I am sitting here at the ACSI Convention, preparing to listen to a lecture on the Fall of Czarist Russia, and Historical Comparison to our current regime by Dr. John Mark Reynolds, once again considering the fairly idiotic meme that all Christians are somehow intellectually vapid. I will readily admit that I am not even close to being as informed as I would like to be, but it has been my faith, and my job in Christian education that has driven my hunger for more knowledge, more understanding, and more learning.
Live Blogging the Lecture
11:30...the projector has disappeared, so it looks like we might get JMR unplugged.
I love it....first thing...this is not a classroom help session...it is a long term practical lesson.
There is a pragmatic value. We often forget why we work in liberal arts high schools. We work in the model the colleges operate under. Why? Most of the reasons that are used to justify this type of education...it increases critical thinking (It doesn't).A successful argument is that the curriculum was developed to help young men and women who are good people.
This isn't votech, this may not improve their technical skills.
History has lessons...if we do not study them, then we will have to discover ourselves.
Most of our students are not on a path to commit genocide...so what lessons can they really learn? We do this to give them moral, political, and philosophical structure to build their worldview upon.
High School education should be education in virtue...it
should be moral education.
Czarist Russia was a Christian culture (probably not like the type of Christian culture that we are used to). Czarist Russia had wealth, it had had upward mobility, it had a growing middle class. After the Revolution it was not the wealthy that suffered, but rather the lower class(who were already suffering under the Czar).
Something went horribly wrong with Russia. The stereotype is that the Czarist government was so corrupt that it had become horribly unstable, and was ripe for a fall.
It was not self-evident...there were indicators, but most people did not really anticipate the Revolution. Russia did endure WWI for three years before the Revolution actually claimed it. If the Russians had lost the war right away, had the Russians decided not to back France, the entire history of Russia may well have been different.
The current situation in Russia is far harsher than during Czarist Russia. Crime and Punishment was actually banned for some time in Russia because it was causing Pro-Czarist feeling to spread in the USSR. Russia had plenty of problems, but it was not the catastrophe we tend to think it was.
The current American regime (no judgement on politics) is quite stable right now. The Constitution is intact (regardless of the cries of some), we will change our government in a mostly peaceful manner, and we will survive for some time. But there are lights flashing brightly that are warning us of problems if we do not address structural weaknesses in the system. What happened to Russia is a cautionary tale for us...it probably will not happen...but it could if we do nothing.
Evidence of Dry Rot in Czarist Russia
1) Leadership class that still believes in the old regime (in our sense, that means those who have never moved beyond 1789....Full Faith and Credit may be an outdated idea) Nicholas II was absolutely willing to allow the status quo to dominate Russian political thought at the time.
2) Failure of the intellectuals to support the old regime or propose new groundbreaking ideas. (Tolstoy, a leading thinker of the time, offered no practical thought to the debate of the time.) Owww...this condemns our time in a grand manner.
3)Nominal adherence to a secularized religion. 90% of Russians would have defined themselves as Christians (the number here is over
80%). Inertia, not belief fueled their spiritual development. (great line: A growing religion produces heretics, a dead religion produces maggots)
4) Rise of the occult and spiritualized religions.
5) End of Progressive-Conservatism (not a political, but an idealogical concept) The past has been good, but it is passed (Disreali)Save the good, but kill that part of the old regimes that are beyond saving. Save the great cathedrals, but let the Church of England die if death is what it deserves....Kill it if necessary. Those who headed the Conservative-Progressive movement in Russia were sneered at or killed.
Kill the relative...save the Truths.Have a plan! The status quo will only suffice for so long, sooner or later, external pressures will expose the weaknesses.
