Mark R. Elliott
Wallace L. Daniel. Russia’s Uncommon Prophet: Father Aleksandr Men and His Times. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016.
In August 1990, while leading a Wheaton College student exchange with Moscow State University, a Russian friend invited me to worship at Father Aleksandr Men’s parish on the outskirts of the capital. Following the Divine Liturgy, I was introduced to Father Men, who surprised me with an invitation to sit in on an editorial meeting of his journal, Mir biblii [World of the Bible]. What surprised me even further in this meeting was the editorial board itself, consisting of Protestant and Catholic as well as Orthodox members. Here in microcosm is an illustration of what has endeared many to Father Men—his personal warmth and acceptance of believers of other persuasions—and what others have found provocative—his refusal to endorse a narrow, nationalistic, triumphalist Orthodoxy.
Wallace L. Daniel, Baptist scholar and retired provost of Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, joins Jane Ellis1 and Nathaniel Davis2 as authors of the most significant English-language accounts of the post-World War II Russian Orthodox Church. Daniel eclipses Yves Hamant’s 1995 biography with insights gained from two newer works on Men by his parishioners, the author’s extensive interviews, and additional newly available primary sources.
Early Life and Education
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Men, born in Moscow in 1935, was deeply influenced by his mother, a Jewish convert to Orthodoxy, and her very accomplished circle of family and friends, all members of the Orthodox catacomb church. They all encouraged the young Aleksandr’s prodigious reading across a wide spectrum of West European and Russian humanities, sciences, and theology.
Bright and unusually well-read for someone living through the xenophobia and paranoia of late Stalinism, Men nevertheless had no possibility of matriculating at Moscow University, which was closed to Jews. In 1953, as an alternative, he entered the Institute of Fur which moved to Irkutsk, Siberia, in 1955. Here Men imbibed great ethnic and religious diversity, rubbing shoulders with Cossacks, Buddhist Buryats, Old Believers, Catholics, and Protestants. Expelled from the Institute for challenging his instructor of atheism, Men returned to Moscow in 1958 without a diploma. Just on the basis of his personal history and self-taught theology, he was ordained a deacon in the Orthodox Church that same year, and by 1960 he completed a correspondence course and was ordained a priest.
Pastoral Ministry and Writings
In his 32 years of ministry Men developed a reputation as a shepherd who could relate as easily to the unschooled as to the intelligentsia, and to students as easily as pensioners. In addition, he somehow managed time to write simple, fresh retellings of the gospel, such as Son of Man, and erudite, multivolume tomes, such as his massive History of Religion.
In Son of Man (1968), written for a popular audience, Men rebutted the anti-religious dogma that the person of Jesus never existed, a notion of Lenin’s. By far Men’s most ambitious project, his six-volume History of Religion, was produced under a pseudonym by Zhizn Bogom, a Belgian-Catholic publishing house sympathetic to Orthodoxy. The first edition of this massive work – volume six alone runs more than 800 pages – appeared between 1970 and 1982. The third edition, finished just before his death in 1990, had a print run of 100,000 copies. An overarching theme in this History is the complementary relationship of science and religion, falsely deemed incompatible, he argued, by Marxist materialists.
State Harassment
Paralleling his pastoral ministry and his theological writings, Men, from the mid-1960s on, had to contend with increasing pressure from Soviet security forces. His friendship with a host of leading lights of his country’s dissident movement, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Father Nikolai Eshliman, Father Gleb Yakunin, Father Dmitrii Dudko, Mikhail Aksenov-Meerson, Anatolii KrasnovLevitin, and Nadezhda Mandelstam, predictably drew the attention of the KGB, with harassment and interrogations particularly severe in the late 1970s and 1980s. At points in 1980, 1984, and 1986, Men feared imminent arrest, as befell Yakunin and Dudko. Mark R. Elliott Early Life and Education
Perestroika and Public Ministry
Security services undoubtedly sought a public television “confession” of wrongdoing similar to the one wrested from a broken Father Dmitrii Dudko, but it was not forthcoming. Instead, by the late 1980s, President Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika were finally taking hold such that Father Men found himself in high demand in public forums to reintroduce Russians to their spiritual heritage. In a hectic schedule of lectures, press interviews, and television appearances – as many as six to seven a week by 1989 – he called for his church’s repentance for its moral compromises and collusion with an atheist state. He also decried what he argued were his church’s wrongheaded attempts to retrieve its pre-Soviet privileges, power, and property. Reformminded believers saw in Men an antidote to the Moscow Patriarchate’s spiritual chauvinism and triumphalism. Much more numerous, however, were his detractors, within and without the church, who read him as a dangerous liberal and cosmopolitan, the latter a code word for westward-leaning Jews whose Russian patriotism was suspect. Men’s Fidelity to Orthodoxy Regarding the question of Men’s fidelity to Orthodoxy, Daniel unreservedly places him in the historic mainstream of his church’s teachings. The (continued on page 14)
Men’s Murder and Likely Motives
In addition to Daniel’s discerning analysis of Men’s formative influences, career, and writings, the author also expertly guides his readers through the botched investigation of Men’s murder, the likely motives and suspects, and the legacy of this revered – and despised – parish priest.
