013, p. 114. 5. New York Times, 12 February 2015. 6. 13 December 2012.

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Spiritual Care and Nursing in Lithuania

by Olga Riklikiene

In 2015 a national survey of student draw upon a patient’s ability to cope with nurses and nursing educators was carried complex health conditions. This holistic out in three universities and six colleges paradigm guides nurses when they carry in Lithuania with the aim of discovering out careful whole-person assessments. perceptions of spiritual care in a country which had experienced 50 years of Soviet Nevertheless, providing spiritual support occupation and anti-religious can be foreign to health care propaganda. This exercise was a first professionals in training and practice important step in a long-term plan to (Penman, 2009). Both student and investigate the phenomenon of spiritual practising nurses report a lack of care in a former Soviet country. knowledge and skill in this field (Stern & James, 2006) which may result from the A questionnaire was distributed to 316 ambiguity surrounding the word student nurses in their 3rd and 4th year of ‘spirituality’ (McSherry and Cash, 2004; study and to 92 nurse educators. Both Sessanna, 2007): there is no consensus on groups acknowledged the importance of a formal definition or even if the term spiritual care for patients and nurses, and should be defined at all (Lazenby, 2010). in many cases defined such care in terms of religious faith. Four categories In the Lithuanian survey, however, associated with perceptions of spirituality ‘spirituality’ meant the meaning or in nursing care emerged from the purpose which a person ascribes to life, responses of the student nurses: a) and ‘spiritual support’ meant facilitating attributes of spiritual care, b) advantages a patient’s search for meaning or purpose of spiritual care, c) religious faith and which would help him or her cope with spiritual care, d) and nurse-patient illness (Ferrell, Smith, Juare & collaboration and communication. Melancon, 2003) or find meaning or Themes from the responses of nurse purpose as he or she prepared for the end educators paralleled the same first three of life. categories but not the fourth. The Lithuanian context Benefits of spiritual care It is argued that although many people When health care providers support the express their spirituality through religious spiritual needs of patients, those with observances, not everyone who is advanced disease use fewer health care spiritual has a religion: anyone who resources with less aggressive treatment searches for ultimate meaning or purpose (Balboni et al., 2013). By being aware of in life can be said to have a spirituality a patient’s spirituality, nurses are able to (Sulmasy, 2002). In Lithuania the support the patient as an individual and to concept of spirituality has been

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complicated by its history of enforced within nursing practice, education and atheism which during Soviet rule research (Seskevicius, 2010). Around severely restricted the religious life of the same time as independence, the population, the majority of whom palliative care developed as a health care were Catholics. It was difficult to discipline. By 2007 Lithuania adopted a integrate spirituality into health care Law on Palliative Care which established practice (Balboni et al., 2014) as the in-patient palliative care services, approach to the latter focused on a introduced out-patient palliative care practitioner’s duty to provide technically consultations, formalised evaluation of competent, medically focused care, palliative care services, and provided without any consideration of a patient as undergraduate and continuing a whole person with a spirituality. Once professional training in palliative care. Lithuania was liberated in 1991 and In 2012, the first 14-bed hospice was gained religious freedom, nursing established. This development was training developed as an academic important as one of the eight elements of discipline within university education. palliative care, which all palliative care But with no tradition to draw upon, services and training must reflect, is academic nursing in Lithuania tried to ‘spiritual, religious, and existential develop new approaches to teaching and aspects of care’ (National Consensus practice, which integrated spirituality Project, 2013). and enabled nurses to think of patients as whole people, with spiritualities which During the last two decades of change in could help them in coping with illness. Eastern Europe, Lithuanian nursing has been rapidly evolving away from The nursing profession in Lithuania in socialist principles of scientific and the past was based on a framework of technical materialism (Blazeviciene and moral values: during the Second World Jakusovaite, 2007). As a condition for War for example Lithuanian nurses membership in the European Union, demonstrated a Christian ethic of caring nursing education was elevated from a and self-sacrifice (Karosas, 2003). Then diploma to a university-based system, followed 50 years of Soviet occupation and nursing research and policy when laws were passed which banned development were expanded (Karosas priests from entering hospitals to and Riklikiene, 2008). As nursing minister to the sick and when it was education moves away from a strongly dangerous to express religious faith. biomedical, technical approach, towards After 1991, in contrast, religious practice a more sensitive, patient-centred, holistic was not only permitted, but viewed as a approach, the nursing curriculum has had sign of a person’s virtue and national to take into account socio-cultural, loyalty; for some, it even became religious and spiritual customs and fashionable. practices.

Nursing care after independence The spiritual, religious, cultural, or human values of students may nurture Today spiritual care, once taboo in the their vocation for the health professions Soviet era, is increasingly being explored (Puchalski et al., 2014), that is, their

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choice of a career serving others and respondents expressed equal admiration attending to the whole patient – body, for those who regularly attended religious mind, and spirit (Balboni et al., 2014). services. Students and educators, alike, Therefore when thinking about the nurs- were neutral regarding atheism. Less than ing curriculum and spirituality, especially half of the student nurses (41.2%) in post-Soviet Lithuania, it has been disagreed with the statement that ‘nurses important to consider the attitudes and ought to have a religious faith,’ while views of students and not just those of half the educators (51.1%) had no clear the educators. opinion about this statement. There were no significant differences between The national survey students and educators as regards attitudes towards general and The questionnaire used for the national professional values; however, the survey was developed by Scott (1959) students tended to dislike atheism more and supplemented by Martin Johnson than the educators. (1983). We chose this one because it was the only one specific to nursing students Analysis revealed that those students and and their educators, while it also had an educators who considered themselves to open-ended question allowing for context be religious expressed significantly more -specific answers, which was thought to admiration and agreement with a be important given Lituanian nursing’s person’s general and professional historical context. This questionnaire religious behaviour as compared to assesses general (that is, more personal) students and educators who considered and professional values: 408 respondents themselves to be atheists or were unsure participated; 316 student nurses in the 3rd about their religion. Students responded and 4th year of study and 92 nurse more positively than educators to the educators. The response rate for students general value question ‘Do you have was 80% and for educators 69.7%. The spiritual aspects to your life?’ final question of the survey which was a Furthermore, students (but not educators) question about spiritual care was who reported having spiritual aspects to completed by 183 respondents – 148 their lives more often supported the (46.8%) students and 35 (38%) expression of religious faith in others educators. The length of answers to each either as a general or professional value. question varied from one word to 25 Nurse educators agreed with the notion words. The mean age of student nurses that religion has no relationship with a was 24.39 years. Of the student nurses spiritual way of life, whereas students did 97.8% were women, while 82.6% of the not. nurse educators were women; 20% of the nurse educators had more than 21 years Attributes of spiritual care of teaching experience. To student nurses, spiritual care involved The survey revealed that the majority of personal qualities such as honesty and student nurses (65.5%) and educators respect, tolerance and responsibility. It (63%) always/usually admired the meant being sincere and kind, ‘showing religiously devout person. Both groups of goodness, tenderness,’ ‘showing respect

