Thursday, February 6, 2025

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 7th of February 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today, or rather- the Sunday closest to today- the 7th of February is an important day in the Russian Orthodox Church and a day that calls for reflection from all Christians on the nature of persecution.

The 7th of February is the feast day, or “remembrance” for the “New Marytrs and Confessors of Russia,” a day to recall the 10s, 100s, thousand, or thousands of more Christian martyrs under the Soviet regime. Like all “persecution” numbers, I want to dance lightly- we cannot know the exact reasons why some were killed or died tangentially (although significantly!) on account of particular soviet doctrines.

In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church held a Jubilee to officially recognize the martyrs of the Soviet Union as saints. They couldn’t give an exact number of martyrs but claimed it may have been more than the first three centuries of the church combined.

Religion, but Christianity in particular, in the Soviet Union is a story we’ve brushed up against a number of times. It was V.I. Lenin, the Bolshevik from the revolution in 1916, who took the quote from Karl Marx about religion being “an opiate of the masses” and derived from that an official “state atheism”.

But as others had distinguished between public life and private faith, the new Soviet ideology had no place for anything “private”—after all, they argued, this was unscientific and unenlightened! So they would call for the expropriation of church property, taking livelihoods and generations of marriages, baptisms, and deaths and handing them over to the state. The fastest way to get into trouble was to condemn it too loudly.

But others were taken out, perhaps, because they were seen as explicit enemies of the state- promoting a Christian faith that was dangerous to a totalitarian regime that demanded your public and private devotion.

Such was the last martyr of the Soviet state- Alexander Men- a popular and enthusiastic defender of Christianity, and one in the public square! He would be killed by a still unknown axe-wielding assailant in late 1990 as the Soviet Union was crumbling. And if he was the “last” of these martyrs (although his status is a little more complicated?) Who was the first? That would be Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev- recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the first bishop tortured and slain by the Bolsheviks who came to Kiev in 1918. Vladimir was sought out, attacked, and choked with his own cross until taken to a field, and after he asked God to forgive his assailants, they shot and killed him. It was (on our calendar) the 7th of February.

When news got to Moscow that Vladimir of Kiev had been murdered, a church council declared that the 7th of February would not only be a day to remember Vladimir, but all who would be martyrs under the Soviets. Little did they know the number that it would come to or that such a declaration and their own church would be taken, and it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that it would be recognized again with the official “glorification” of those Martyrs in 2000.

There are more shows- certainly a longer episode dedicated to Alexander Men should be in the works- and in the transcript for this show I have just magically put a link to a Weekend Edition from a few years ago that gives the 30,000 foot view of the Russian Church… https://www.1517.org/podcast-overview/2023-06-03 there was also the one about the Russian Pentecostals… the Siberian Seven- the link is there too: https://www.1517.org/podcast-overview/2023-01-07

Today we remember the 20th century martyrs of a particularly cruel government- a number too vast to count- the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia” remember on this, the 7th of February.

The last word for today from the daily lectionary and Acts 9- more fun with Saul/Paul: 

26 When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. 28 So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He talked and debated with the Hellenistic Jews, but they tried to kill him. 30 When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

31 Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers. 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 7th of February 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man injured when he was Stalin, then had to be Russian and hit something pretty hard- it’s gonna leave a Marx. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who finds these puns so easy to write; in Soviet Russia, they write themselves. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.