On 9 September 1990, before seven a.m., on a dark forested path between his home and the train that was to take him to his church, Father Aleksandr Men was clubbed to death by an axewielding perpetrator. Father Men’s murder remains unsolved, and as Daniel notes, it may never be solved short of “the opening of KGB archives.” Nevertheless, speculation has abounded as to groups with motives, which Daniel summarizes under four headings: anti-Semites, ultra-nationalists, ultraconservative Orthodox, and the KGB. Anti-Semites, ultra-nationalists, and ultra-conservative Orthodox fundamentalists opposed Men as the proponent of Western-style democracy, human rights, freedom of conscience, tolerance, and an Orthodoxy confident enough of its basic truths to tolerate coexistence with its fellow citizens of other persuasions. For its part, the KGB had ample motive to wish Father Men dead for besting its protracted but unsuccessful campaign against him. As Daniel aptly summarized, the secret police had the motive, the means, and “the support within the official investigating agencies to cover it up effectively.”
Men’s Legacy
For Daniel, two questions regarding Father Men are overriding: To what extent is his legacy likely to be lasting? And to what extent is his understanding of Christianity faithful to Orthodoxy (the chief concern of Russia’s majority confession) and faithful to Scripture (the chief concern of Russia’s Evangelicals)? Daniel clearly argues that Men’s influence remains substantial. He notes, for example, the sale of over five million copies of Father Aleksandr’s books, sermons, and lectures, over one million of Son of Man alone.
Men’s Fidelity to Orthodoxy
Regarding the question of Men’s fidelity to Orthodoxy, Daniel unreservedly places him in the historic mainstream of his church’s teachings. The author argues Men should not be condemned just because he read widely, including works by those whom especially conservative Orthodox consider suspect, such as Ernest Renan, Vladimir Soloviev, and Sergei Bulgakov. Likewise, Men’s charitable disposition towards other Christian confessions should not be taken for acceptance of non-Orthodox dogma.
Men’s Fidelity to Scripture
As to the issue of Men’s fidelity to Scripture, Russian Evangelicals are split. To illustrate their ambivalence, I quote from an American missionary who has sojourned among Russian Evangelicals for decades:
Men was a favorite among Protestants during the Soviet period. The erudition and literary virtuosity of his works were helpful tools in evangelizing the intelligentsia. His most popular books among Protestants were Son of Man and How to Read the Bible. In the 1970s and 1980s Moscow Baptist Church youth worked on joint projects with Men, for example, creating filmstrips illustrating biblical passages to be used in Sunday schools. So there is much positive to say about Men. But when I started reading Men’s books myself, I kept finding things that jarred with my own understanding of Evangelical thought. So I quickly stopped promoting him.
As eloquently as Daniel makes his case for Men’s orthodoxy (lower case), other proponents of Christian orthodoxy (be they Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, myself included) can also find some of Daniel’s characterizations of Men jarring, for example: “Fr. Aleksandr did not want to close Russia off from other religions and diverse kinds of experiences;” and “The Muslim who ‘believes in a single God as sovereign of history and humanity,’ Fr. Aleksandr said, ‘also confesses a truthful faith.’” Evangelicals will question whether such sentiments can be squared with the exclusive truth claims of Christ who declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
In Summary
I personally find it painful to discover where Father Men seems to stray from Christian orthodoxy because I find so much to admire in his life and witness: his thirst for a truly liberal arts education that strengthens rather than undermines faith, his cogent defense of the compatibility of science and religion, his courageous confrontation with the KGB that did not end with his spiritual capitulation, and his ability to relate to both simple folk and intelligentsia.
I will end where I began—in 1990. Three short weeks after I met Father Aleksandr in August 1990 I was back in the U.S., busy with Moscow State exchange students at Wheaton College. On September 9th I was an hour from campus in Chicago assisting our Moscow State faculty advisor with an errand when the shocking report came over the car radio of Father Men’s murder. We both were stunned by the news. I asked my exchange counterpart if she would like to go to the nearby Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral for prayer, to which she readily agreed. As this accomplished, but thoroughly secularized professor lit a candle for Father Men, I was struck by the depth of her grief. It brought to mind, once again, the extraordinary gift this learned, winsome priest had possessed in pointing Russian intelligentsia to Christ. Whatever my own reservations with some of Father Men’s theological formulations, for me they pale before the great spiritual good he worked in Russia—and far from it. Lord, have mercy.
Notes
- The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History, 1986, and The Russian Orthodox Church: Triumphalism and Defensiveness, 1996.
- A Long Walk to Church: A Contemporary History of Russian Orthodoxy, 1995. Editor’s Note: For the unabridged version of this review see Mark R. Elliott, “Reflections on the Life of Aleksandr Men,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 37 (No. 1, 2017): 8-19; http:// digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/.
Mark R. Elliott is author of Pawns of Yalta; Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation (University of Illinois Press) and founding editor of the East-West Church & Ministry Report (1993-; www.eastwestreport.org).