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for another person, for their dignity and much as the students but included new independence,’ ‘showing respect for their concepts such as empathy and humanity: faith and values’. To student nurses the ‘it is more empathy,’ ‘a nurse not only professional skill and behaviour of a takes care of a patient’s body but nurse in delivering spiritual care maintains his/her humanity,’ ‘humanity integrated moral norms and values: ‘there ought to be the foundation of nursing are very important values in the work of philosophy.’ At the same time nurse nurses such as compassion and educators associated the traditional understanding,’ the provision of ‘spiritual personal characteristics of a nurse with care is shown through mercifulness.’ the delivery of spiritual care: ‘attentiveness, selflessness, professonal A nurse should be non-judgmental and responsibility, mercifulness as well.’ altruistic when providing spiritual care Having been trained in deontological and ‘doesn’t take into account her own ethics, they emphasised that when personal attitudes but provides holistic thinking about the delivery of spiritual care through being kind and patient.’ care, ‘it is necessary to follow ethical Students perceived spiritual care as rules’ and ‘to make sure that professional providing ‘help and comprehensive ethics are understood.’ support’ and linked it to the primary responsibilities of professional nurses and Advantages of spiritual care to inner strength, adding that spiritual care ‘needs unending patience, Survey respondents demonstrated the endurance, love and understanding.’ At greatest consensus when describing the the same time, providing this kind of care advantages of spiritual care for patients ‘helps one understand the person better.’ and providers. From the patient’s perspective, spiritual care guaranteed This notion of mutual understanding equality and humanity. As one student between nurse and patient figured put it, ‘[the nurse] delivers care without frequently in students’ responses. The regard to the social status of the patient.’ autonomy and individuality of a patient Spiritual care ‘saves human lives.’ were important elements: ‘it is essential Student nurses described a patient‘s sense to listen to the patient and consider their of being safe and cared for: ‘every person wishes, the principles of humanity and has a right to support and caring.’ One autonomy,’ ‘each person is an student nurse said that : individual.’ ‘the patient has to feel safe while Nurse educators emphasised the talking to a nurse and not alone with importance of respect and human dignity, their problems; for example, when I human values and spiritual beliefs, went to the operating theatre with a including warmth, tenderness and love: patient who was very worried and I ‘respect for people, for their dignity and calmed her down.’ individuality,’ ‘loving people as they are,’ ‘hands ought to be tender in taking Moreover, students linked spiritual care care – no ambiguity!’ They did not with end-of-life care. Hopefulness and emphasise patience and understanding as inspiration were the right nursing

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attitudes in spiritual care: ‘to believe in a Religious faith and spiritual care patient‘s recovery and in the ability to help him feel better,’ ‘to bring relief and Student nurses considered a patient’s hope to dying patients.’ According to attitude to religion to be an important students, providing spiritual care was element in the provision of spiritual care. advantageous not only for patients but One reply to the questionnaire stated that also for nurses: ‘a person with spiritual nurses are guided by ‘basic moral rules values has compassion and helps the which could also include the Ten weak and ill,’ ‘it helps to understand Commandments.’ Spiritual care was patients’ problems and empathise with related to religious resources and ‘help them,’ ‘[a nurse] will cope with for the soul.’ Students mentioned difficulties at work more easily and feel freedom from religious prejudice: ‘a reassured in various situations.’ Nurse nurse has to respect a patient‘s religion educators supported the view of students and cannot criticise religious beliefs, that spiritual care enables patients to feel sometimes it is better to encourage...to safe and to experience wellbeing: ‘a give hope.’ They thought a nurse should stronger feeling of safety makes it easier be ‘aware of many religions and be able for the patient to cope with infirmity.’ to adapt to patients and their religious They agreed that nursing went beyond views.’ Student nurses suggested that a physical care to include spiritual care: nurse has to pay attention to a patient‘s ‘nursing is not just physical help, it is religion, as ‘human life depends not only most important to help the soul.’ They on medicine, but on a higher power, God also emphasised the link between the – He will always help and make things existential attitudes of the inner lives of better.’ The link between spiritual care nurses and patients: and religion, especially at the end of life, was clearly presented by students: ‘using an existential perspective to ‘religious support and understanding is help the patient preserve the harmony especially necessary at [the] end of life of body, mind and spirit; seeing the for patients and their relatives.’ A person’s internal world, ensuring that practical suggestion from one student was patients understand and accept the that a nurse has ‘to pay attention to spiritual world, not necessarily whether the patient is a Catholic or a religion.’ Muslim or a member of another denomination because much may depend Spiritual care was required in palliative on religion.’ Nurse educators agreed care: ‘hope and trust for the patient even with students that ‘faith helps a person; in difficult situations,’ ‘a nurse has to sometimes it is good to know, especially maintain [a] patient’s faith and hope for for children, that life is not over after recovery or a dignified death, when death death.’ They supported the beliefs and is inevitable.’ They agreed with the religious practices of patients through students that providing spiritual care encouraging clergy to get involved and to benefitted the nurse as well as the patient: minister to patients: ‘respect and help for ‘a spiritually strong nurse concentrates the dying’ was part of a nurse‘s duty of better on her work and is more gentle.’ care.

