Solzhenitsyn's Resistance to Militant Atheism

Over at the Christian Post, Bill Connor writes about the continuing relevance of Solzhenitsyn’s Christian message and quotes this passage from the Templeton Lecture:

“It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that ‘revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.’ That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve its diabolical ends. Communism needs to control a population devoid of religious and national feeling, and this entails the destruction of faith and nationhood.”

Forgetting God and Remembering Thatcher

The Claremont Review, in its Summer issue, has a powerful excerpt from Solzhenitsyn’s forthcoming memoir, Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978–1994, translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore. These pages, written in 1987 but published here for the first time in English, describe Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 trip to London to receive the Templeton Prize for progress in religion and his meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“For exactly an hour we sat on sofas around
a low table, an hour of the most substantive
conversation, while Irina Alekseevna translat-
ed accurately and effortlessly. There were no
patches of empty courtesy, and no distraction
at all—just world and British politics today.”

National Review: Solzhenitsyn at 100

Jack Fowler at the National Review reflects on Solzhenitsyn’s centennial, and posts the full text of Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 Templeton Address, which originally ran in the 22 July 1983 issue of National Review.

Solzhenitsyn and Lincoln

At First Things, Robert P. George reflects on Solzhenitsyn’s moral message and intriguingly compares his Harvard and Templeton speeches with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Proclamation of a National Day of Prayer and Fasting.

“It has been 155 years since Lincoln wrote those words. And yet, it is as if he wrote them yesterday and directed them to us today. Yes, as a culture, as a people, we have forgotten God. That is reflected in our laws, in the edicts of our Supreme Court, in our public policies, in our news and entertainment media, in our schools and universities, in our economic and cultural institutions, on the streets of our cities, and even, alas, in many homes. We “have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts,” that our “blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.” And, as a result, we find ourselves in the condition so accurately and brutally diagnosed by Solzhenitsyn.”