The Seed of the Church

Might and Main To No Avail

The phrase “Church under the cross” was coined during the Reformation. It refers to times and circumstances where Christian believers were subject to persecution. The twentieth century saw some of the most organised and relentless persecution of Christians ever recorded.

In the Soviet Union, religion in general was seen as a symptom of wider and deeper social evils. Just as we in our day may argue that drugs, or crime, or drunkenness signal a deeper malaise so socialist ideology argued that religion was symptomatic of more serious distresses. But people needed to be weaned off dependence upon religion in order for the real, underlying, and more substantial problems to be addressed. So, Marx:

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.
Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, cited in Trevor Beeson, Discretion and Valour: Religious Conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe (London: Fontana, 1974), p.19.

For Marx (and Lenin, and those who followed in their train) religion was a false solution to a real problem. But you have to get an addict off the drug in the first place before you can make the changes which will make drug dependence no longer necessary. It goes without saying that this sort of condescending pity for Christians has become stock-in-trade for many people today. But in the Soviet Union condescension and pity soon took a more sinister turn. Once the Revolution was successful and (by definition) the underlying “real distress” had been removed there was no longer any need for religion per se. Therefore, to persist in a religion was an implicitly rebellious or seditious act: it was an unwelcome evidence that “real distress” still existed in Soviet society. To persist in religion, therefore, became an implicitly seditious act.

As a result, for over sixty years (three generations) Russian Christians and churches were subject to successive waves of persecution and oppression. The first steps were the “easy” ones for the Communist regime. Firstly, the power and influence of the Russian orthodox church had to be broken. Confiscation of land, plant, and property was announced by decree as early as 1918.

No ecclesiastical or religious association shall have the right to own property. Such associations shall not enjoy the right of legal entity.

All property belonging to churches and religious associations existing in Russia shall become public property. Buildings and objects intended especially for religious worship shall be handed over by special decision of local or central authorities, free of charge, for use by the religious association concerned.
Decree of Separation of Church and State, 1918.

Thus, at one stroke, all plant, property, and equipment belonging to the church was seized; its continued use by Christians was to be at the whim and pleasure of the state. But Lenin understood that to stamp out the Christian faith one had to prohibit the teaching and proclamation of the faith. All schooling and education by churches was therefore prohibited from 1918 onwards. Churches could only give and receive religious instruction privately.

In 1928, Stalin went further:

Religious associations may not organize for children, young people and women special prayer or other meetings, circles, groups, departments for Biblical or literary study, sewing, working or the teaching of religion, etc., excursions, children's playgrounds, libraries, reading rooms, sanatoria, or medical care.
Beeson, p.40.

The state was starting to focus more attention on teaching and the fundamental aspects of communal or corporate religious life. Application of these laws tended to flow in waves. Oftentimes actual persecution went way beyond the law—draconian though they were. But some of the most severe oppression occurred under Khrushchev who launched a programme of militant hostility against Christians which lasted five years.

It was already illegal for parents to compel their children to attend church against their will. Young people under the age of eighteen were forbidden in any case to be members of religious organizations. Participation by them in church services or religious ceremonies of any kinds which had previously been discouraged was now illegal. Clergy . . . were forbidden to instruct children in any circumstances.
Beeson, p. 40, 41.

Notice the focus upon the children. The authorities had worked out that a considerable power lay in parents being able to lead their children in the faith. Intergenerational faith, and the transmission of the faith from parents to children lies at the heart of the Covenant of Grace. It is an appointed Divine mechanism for sustaining and expanding the Kingdom of God. The Communists came to understand that to extinguish religious faith they must strike at one of its root: cutting children off from the religious instruction of parents would prevent the inter-generational transfer of faith.

At the same time, children were to be subjected to the relentless propagation of militant materialist atheism in the schools (“scientific atheism”). Adults similarly were to be indoctrinated via the media, offices, factories, farms, and the army. Religion was presented as primitive superstition, illegal; the existence of God had been “disproved” by science; religion was a hoax, etc. This effort went on for years and decades.

What was the outcome? Despite all these efforts (or possibly because of them) by the 1970's it was estimated that the percentage of people attending church in the Soviet Union was higher than in the UK. (Of course there were no reliable statistics). However, anecdotal evidence was striking. Western visitors to major metropolitan centres like Moscow and Leningrad reported that on Sunday one did not need to ask directions to a church service—you just had to follow the crowd.

One English visitor to Moscow in 1973 reported on his experience of visiting churches as follows:

At the first (church) we found that the service would not start until 8 pm and so we decided to return. Nearly two hours before, people were already gathering. The next was St Nicholas. We stood at the back for a while. I do not think I have every seen a church so full, with people standing shoulder to shoulder as at a football match. Where would one see that in England? The priest attracts the young and intellectuals as well as the faithful babushki (grandmothers). The third church, St John the Warrior, we could not get into at all . . . . The crowded congregation was tight-packed and reverent.
Beeson, p. 28.

The same visitor went on to Leningrad and described the singing in two of the services he attended:

. . . how melodiously Russian congregations sing, without any musical accompaniment. Those two congregational settings (Our Father, the Creed) sung by massed soprano voices, pure without being trained, were a foretaste of angels' voices; they are so clearly part of the life and soul of the Russian people. At each of these services we were just in time to hear the congregations in their full joy of belief in the Risen Christ.
Ibid., p. 29.

The heart of true faith living in the hearts of His people. Decades of successive state persecution, suppression, bloodshed, ridicule, deprivations, indoctrination, and pressure could not extinguish it. One is reminded of the Word of the Lord through the prophet, Isaiah:

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth,
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater
So shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55: 10,11