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The nurse-patient relationship from nursing per se. Several students argued that ‘spiritual values in care are Students, but not educators, considered very important, but the professionalism in that the process of nurse-patient practical matters cannot be forgotten.’ collaboration and communication was Another responded that ‘it is an obligation part of spiritual care which involved not for a nurse to be compassionate and to ‘just working with patients, but also console, but it is not compulsory to pray includes understanding.’ From the for a patient’s health; this is nonsense!’ students’ point of view, spiritual care was Other statements of educators indicated an interaction, and even possibly, a that nursing care has to be strictly therapeutic intervention for the patient’s separated from spirituality and moral mental health. One reply to the values: ‘spiritual values are important but questionnaire stated: not a priority’; and ‘nursing care is not related to spiritual values at all.’ One ‘Often when exploring the patient’s nurse educator rigidly interpreted psychological problems, it is spirituality as religion: ‘I think that interesting how he accepts the changes religion [...] should never be included in in health and [the nurse], by listening questionnaires.’ to him and sharing his burden, helps the patient to feel less pain and Nursing is an art and a science psychological distress.’ According to the vast majority of student Another reply stated: nurses and nurse educators, spiritual care involved a complex mix of character, ‘If a nurse sees a patient suffering from behaviour and social skills, supported by depression, he/she must talk with the particular values and attitudes. patient, explain to him/her that life is Generational differences stemming from beautiful, that not everything is so bad the experience of political events might and he/she has to love [life].’ explain differences in perception between younger student nurses, who grew up in a Spiritual care in nursing, to students, was post-Soviet environment, and older nurse ‘not simply mechanical work, but activity educators, who developed professionally based on spiritual collaboration.’ Students under the Soviet regime which suppressed adopted the attitude of ‘a healthy spirit in religious and spiritual expression. a healthy body’ and believed that ‘sometimes interaction, sincerity, good Health care education of the post-Soviet words, faith and hope are enough for era emphasises interaction and patients to feel better and to recover communication as a crucial part of faster.’ nursing. In contrast almost all nurse educators were trained according to the A divergent view bio-medical model which involved not only personal values such as honesty, A small number of student nurses (4.7%) responsiblity and professionalism but also and nurse educators (17.1%) expressed a Marxist materialist values – technical and different opinion: in their view the scientific advancements. According to provision of spiritual care was separate this more technocratic model, the nurse- Keston Newsletter No 23, 2016 30

patient relationship was not an equal one holistic manner, the ability of patients to but paternalistic; the nurse or physician cope with illness was enhanced. Providing made every decision about a patient’s spiritual care had benefits for nurses as treatment. well; it decreased burn-out and promoted quality in the delivery of care. Spiritual care in the survey was associated with ‘human values of love, Conclusion compassion and altruism,’ ‘maintaining relationships,’ ‘participating in religious There are generally speaking four spheres practices’ and ‘culture,’ as described by when considering the quality of life: Penman et al. (2013). Both students and physical, psychological, social, and educators related such care to personal spiritual, according to the Quality of Life moral and belief systems. For students it model (Ferrell et al., 1991). The spiritual entailed respect, independence, support, sphere includes meaning, religious faith, and the preservation of human life. They and hope, among other elements. The thought that such care involved being whole-person care perspective (Balboni et present to the patient and listening to his al., 2014) combined with the bio-psycho- or her story (Balboni et al., 2014). To social-spiritual model of care (Sulmasy, them nursing was an art as well as a 2002) should guide the formation of a science. Educators also cited respect but nurse through scientific, intellectual, emphasised more the duty of care; they personal and spiritual development. stressed the importance of professional Providing spiritual care is important in ethics, which was consistent with their order to ensure quality care (Wittenberg et training in medical deontology. Younger al., 2015) and integrates ethical principles students, born after Lithuanian with health care practice. The student independence, who had not experienced nurses and educators in the survey also this training, had internalised the pointed to the benefits for themselves of importance of the ethical principle of providing spiritual care: a nurse was autonomy. While student nurses inspired and empowered by inner-peace, considered interaction, reciprocal mindfulness, mercifulness and increased understanding, and human relationships to professional responsibility. Descarte’s be aspects of spirituality, nurse educators dualistic philosophy separated body from did not cite these; they did not think soul: a more holistic philosophy restores ‘relationship’ was an important element in the spiritual dimension. Spirituality is an the provision of spiritual care. However, integral component of nursing since, for although the two groups in the survey had the body to be healthy, the soul must be some slightly different perceptions, both healthy too. considered the spiritual domain to be an The original version of this article was important aspect of nursing care. Student nurses and nurse educators believed that published in Nurse Education Today, No.1, 2016. when patient care was provided in a

Olga Riklikiene is an Associated Professor at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Faculty of Nursing and Care Department, in Kaunas. She is consulted by Lithuania’s Ministry of Health and is currently helping develop nursing at the National Medical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan. Keston Newsletter No 23, 2016 31

References Balboni, M., Puchalski, C., Peteet, J., 2014. International Journal of Nursing Studies 41 ‘The Relationship between Medicine, (2), 151–161. Spirituality and Religion: Three Models for Integration.’ Journal of Religion and Health 53 Penman, J., Oliver, M., Harrington, A., 2009. (5), 1586–1598. ‘Spirituality and spiritual engagement as perceived by palliative care clients and Balboni, T., Balboni, M., Enzinger, A., et al., caregivers.’ Australian Journal of Advanced 2013. ‘Provision of Spiritual Support to Nursing 26 (4), 29–35. Patients with Advanced Cancer by Religious Communities and Associations with Medical Penman, J., Oliver, M., Harrington, A, 2013. Care at the End of Life.’ JAMA Internal ‘The relational model of spiritual engagement Medicine 173 (12), 1109–1117. depicted by palliative care clients and caregivers.’ International Journal of Nursing Baldacchino, D., Draper, P., 2001. ‘Spiritual Practice 19 (1), 39–46. coping strategies: a review of the nursing research literature.’ Journal of Advanced Puchalski, C., Blatt, B., Kogan, M., Butler, A., Nursing 34 (6), 833–841. 2014. ‘Spirituality and health: The development of a field.’ Academic Medicine 89 Blazeviciene, A., Jakusovaite, I., 2007. ‘Value (1), 10–16. priorities and their relations with quality of life in the Baby Boomer generation of Lithuanian Puchalski, C., Ferrell, B., Virani, R., et al., nurses: a cross-sectional survey.’ BMC Nursing 2009. ‘Improving the quality of spiritual care 6 (10), 1–6. as a dimension of palliative care: Report of the Consensus Conference.’ Journal of Palliative Ferrell, B., Smith, S., Juarez, G., Melancon, C., Medicine 12 (10), 885–904. 2003. ‘Meaning of illness and spirituality in ovarian cancer survivors.’ Oncology Nursing Rumbold B., 2003. ‘Attending to spiritual Forum 30 (2), 249–257. care.’ Health Issues 77, 14–17.

