October 15, 2020
(Full text obtained from the article found at link: https://thetandd.com/opinion/columnist/commentary-answer-to-u-s-problems/article_cc65b069-c510-5895-a204-30c2081bb6f0.html
ANSWERS TO US PROBLEMS
by Bill Connor*
With the 2019 Pew Research poll showing the
percentage of Christians in America dropping from 77% in 2009 to 65% in 2019,
the religious transformation of Americans cannot be ignored. For many
Americans, religion is seen as a personal matter that should be disconnected
from public life. Many of the political left assert Christian values are a
danger to public decision-making.
Amy Coney Barrett was grilled by Democratic
senators about the potential dangerous role her religious beliefs might play
during the 2018 Appeals Court confirmation hearings. The reality is that the
level of religion in a nation is of utmost importance to the future of the
nation. The prophetic warning of the danger of national spiritual decline, by
author and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, is what America desperately
needs right now. Let me explain.
Solzhenitsyn was born in Russia in December 1918.
Though baptized in a Russian Orthodox family, Solzhenitsyn experienced the
anti-Christian fervor of the Soviet Union growing up and he became a
militant atheist communist. During World War II, Solzhenitsyn served as an
artillery captain and was thrice decorated for bravery fighting Nazi Germany.
Despite heroism in the Red Army, in 1945 Solzhenitsyn was given an eight-year
sentence to a Soviet gulag due to private criticism of Stalin.
It was during that period the Solzhenitsyn experienced
a religious conversion back to the Orthodox Christian faith of his youth. He
came to see the hatred of Christianity at the heart of communism, and came to
better understand the ultimate reason for the horror of 60 million dead in the
Soviet Union. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, it took root due to the nation turning
from God.
Solzhenitsyn was
released from the gulag in 1953 and attempted to publish works critical of the
gulag system and the Soviet Union. After persecution by Soviet authorities,
Solzhenitsyn was ultimately stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled
from Russia. He lived in America from 1976 until after the fall of the Soviet
Union, when, in 1994, he returned to his home country of Russia.
While in America, due
to his international acclaim as a writer and dissident, Solzhenitsyn was
invited to give many speeches to various Western audiences. In 1978, Solzhenitsyn
shocked liberal Harvard University by warning of the danger of the materialism
and rising secularism he saw pervading and corroding the West. Solzhenitsyn
compared the horrible consequences of state-enforced atheism in the Soviet
Union to the secularism and materialism he saw in America.
It was at his 1983
address when receiving the Templeton Award that Solzhenitsyn succinctly
explained the reason for the Bolshevik Revolution and the barbarity and
atrocities it wrought on the world: “Men have forgotten God, and that’s why all
this happened.” This was the ultimate explanation for the horrors of socialism.
Solzhenitsyn was also providing warning that America could experience the same
by “forgetting God.”
According to Solzhenitsyn, violent revolution followed
godlessness and increased godlessness: “It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew
from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that
‘revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.’ That is absolutely true. But
the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and
tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical
system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God
is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and
economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to
Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. To achieve
its diabolical ends, Communism needs to control a population devoid of
religious and national feeling, and this entails the destruction of faith and
nationhood.”
Solzhenitsyn went on
to explain the counter to the Marxism and secularism of his day. Prophetically,
this provides the answer to the rising Marxism and anarchy we find growing in
America today. As Solzhenitsyn explains, contrary to the group, racial, and
class divisions of Marxism, America must look to God, both as a nation and as
individuals:
“All attempts to find
a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our
consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will
be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain. The resources we have set aside for
ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror
perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but
within each of us individually, and within every society. This is especially
true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have
surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves,
in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose.”
In America today, we see the increasing attacks on the
foundations of our traditional Christian faith and our nation by groups like
Antifa and BLM and ideas like Critical Race Theory and the 1619 project.
Whether by destruction of statues and memorials to the nation and Church, or by
shaming national history through fraudulent alternative historic narratives. Solzhenitsyn’s
answer to this is the unbeatable power of Christianity.
“The centralized
atheism (Soviet Union) before whose armed might the whole world trembles still
hates and fears this unarmed faith (Christianity) as much today as it did 60
years ago. Yes! All the savage persecutions loosed upon our people by a
murderous state atheism, coupled with the corroding effect of its lies, and an
avalanche of stultifying propaganda — all of these together have proven weaker
than the thousand-year-old faith of our nation. This faith has not been
destroyed; it remains the most sublime, the most cherished gift.”
After his conversion
from communist to Christianity in a Soviet gulag, Solzhenitsyn always foresaw
the ultimate triumph of Christianity. Joseph Pearce put it best of
Solzhenitsyn’s life and our hope in Christianity: “Little could Solzhenitsyn
have known when he languished as one of the many millions in the Soviet prison
system that he would outlive the Soviet system and, furthermore, that his own
courage would play an important part in that very system’s collapse.”
Like Solzhenitsyn, let us put our faith in the power
of Christianity to triumph over the modern darkness seeking to envelop our
nation and let us never forget God.
*
Bill Connor, an Army Infantry colonel, author and Orangeburg attorney, has
deployed multiple times to the Middle East. Connor was the senior U.S. military
adviser to Afghan forces in Helmand Province, where he received the Bronze
Star. A Citadel graduate with a JD from USC, he is also a Distinguished
Graduate of the U.S. Army War College, earning his master of strategic studies.
He is the author of the book "Articles from War.”
