Science for young men

“Sretensky Readings” opened with a plenary session, at which reports were made by teachers and graduates of SFI and the secretary of the Academic Council of the Church Postgraduate School, Alexander Mramornov. The report of the SFI guest was devoted to the methods of repression against the clergy practiced by revolutionary tribunals in the first years of Soviet power.

After the plenary session, the conference participants dispersed into sections, a total of five: missiology and catechetics, Holy Scripture and biblical studies, church history, etc. Students from many cities came to the conference with reports: St. Petersburg (Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy), Sergiev Posad (Moscow Theological Academy), Minsk (Institute of Theology named after St. Methodius and Cyril), Belgorod (Belgorod Theological Seminary), etc. Although the conference is called a student conference, SFI teachers traditionally take part in it, but this year there is an influx of student participants was so great that the teachers (except for the plenary session) modestly pushed their reports to the very end - if there was time left.

The missiology section mainly discussed current issues of today's practice of announcements. Anna Aliyeva, in her report (read by a colleague, since she herself was ill), spoke about the need for a catechist to study the stereotypical ideas of modern Russians about God and faith. Stereotypical ideas are a person’s system of coordinates through which he looks at the world. In order to properly structure your studies, it is important to understand how a person imagines faith. Anna based her conclusions on research by the Levada Center, the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a number of pan-European studies with the participation of Russia. It turns out that the majority of respondents represent “God” as an impersonal force or generally find it difficult to determine what they understand by “God.” A curious touch to the perception of God is given by modern Russians’ idea of ​​Christ - a fairly large percentage of Russians (70%) are not sure that Jesus was a historical figure. Only 29% believe that Jesus is a real historical person. It turns out that in general there is no trust in the Gospel as a historical source. A huge number of superstitions are associated with the Orthodox faith, or, more precisely, superstition is confused with faith. It turns out that a person who considers himself Orthodox actually has magical experience, and this creates serious difficulties not only at the stage of witnessing, but also at the subsequent stage of learning the faith.

61% of believers agreed that “other nations also have Orthodox churches, but the true Orthodox faith can only be found in Russia,” while 27% disagreed. 90% of believers and 47% of atheists agreed with the fact that “a Russian person, even if he is not baptized and does not go to church, is still Orthodox in his soul.” This distribution of answers shows that one of the main factors determining Orthodoxy in the consciousness of a modern Russian is national identity. It turns out that society, the nation, is stronger in its influence on Orthodoxy than Orthodoxy is on them.

The sections of religious studies and philosophy presented a variety of reports on topics. About the publicist and public figure Valentin Aleksandrovich Ternavtsev, who was one of the organizers and speakers of religious and philosophical meetings at the beginning of the twentieth century, which became a meeting place for representatives of the intelligentsia and clergy (Alla Fedyakova). On the Orthodox mission to foreigners during the Synodal period. David-Amir Sadur in this report distinguishes between two missions: the official one, which was carried out out of political interests and initiated by the state for the Russification of the peoples in the territories annexed to the Russian Empire and often resorted to violent measures or bribery. And informal - which was carried out by missionaries by vocation, almost always settling among the “ward” people, studying their language and culture, translating the Holy Scriptures, setting up schools and hospitals.

After each presentation, time was given for questions, and almost all reports provoked a lively and interested discussion.