Ferrell, B., Grant, M., Padilla, G., 1991. Seskevičius A., 2010. ‘Given Hope: Fifteen ‘Experience of pain and perceptions of quality years of Lithuanian Society of Palliative of life: validation of a conceptual model.’ Medicine (1995–2010).’ Kaunas: Naujasis Hospice Journal 7(3), 9-24. lankas (In Lithuanian).

Haigh, C., Johnson, M., 2007. ‘Attitudes and Sessanna, L., Finnell, D., Jezewski, M., 2007. Values of Nurse Educators: An International ‘Spirituality in Nursing and Health-Related Survey.’ International Journal of Nursing Literature.’ Journal of Holistic Nursing 25 (4), Education Scholarship 4 (1). 252–262.

Karosas, L., 2003. ‘The interrupted Stern, J., James S., 2006. ‘Every person development of Lithuanian nursing.’ Doctoral matters: enabling spirituality education for Dissertation. University of Connecticut Storrs, nurses.’ Journal of Clinical Nursing 15 (7), CT. 897–904.

Karosas, L., Riklikiene, O., 2008. ‘Gender and Sulmacy, D., 2002. ‘A Biopsychosocial- the interrupted development of professional Spiritual Model for the Care of Patients at the nursing in Lithuania.’ Acta Medica Lituanica End of Life.’ The Gerontologist 42 III, 24–33. 15 (4), 235–238. Tanyi, R., 2002. ‘Towards clarification of the Lazenby, M., 2010. ‘On “spirituality,” meaning of spirituality.’ Journal of Advanced “religion,” and “religions”: A concept Nursing, 39 (5), 500–509. analysis.’ Palliative and Supportive Care, 8 (4), 469–476. Wittenberg, E., Ferrell, B., Goldsmith, J., Buller, H., 2015. ‘Provider Difficulties with Maneesriwongul, W., Dixon, JK. 2004. Spiritual and Forgiveness Communication at ‘Instrument translation process: a methods the End of Life.’ Am J Hosp Palliative Care. review. ’J Adv Nurs 48(2), 175-86. July 2. pii: 1049909115591811. [E-pub ahead of print] McSherry, W., Cash, K., 2004. ‘The language of spirituality: an emerging taxonomy.’

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My week in Ukraine

by Lorna Bourdeaux

As a student of Rus- sian almost 40 years ago I lived for three months in Leningrad in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). I was profoundly struck by the way in which peo- ple lived so closely together in a confined physical space and how the concept of ‘private space’ seemed to be entirely lacking. As students, not sur- prisingly, we lived in British Christians (Lorna Bourdeaux, back row 3rd from left) dormitories, five Brits at aid depot in Eastern Ukraine and two Russians per room, each with a narrow bed, a shared It was commonplace for a stranger to cupboard and a storage space under the come up to you in the street (we stood bed. I got to know ordinary Russians out as Westerners) to tell you to button who lived in communal flats – one fami- up your coat or wrap your scarf correctly ly of four to a single room – with a (it was still cold in April when we arrived shared kitchen and toilet and no bath- and spring was late). When, for the first room. We did not get to know our Rus- time, I ventured nervously into an Ortho- sian room mates as, naïve as we were, we dox church during a service an elderly knew that they were there as ‘minders’ lady approached to tell me I must stand reporting back on our every move. ‘correctly’ – arms straight down by my sides. None of this gave offence – it just Outside the confines of the dorm it was a felt strange and I attributed this mixture different matter. Ordinary Russians were of warmth, tactile behaviour and admoni- overwhelmingly hospitable and went out tion to a considerable cultural difference of their way to be generous and thought- between East and West. ful hosts. You could never enter a home, however humble, without the table im- In Ukraine in February I experienced the mediately being spread with food and exact same warmth – the hugging and drink – no matter what time of day or kissing, the overwhelming hospitality, night – and you were constantly urged to the sharing of food and drink, and being ‘kushaite’ – ‘eat up’. Being hugged and told to ‘do up your coat’ – it was minus kissed on alternate cheeks was the norm. five in Vasilkivka, a small town in East-

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British group visit a feeding point for the homeless in Zaporizhye

ern Ukraine where we were guests for rely on family and friends to help out two nights. It was reassuringly familiar when things go wrong, otherwise you and also deeply humbling. These were easily slip through the cracks and be- poor people struggling to make ends come destitute. The state does not ap- meet, but willing to share whatever they pear to be willing or able to help – or had with strangers. indeed, to care. We met many such des- perate people during our week in Since my time in Leningrad in the 1970s Ukraine. there have been seismic shifts in the region of the FSU – geographical bound- It was immensely encouraging to see that aries have changed as have political, some of these needs are being addressed cultural and linguistic ones. Ukraine by members of Evangelical churches, gained its independence from the FSU in Baptists, Mennonites and Pentecostals. 1991 and has a population of 44 million We visited a feeding point for the home- of whom three million live in the capital, less in Zaporizhye run by Christians Kyiv. For the past 25 years its citizens from the ‘School without Walls’ project. have endured corrupt, wasteful and crim- Zaporizhye is a large industrial town inally inefficient governance. Past at- roughly 150 kilometres from the war tempts at reform have failed. Renewed zone in the far east of the country. Its attempts appear to be faltering. The war population has been increased by thou- in Eastern Ukraine has cost at least 8,000 sands of refugees from the Donetsk and lives and there are 1.7 million internally Luhansk regions – possibly as many as displaced people. You have to be self- 200,000 – and among them are many sufficient in order to survive and you alcoholics and drug addicts.

