AGAINST RELIGION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 72, 24 March 1923, Page 26

AGAINST RELIGION.

i . SUBTLE BOLSHEVIK CAMPAIGN j ■ i WELL-CLOAKED PROPAGANDA. J ' I The Bolsheviks have begun demolishing the little street chapels which are such I a feature of Moscow (writes a corresponi dent from the Russian capital). It is reI ported that several churches also will be j sacriiice<l. That act of vandalism in destroying chapels is the outward expresson : of a very strenuous anti-religious ; campaign which is being carried on by j lunirauv Ivnn Stepuuov. Stepanov : lectures principally in workmen's clubs, j and is crafty enough not, as a rule, to ! mal:e a frontal attack on Christianit}'. I On the contrary, he states the ca>e for science, casiially mentions great discrepancies between science and religion, ■ ami then leaves his audiences to draw : tiu'ir own conclusions. Never, in his I addresses to workmen, does he deny the ! inspiration of the scriptures or the truth lot Christianity; he only smiles gently wiien these questions are raised. Most of his lectures are scientific—(l) Tiie I origin of the earth. (2) The origin of i life on the earth. (3) The origin of I man, etc. I fljftfter one of the lectures a workman I was heard to declare in a loud tone to a chum: "I, brother, now know why thunder and lightning, and even whence man came—l know!" On the simple mind of the Russian workman these lectures sometimes act very rapidly. Recently the employees cf I the Gomelsky factory, where about 150!) men work, tore down nil the ikons and religious pictures with which many of the roonn had boon decorated from olden times and handed them over to the local I i-hi.rrh. saying that the church was the I rit'ht place for them, not (he factory. The I Communists in the factory regard this as I r great victory—"a great blow," as one jof them puts it, "to the remnants of the religious opium"—for some of the ikons are "miraculous," others "not made by hands," and their original installation ' had been superintended by the local i bishop and carried out with imposing : religious ceremony. I j Throughout Zhitomir all the monke are : i being made to leave the monasteries, and the oiiiluings thus vacated arc placed at the disposal oi the local departments of i >varobraza and Zdravookhranenia, or in I otier words of national education and • I public health. The Zhitoiitir episcopal : j council is also closed. ] I -Meanwhile the Moscow committee of j J the Russian Communist party has opened I •an anti-religioue seminary for the careful ', J training of "propagandists and asitators ! lin religious questions." According to I Comrade Kurcherin, who deal-; with thU I I question in the "I vestia," this seminary ! X supplying a long-felt want. "Comrade's ' in touch with the work of the agitational i propagandist apparatus in our aartv I organs are well aware," he says, "of how small is the propagandist force in the i Bolshevik organisation generally, and this J detect is particularly noticeable in the j case of propagandists and agitators who ; specialise in religious questions. "It is now a year." he continue*. I since the most level-headed and far- 1 sighted of our leaders saw what an ad- I vantage it would be if we could establish nnr.er the auspices of the Moscow com- ! mittec a good, anti-religious seminary i tin has now been done, and in a short tmis it wdl all oi.r ranks with eerioua Hiulcnts. thoroughly well grounded in t.ic methods of religious controversy and a credit to the old comrades experienced in such work, who have been entrusted wit.i the direction of the establishment ■I«o or four dozen comrades in this seminary-some of them new propagandists, some of them oi!—have worked out, under the direction of several sturdy old atheists, a plan for a joint anti-rel'i-fpcus advance, a plan which will reduce | to a minimum all the inconsistencies in the practical side of the question. " Mmiv njrilafors hare, in the past r-one in too much for 'psychological-analyses' or for '.racing relic-ions myths to astronomical causes. Other 7gftator« have been historical specialists who absolutely failed to realise that an audience in this country is anything bat inclined to regard relnion as a fit oftjeet for scientific examination. "The anti-religious seminary which has now been opened by the Moscow Soviet carefully avoids these pitfalls. It consists of practiced propagandi-ts from Moscow and the provinces as well as of comrade.? who have only recently turned their attention to the qucstion'of antireligious lectures. All nre, as T said I b-forp, tinder the experienced direction "f oil anti-Christian orators and of professors learned in natural science; and all are taught how to make their points to the best advantage from the platform, ami how, at the same time, to convey real information to their hearers." Iti face of these insults to the religion professed by SO per cent of the Russian people, the Russian Orthodox Church is quite silent and helpless. No priest has darofl to denounce from the pulpit the proposal to turn the great festival of Christmas into ri.-lieide or the establishment of an anti-religious seminary by the •Soviet Government. * The patriarch is imprisoned in the IJonskoi monastry and his palace is occupied by Bishoip Antonino and others who if not Bolsheviks themselves, are in very close touch with the Bolsheviks. Tlies" men are carrying on the work of the Church and are all in favour of a reformation which will involve the abolition of the monasteries and nunneries and thacquisition by the married clerr-r of all the privileges hitherto confined' to the monks. Bat instead of working together, they arc bitterly attacking one another. The new Church is already divided info t,n eroiip*—one called' "the Living ChurcV and the other "the Church of the Regeneration," the former being directed by Bishop Anfonine and the latter by Father Krasnitskv. Tims, while ahle and ' unscrupulous enemies of Christianity, backed by the whole fnrce of the Soviet Government, ! make use of the very latest weapon'I fashioned by science, in order to under- ! mine the Russian Church, the prelates,'! who shouH defend that church, are so I' absorbed in quarrels anting themselves !, about the most trifling minutae of ecclc- i. siastical dircifliiie that they fail to { realise the dancer which thrcHtens all : . Russian Christianity. ' j