CHURCHES IN RUSSIA
Sir-In- your issue of July 29 "C.V.B." quotes a clergyman "who has been there" as saying: "the Churches of the U.S.S.R. are not merely free, but active in the defence of their country." Let us test the truth of this as follows: If no member of the New Zealand churches could be allowed in the party now in power; if to be even the son of a minister of religion barred one from membership of that party; if until about 1943 all the New Zealand churches had been ‘commandeered by the. Government as storehouses; if all church vestments, altar drapings, and Yhe like, were pillaged and used by State clowns to mock religious ‘rites and ceremonies; if the official policy of the ‘ruling party in New Zealand were actively anti-Ged; if all education in New Zealand was a State monopoly, with no place in the curriculum for religion, but only for anti-religion-would it not be a flagrant misuse of language to say that the New Zealand churches were free? Yet this is the actual state of things religious in Russia, according to Kravchenko, who was "there" for about 40 years, Ever since the Revolution, gullible visitors have been persuaded into believing the Russian churches to be free. Why, then, did Stalin have to declare them so just then? Kravchenko says it was just a gesture to deceive foreign peoples, making them think the churches were now fully tolerated. About the same time Stalin officially disbanded the Communist organisation outside
Russia, yet every one knows that Communist activities have been very greatly intensified since VJ Day--so little does a Kremlin pronouncement mean, Kravchenko’s' book reads far more probably than the books of Dean Hewlett Johnson, the latter’s references to religion being very reticent indeed. —
F.K.
T.
(Gisborne),
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 5
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299CHURCHES IN RUSSIA New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 535, 23 September 1949, Page 5
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