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be shared amongst all the families. Cur- rently there are approximately 30 fami- lies, including small children, living in dormitory-style accommodation with one room per family and very basic shared kitchen and toilet facilities.

Natalya, an Orthodox believer, told me that she and her husband, Nikolai, were from Donetsk (now in the rebel-held territory). They used to live in a quiet area, their daughter and two children living nearby. When the bombing start- ed they became very frightened. Natal- ya’s son, age 26, was shot dead on his way back home from work. Natalya and Lorna Bourdeaux (back to camera) her husband fled leaving everything talks to a woman in a home for the behind – their home, some land, a car elderly outside Zaporizhye and a vineyard. Her daughter moved to ‘School without Walls’ started as a Luhansk (also in rebel-held territory) movement within the Baptist community where she had friends and she has started about 15 years ago, and its primary aim a small sewing business. Nikolai has was to teach the basics of the Christian had a stroke and can no longer speak. faith and ministry to future church lead- We asked Natalya what were her hopes ers. Involvement in aid work has for the future: ‘I just want to return home evolved from this and Evangelical Chris- when the war is over. My roots are there tians in Zaporizhye are at the forefront – my vineyard and my rose garden.’ She of work with the homeless, refugees, was delighted to receive a Bible from prisoners and with a state-run rehab Roman. ‘I left my Bible behind when I centre for addicts. They also run an ac- fled – I’m so glad to have another one.’ tive youth programme. All of those we met who are involved with rehab work Later on the same day Roman took us to are themselves former convicted crimi- meet a group of his fellow Mennonite nals and drug addicts who have served pastors over lunch. They wanted to tell time in prison. We heard some extraor- us about their humanitarian work on the dinary personal testimonies. front line. One of the most striking things they emphasised was their convic- One of our most moving encounters was tion that the future direction of their with a group of refugees. They are church will be determined by the stance housed in a Soviet-era ‘Pioneer camp’ they take towards the victims of the war on the outskirts of the city on land which and the soldiers fighting in it. ‘We think now belongs to the Pentecostal church. the church is called to respond to the The trip was organised by a wonderful challenges – we can’t stand aside. We Mennonite pastor, Roman, who visits the can’t call ourselves a church if we seal camp regularly. We took food parcels to up our walls and refuse to care about the

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outside world.’ They have responded by be the responsibility of local government making weekly trips to the front line but, in reality, in many places local gov- with food and clothing, and have deliv- ernment has disappeared and local activ- ered more than 120 tons of food in the ists and teachers have stepped in to fill past eight months. Some of the food the gaps. Roman told us that the teach- staples come from overseas, but the bulk ers have asked them to organise an event of it is bought locally and paid for by the for them. ‘So much attention is focused local community. They also distribute on the kids – take us for a day out too!’ Bibles, New Testaments and children’s The pastors are planning a summer train- literature. When we asked them what ing seminar to equip teachers to work was the most important aspect of this with children affected by post-traumatic work they told us: ‘Building good rela- stress and to run children’s summer tionships with the people still living camps. Roman has posted a video with there. People call us – they have our English subtitles showing the work of phone numbers – to ask advice about life some of the pastors we met – distributing and spiritual questions.’ aid to people on the front line.: https://m.youtube.com/watch? They are hoping to start a new church feature=youtu.be&v=Eq4JGJ3br0M close to the front line: When members of our group asked what ‘We want to use the experience we we could do to help when we returned to have gained to help and serve people. the UK, we were told: ‘It means so much Before the war there were about that you have come to visit us and listen 40,000 people in Avdiyivka (about to us – tell people the truth about what is seven kilometres from Donetsk) and happening in Ukraine.’ now there are 18,000. We are working in the schools there, and a wide range of people are open to collab- orating with us, including school principals and city governors. We are plan- ning a big event for the school children there.’

Fighting continues, mainly at night, in the villages around Avdiyivka. All the teachers are trained to know what to do in the event of an Visit to the ‘School without Walls’ attack. This is supposed to youth group in Zaporizhye

Lorna Bourdeaux worked for Keston between 1978 and 1999, and has subsequently worked for Age UK Oxfordshire specialising in dementia care.

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Relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church

by Hugh Wybrew

Pope Francis & Patriarch Kirill meet in Havana on 12th February 2016

The meeting between Pope Francis and Zeno’s Henoticon, an attempt to recon- Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus- cile Chalcedonians and Monophysites in sia in February 2016 came for the secu- the East. Rome saw it as undermining lar media out of the ecumenical blue. the Chalcedonian definition of the per- The Week, published after the media had son of Jesus Christ and so denounced it. moved on to other matters, mentioned In the 9th century Rome and Constanti- the meeting briefly, saying that it was nople were again in a state of schism the first meeting of a Pope and a Patri- over the case of Patriarch Photius. Pope arch for nearly 1,000 years. Earlier and Nicholas I claimed jurisdiction over the fuller reports carried headlines suggest- Eastern Church; Photius accused the ing that perhaps the Great Schism was West of introducing the filioque into the about to be healed. In view of such ill- Nicene creed. informed reporting it might be helpful to present a brief over-view of the present These were just two instances of gradu- state of relations between the Roman ally worsening relations between Con- Catholic Church and the Orthodox stantinople and Rome. From 800, when Church. the Pope crowned Charlemagne emper- or, political rivalry between the East The historical background is one of hos- Roman Empire and the Carolingian Em- tility. Tensions between Rome and Con- pire in the West combined with doctrinal stantinople go back at least to the 5th disagreements and ecclesiastical jurisdic- century. From 482 to 518 they were in a tional clashes to worsen relations. They state of schism, provoked by the emperor were further strained in the 11th century

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when Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Mi- bringing the modern ecumenical move- chael Cerularius suppressed Greek and ment into being, Rome refused all part in Latin customs in their respective juris- it. The first step towards reconciliation dictions. In 1054 Leo’s legates to Con- between the two churches was taken in stantinople excommunicated the Patri- 1964, during the Second Vatican Coun- arch, and were in their turn excommuni- cil, when Pope Paul VI and the Ecumen- cated by Cerularius. By this time Leo ical Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jeru- was dead, so Cardinal Humbert’s action salem. The Week’s claim notwithstand- was of doubtful validity. In any case ing, that was the first meeting of a Pope these were personal excommunications and a Patriarch for ‘nearly a thousand only. But they gave rise in time to the years’. Two years later the mutual anath- habit of referring to the incident as the emas of 1054 were lifted, and declared Great Schism, and that myth has been to be a tragic mistake. Since then there perpetuated. There is evidence of Greeks have been regular friendly contacts be- and Latins receiving communion togeth- tween Constantinople and Rome, and er long after 1054. other meetings of popes and patriarchs. Patriarch Kirill was almost the last of the Far more serious in creating a lasting heads of the 14 autocephalous Orthodox breach between Rome and Constantino- churches to meet a pope. Successive ple was the capture of the East Roman patriarchs of Moscow have declined to capital by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, meet successive popes on the ground and the creation in Constantinople of a that the time was not yet right. As re- Latin Empire and Patriarchate. Neither cently as January 2016 Metropolitan the Council of Lyons in 1274 nor that of Hilarion, head of the External Church Ferrara-Florence in 1438-9 were able to Relations Department of the Moscow bring about lasting reconciliation. The Patriarchate, repeated what Jonathan union proclaimed at the latter council Luxmoore in The Tablet of 13 February was formally repudiated by Constantino- 2016 called ‘the long-held mantra that ple in 1484, after Constantinople had “objective conditions” had not yet been fallen to the Turks in 1453. Hostility met on the “main issues” dividing the between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches’. Chief Catholics was exacerbated by Latin mis- among those issues is the existence of sionary efforts to bring the Eastern the ‘uniate’ Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church into communion with Rome, Church, formed in 1596, suppressed by which resulted in the formation over the Soviet government after the Second several centuries of what were called World War, and revived in 1989 togeth- Uniate churches in Eastern Europe and er with other Eastern Catholic churches the Middle East. The First Vatican suppressed by Communist regimes. Council’s reiteration of universal papal jurisdiction and its proclamation of papal The sudden change of mind on the part infallibility in 1870 provoked the Ortho- of the Moscow Patriarchate came as a dox once again to reject Roman claims. surprise not only to the secular media. Behind the scenes it is probable that it While the Patriarchate of Constantinople owed a good deal to President Putin. played an active role in the 1920s in Media reporting has certainly helped to

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create an impression that the Patriarch of eration with the leader of an estimat- Moscow is the leading figure in Ortho- ed two-thirds of the global popula- doxy, an impression welcome to Patri- tion of Orthodox Christians. For arch Kirill, keen to enhance his influence Patriarch Kirill, the same meeting is at the forthcoming Great and Holy Pan- an opportunity to overshadow his Orthodox Council. The Council, first rival Patriarch Bartholomew, on the mooted in 1960, was to have been held international arena, and possibly to in the 4th century Church of Aghia Ei- gain the Vatican’s stamp of approval rene (Holy Peace) in Istanbul, where the on Moscow’s aggressive geopoli- Second Ecumenical Council was held in tics.’ 381. Because the Moscow Patriarchate said it was impossible for the Russians to Meanwhile the official theological dia- go there, given the present state of Rus- logue between the Roman Catholic and sian-Turkish relations, it is now planned Orthodox Churches has been pursuing its to be held in Crete from 16—27 June, way. Set up in 1976, it so far has pub- still within the jurisdiction of the Patriar- lished three agreed statements: Munich chate of Constantinople. The Ecumeni- 1982, on The Mystery of the Church and cal Patriarch, as the senior Orthodox of the Eucharist in the light of the Mys- Patriarch, will convene the Council of tery of the Holy Trinity; Bari 1987, on which he has been a main promoter, and Faith, the Sacraments and the Unity of preside at it. Taking part will be the the Church; and Valamo 1988, on The heads of all 14 autocephalous Orthodox Sacrament of Ordination within the Sac- Churches. Churches not recognised as ramental Structure of the Church. While canonical, such as the Ukrainian Ortho- the Roman Catholic Church has recog- dox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) and the nised the validity of Orthodox sacra- Orthodox Church of America will not be ments at least since the Second Vatican represented. It is not quite clear how Council, the meeting at Bari failed to decisions will be taken, whether by ma- achieve a consensus on the part of the jority vote or consensus. If the latter, Orthodox regarding Roman Catholic then each church would presumably sacraments, including baptism. A meet- possess a veto. ing at Balamand in 1993 produced an agreement that Uniatism was not an Both Putin and Kirill have been busy acceptable model for reunion, and in- promoting the ideology of Moscow as cluded several references to the recogni- the Third Rome, the true successor both tion by each Church of the sacramentali- politically and religiously of the Second ty of the other. It was not therefore any- Rome, Constantinople, with implication thing new when the statement issued by that the Patriarch of Moscow should be Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill includ- the leading Patriarch in the Orthodox ed an agreement on the unacceptability Church. When the meeting was an- of Uniatism. The Balamand statement nounced, an American Orthodox com- also affirmed the validity of the sacra- mented: ments of both Churches, and referred to them as Sister-Churches. While the Sec- ‘For Pope Francis, the Havana meet- ond Vatican Council had recognised the ing holds a promise of fraternal coop- Orthodox as Sister Churches, the Ortho-

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dox had not previously reciprocated. The demned in the document as ecumenical Balamand statement however was reject- obstructionists: ed by the Eastern Catholic Church of Romania and the Church of Greece. ‘The Orthodox Church believes that any attempts to shatter Church unity, Apart from ecclesiastical political issues, undertaken by individuals or groups the two chief obstacles to reconciliation under the pretence of preserving or and the re-establishment of communion defending true Orthodoxy, must be between Catholics and Orthodox remain condemned. As evidenced by the the claim of the papacy to universal ju- whole life of the Orthodox Church, risdiction and the official claim of the the preservation of the true Orthodox Orthodox that they are the one, holy, faith is only possible thanks to the catholic and apostolic church of the conciliar structure which since an- creed. The latter naturally remains a cient times has been for the Church major obstacle in the way of progress in the strong and final criterion in mat- all dialogues in which the Orthodox are ters of faith.’ involved. It is unlikely that there will be any change of attitude at the forthcoming The healing of the so-called ‘Great Great and Holy Council. Schism’ depends not only on the attitude of Rome, but on that of all the Orthodox A document on Relations of the Ortho- Churches. Even if Kirill were seriously dox Church with the Rest of the Chris- interested in healing the schism with tian World was adopted as a draft text Rome, no single Orthodox primate, not last October by the 5th Pan-Orthodox Pre even the Ecumenical Patriarch, can make -Council Conference meeting at the Or- a move in that direction by himself. All thodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriar- the Orthodox Churches would have to chate in Chambésy in Switzerland. It take the necessary decision together. It is has been criticised by some Orthodox not altogether clear whether or not traditionalists, not least for its use of the ‘Relations’ will remain on the agenda of word ‘church’ for non-Orthodox Chris- the Pan-Orthodox Council, from which tian communities. For the critics, this other controversial documents have al- undermines the claim of the Orthodox to ready been withdrawn. Were it to be be the one true Church. Such criticism discussed and accepted, it would certain- has come particularly from traditionalist ly be a significant step forward towards groups in Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece and closer relations between Rome and the Russia, and reflects the anti-Western and Orthodox, to which the friendly meeting anti-ecumenical strand that has emerged of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill in in all the Orthodox churches in recent Havana will also have made a contribu- years. Such groups are explicitly con- tion.

Canon Hugh Wybrew is a priest in the Church of England, living in active retire- ment in Oxford. He has had many contacts with the Orthodox Church in England and abroad since he learnt Russian during National Service, and was for over 30 years a member of the international Anglican–Orthodox theological dialogue.

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Home News

Michael Bourdeaux writes:

My thoughts have continued to focus on Not all, however, were thrilled. The Ukraine. Both because the situation in new sense of freedom, dignity, and the eastern regions and Crimea, under civic responsibility and prospects of the thumb of Russia, has moved off the association with European peoples agenda as far as the media are con- and nations needed to be stopped: it cerned, but also because of my wife could spread to Ukraine’s neigh- Lorna’s recent visit (seen pp.33-36) I bours. Thus, for the last two years, thought I would try to revive some inter- the entire Ukrainian nation is being est by writing a letter to The Times. The punished by its northern neighbour Letters Editor initially commissioned nostalgic for the Soviet legacy of this, but, after several exchanges, my imperial grandeur. Such hegemony text appeared online only. This is what I can be maintained only through fear, would have liked to see in the print ver- intimidation, and control of the me- sion. Soviet persecution of the Ukrainian dia. It requires a disregard for human Greek Catholic Church has been almost rights and freedom of conscience. entirely forgotten, though its current The punishment meted out to bishops have written a long and digni- Ukrainians for their audacity to be fied document following their visit to the free is brutal, cynical, and manipula- Vatican in early March. Here are a few tive. The agenda of abuse seeks in- extracts from their letter: ternational legitimisation and culti- vates enmity towards and rejection of ‘[…] the people of Ukraine are the will of the people of Ukraine. It claiming their God-given human seeks to stop the development of dignity. They are determined to civil society and the establishment of break with a Soviet past – genocidal, true rule of law. […] colonial and imperialistic, ferocious- ly atheistic and profoundly corrupt. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church ceaselessly prays for and […] God spoke to the conscience of promotes peace, and in Rome its the citizens of Ukraine and the Holy leadership appealed to the Holy Fa- Spirit guided hundreds of thousands ther and to the world to help stop the of men and women, the young and war and stem the humanitarian crisis the elderly, to stand together on the caused by the Russian invasion of Maidan in prayer for the nation. Ukraine. […]’ “Enough! Let us end the corruption and systemic injustice!” While af- This year 10 March marks the 70th anni- firming human dignity the nation versary of one of the most brutal acts of experienced authentic ecumenism in religious persecution in history. Lviv action: a desire for full and visible had recently fallen into Soviet hands and Christian unity. […] was the seat of the Ukrainian Greek

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Catholic Church, which owed its alle- back to us an astonishing amount of giance to the Vatican, but followed the primary material, which, as mentioned in Eastern Rite (with liturgy in Slavonic, earlier issues of the Newsletter, was not Latin, and married clergy). Disputes eventually reassessed and re-catalogued between this and the Russian Orthodox by Alina Urs on two visits to Baylor Church go back to the late 16th century, University. The government institute for but in the 20th century the Greek Catho- which she works is collecting infor- lics carried the banner of Ukrainian na- mation on abuses of human rights during tionalism – and now they found them- the Communist period and Alina discov- selves under Soviet jurisdiction. ered that our collection contains much that is new to them. Stalin’s answer was to have the mostly married priesthood, fearful for their Alina and Alan had never met face to families, assemble in St George’s Cathe- face. Their conversation went on for dral on 10 March 1946 for the so-called many hours over two days and focused Synod of Lviv. The proceedings took on Alan’s personal experiences, how he place at the point of a gun, with all the coped under pressure from the Romani- bishops already imprisoned. The terri- an Securitate and how he managed to fied assembly ‘voted’ to abolish their secrete the documents out of Romania. own church and hand over all property Alina plans to write up these conversa- to the Moscow Patriarchate. The latter tions and they will form the basis for a thus illegitimately acquired a huge new fascinating article which we hope to swathe of churches. publish in the Newsletter.

Following years of growing under- I had the pleasure on 1-2 March of once ground protest and continuing persecu- again being the guest of the Templeton tion, Mikhail Gorbachev eventually Foundation for their announcement in lifted the ban on the legal existence of London of the winner of this year’s the world’s largest underground church. Prize. On the Tuesday evening I walked Buildings were returned, but to this day into the reception at the St James’s Court the Moscow Patriarchate has not apolo- Hotel and the first person I saw was the gised for its complicity in this act of former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan public shame. Sacks, standing alone. I went up to him and we introduced each other (I hadn’t Our house was a hive of unusual activity previously met him). After about five over the weekend of 26-28 February, minutes I asked him if he knew yet who hosting a small but extended conference had won the Prize this year. In the most on Romania. Back in Communist days, modest way possible, he said, ‘Well, perhaps second in importance to our actually it’s me!’ Never has there been a Soviet archive, was the one on Romania. more worthy winner. Alan Scarfe studied in Bucharest at the Orthodox Seminary, went on to work at Next day was the press conference at the Keston and, after leaving, eventually British Academy, an event streamed became Episcopal Bishop of Iowa. He worldwide on the Internet. Before Ed- collected and found a way of sending ward Stourton, the chairman, announced

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the new winner, he paid tribute to Kes- Mari to support the Pugachev uprising ton and mentioned my name as the win- against the Russian throne. During the ner of the Prize in 1984. I was sitting Soviet period Mari national culture was adjacent to Michael Gove: I’m not sure encouraged, but the Russian Orthodox whether that has re-introduced our work Church was undermined – between 1961 to the seat of government! It is good, -1991 there was no Orthodox church in though, that Keston still has a presence Ioshkar-Ola, the capital. One of the high- in the public eye, however intermittent lights of this field trip was visiting an this might be. Old Believer priest, Fr Sergi Makhnyov, in the small town of Kozmodemyansk Xenia Dennen writes: located in the area inhabited by the hill Mari. This expedition involved crossing I have much enjoyed taking part in three the Volga on a rusty old ferry: although Encyclopaedia field trips since the last the vessel had a raised gangway both Newsletter was published: in November fore and aft, only one could be lowered to the Mari-El Republic, in January this to let off the cars, so as we moved away year to Saransk, capital of the Mordovi- from the shore the ferry first turned an Republic, and in March to Kurgan in round so that the end with the function- southern Siberia. During my visit to ing gangway was facing Kozmodemy- Russia in March I was also able to attend ansk. the launch of the Encyclopaedia’s sec- ond volume (new edition) at the Institute Fr Sergi met us outside his church and of Europe in Moscow. settled us down inside with a cup of tea. Before his ordination, he said, he had Mari El is a fascinating area where the served in air transport and had been local ancient paganism has been given posted to Afghanistan during the war. official status on a par with Russian When I asked him how he had become Orthodoxy. The area had originally an Old Believer, he spoke about his in- formed part of the Kazan Khanate before tellectual growth: ‘I read a lot of foreign Ivan the Terrible conquered it in 1551 books as a child which developed a and incorporated it into the Russian Em- sense of patriotism in me.’ In the mili- pire. The Mari people belong to the Fin- tary he had met other Christians, and no-Ugrian ethnic group and their lan- then, an icon found him, he explained, guage is related to Finnish and Estonian. and ‘a seed was sown’. He had bought a They divide into two groups – the hill Soviet book with definitions of religious Mari and the Mari of the plain: the latter, terminology which fascinated him and ‘I the majority, were influenced by Islam began to think about God’. His regiment under the Kazan Khanate and continued was moved and later disbanded: ‘I re- to observe the rites of their ancient pa- signed and decided to get ordained as a gan religion. The hill Mari, in contrast, Russian Orthodox priest.’ Later he de- supported the incorporation of their terri- cided to join the Old Believers: ‘I saw tory into Russia in the 16th century, and much that was incorrect in the Moscow converted to Orthodoxy. Russification Patriarchate, and I understood that either among the majority was unsuccessful I had to change my moral principles or and indeed in the 18th century led many leave.’ Unlike some Old Believers he

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Patrons had no belief in the approaching Anti- christ and the end of world – in fact he The Rt Revd Lord Williams of Oystermouth laughed at this question: ‘Normal, The Archbishop of Westminster The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain peaceful life is wonderful. I don't en- The Moderator of the Free Churches courage fear about the future: I live from The Archbishop of Glasgow day to day, I don’t try to guess the fu- The Archbishop of Thyateira & Great Britain ture, I only look as far as tomorrow.’ Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia

The Mordovian Republic has two indig- enous ethnic groups, the Erzya and the Erzya also venerated, she said, a spirit of Moksha whose languages, like Mari, also the water, of the woods, of the harvest, of belong to the Finno-Ugrian group. The the soil, of the wind… I noticed the Uni- area was Christianised in the early 16th versal Declaration of Human Rights on century and incorporated into Russia by the wall too. When we visited the Lu- the middle of the century. Despite efforts theran church we met the Lutheran pastor to convert the Erzya and Moksha many Alexei Alyoshkin, the brother of Andrei retained their pagan beliefs which are the artist whose large picture of the resur- still alive today. rected Christ adorned the wall above the altar. Pastor Alexei offered us tea plus Raisa Kemaikina, an Erzya pagan priest- pastries made by a newly-founded bakery ess, and the local artist Andrei Alyosh- owned by his church, and Mordovian kin, who converted to Lutheranism and honey made by bees which had the bene- helped found the Church of Ingria in fit of some wonderful flowers; it was full Mordovia, are two important national of vitamins, said Pastor Alexei, with no leaders. Raisa complained to us that her added sugar. He had 25 regulars in his people were oppressed: ‘We are a few congregation and 50-60 members who healthy cells in a sick body. There is no attended on feast days; many of the venue where we can meet and speak the younger members had moved away. His Erzya language.’ She showed us her tiny church struggled with financial problems office, called the Centre for the Preserva- but it now had close relations with a tion of the Erzya People, where she pro- Swedish Lutheran church in Stockholm, duced an Erzya national newspaper. A attended by 2000 – a Charismatic con- picture on the wall depicted a pagan cere- gregation – and he hoped to start some- mony: a long line of women circled thing similar. ‘God helps us each day as round a central structure which represent- we face our difficulties. I do the clean- ed a candle, whereupon Raisa comment- ing, clear away the snow, do the job of ed that her people believed in one God, treasurer and pastor. We live in the situ- the ‘great creator’ and ruler over protec- ation of the early church; we feel God is tive spirits who were all feminine and close, answering our problems. When all helped human beings to be good. The is easy, you lose this sense.’

Keston Institute PO Box 712, York YO1 0GX [email protected] www.keston.org.uk

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