Category: History

10Mar

How They Died: Stalin

On 5 March 1953, the brutal Stalin era of the Soviet Union came to an abrupt end, as the dictator died of a hemorrhagic stroke (the presence of gastrointestinal and cardiac hemorrhage has led to the credible theory that he may have been poisoned with warfarin by his own associates). His daughter, Svetlana, was present, and gave an eyewitness account:

My father died a difficult and terrible death. It was the first and only time I’ve seen someone die. God grants an easy death only to the just.

The hemorrhaging had gradually spread to the rest of his brain. Since his heart was healthy and strong, it affected the breathing centers bit by bit and caused suffocation. His breathing became shorter and shorter. For the last 12 hours the lack of oxygen was acute. His face altered and became dark. His lips turned black and the features grew unrecognisable. The last hours were nothing but a slow strangulation. The death agony was horrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed the very last moment, he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry, and full of the fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him. The glances swept over everyone in a second. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened that to this day I can’t forget and don’t understand. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace, and no one could say to whom or at what it might be directed. The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh.

(Source: Alliluyeva, Svetlana, Twenty Letters to a Friend, 17. New York, Harper, 1967.)

05Mar

100 Years of Communism: Venona Project and McCarthyism

In the last few decades a new debate has emerged among historians, in light of revelations obtained from Communist Archives, the Mitronin Archives, and the Venona Project. The debate centers upon the extent to which in the 20th century the U.S. was facing an existential threat from Communist infiltration in all levels of government and society. Was McCarthy right?

McCarthyism arose during dark times, following the Soviet theft of the secrets of the U.S. atomic bomb, the Communist takeover of China, and the fall of Eastern Europe under the “iron curtain”, seemingly with the complicity of the Truman administration. McCarthy exploited the unease.

Senator Joe McCarthy was an ambitious senator from Wisconsin, from 1947 to 1957. He rose to national fame after a February 9, 1950 speech in West Virginia, in which he claimed to have in his hand a piece of paper that contained a list of Communist spies in the U.S. government. Four years later, he was disgraced. His downfall was heralded by withering criticism from famed journalist Edward R. Murrow, and by a fiery retort on the Senate floor by Army counsel Joseph Nye Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Writing in 2003, senators Collins and Durbin wrote, “Senator McCarthy’s zeal to uncover subversion and espionage led to disturbing excesses.” (Collins, Susan and Levin, Carl (2003). Preface (PDF). Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations. U.S. Government Printing Office). McCarthy personally flamed out spectacularly; consumed by addictions to heroin and alcohol, he died of liver failure at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1957. He was only 48.

McCarthy’s name lingers on as a dirty word, as Harvey Klehr notes:
To accuse someone of McCarthyism or to label a person a McCarthyite is not to issue a compliment. The implication is that a person so named has made scurrilous and unwarranted accusations and is engaged in unethical and sleazy maneuvers. The late Senator from Wisconsin even gave his name to the period. The McCarthy era is commonly depicted as one where America, consumed by a paranoid and irrational fear of domestic communism, went on a witch-hunt. (Harvey Klehr in Frontpagemag.com).

An article in The American Prospect” notes the following:
McCarthy’s claims were ultimately discredited, of course—along with the senator himself. But today the story is taking a new turn. A growing number of writers and intellectuals are beginning to argue that for all McCarthy’s bluster and swagger, he may have been right after all. And I don’t just mean writers on the right. Editorializing in the Washington Post in 1996, Nicholas Von Hoffman concluded that “point by point Joe McCarthy got it all wrong and yet was still closer to the truth than those who ridiculed him.” Still more dramatically, the London Observer opined that historians who had vilified McCarthy for two generations “are now facing the unpleasant truth that he was right.”. In his book Blacklisted By History, M. Stanton Evans writes: “The real Joe McCarthy has vanished into the mists of fable and recycled error, so that it takes the equivalent of a dragnet search to find him.”

The Venona Papers are one of the sources of information shedding new light on Communist espionage. Venona was a secret counterintelligence program conducted by the National Security Agency and its precursors from 1943-1980. The program, so secret that even Harry Truman was in the dark, intercepted and decoded thousands of messages from the Soviet Union’s secret police (NKVD).

As the Washington Post reported:
The recent publication of a batch of Venona transcripts gives evidence that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were rife with communist spies and political operatives who reported, directly or indirectly, to the Soviet government, much as their anti-communist opponents charged.

… The sum and substance of this growing body of material is that: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed in June 1953 for atomic espionage, were guilty; Alger Hiss, a darling of the establishment was guilty; and that dozens of lesser known persons such as Victor Perlo, Judith Coplon and Harry Gold, whose innocence of the accusations made against them had been a tenet of leftist faith for decades, were traitors or, at the least, the ideological vassals of a foreign power.”

In response to McCarthy’s attack John E. Peurifoy, deputy undersecretary of state, said that in the previous three years the government had investigated over 16,000 of its employees and had failed to find a communist. “If I can find a single one, he will be fired by sundown,” Peurifoy declared. The Venona transcripts contain the code names of about 200 persons, although some of these were clearly persons who had unwitting contact with Soviet agents. The Venona documents indicate that there were perhaps a dozen Soviet agents in the State Department alone. It is now clear that the Truman administration wasn’t looking very hard.”

Further reading:
The Washington Post.

26Feb

100 Years of Communism: Infiltration of African-American Churches

Manning Johnson (1908-1959) was an African American who was introduced to Communism by way of a front organization called the American Negro Labor Congress, and saw in Communism a possible redress to ills suffered by his people. An ambitious member of the Communist Party in America in the 1930s, he rose to the highest ranks, gaining a seat on the National Committee, and becoming a candidate for the ultra-elite Politburo. He ran for the U.S. Congress in New York as a Communist in 1935.

He became disillusioned with things when he realized that minorities were being exploited and controlled by white leaders of the party:

“These white communists wielded more power than the nominal Negro heads of the Commission. In a word, they are like white overseers. Every Negro member was aware of the fact that these white overseers constituted the eyes, the ears and the voice of the Kremlin.”

He apparently also felt some remorse about the ruthless tactics employed by the party, including espionage, subversion of well intended “dupes”, and even assassinations:

“Thus, as a participant on the highest level of the communist conspiracy in America, I observed the cold, calculating, ruthless nature of red power politics and political warfare, stripped of all its illusory propaganda and idealistic cover. “

In his autobiography, Color, Communism, and Common Sense, he described shocking inside information about how Communists targeted the African American churches because of their centrality to community life. Moscow-based agents instructed the American Communists to cease denouncing the churches, which had so far failed, and to try to infiltrate them instead. Deception was to be the new policy: “The honeyed phrase replaced harsh words. The smile replaced the smirk. The velvet glove covered the mailed fist.” He stated that from 1934 on, the policy achieved successes:

White ministers acting as missionaries, using the race angle as bait, aided in the cultivation of Negro ministers for work in the Red solar system of organizations. Bribery through gifts, paid lectures, flattery through long applause at staged rallies, favorable mention in the red controlled press were not the only methods employed to corrupt the Negro ministers. The use of sex and perversion as a means of political blackmail was an accepted red tactic.

At the same time that all this was going on at the top, the comrades were building cells below in the church “to guarantee that decisions made at the top would be brought down to the congregation.”

Manning cited documents alleging that some youth organizations and a number of Alabama churches were under Communist control, and could therefore also be used as cover for illegal activities.

The irony is profound. While at the same time they were going about destroying churches and rooting out Christians in Soviet territories, the Kremlin pushed the following message in its efforts to woo American black churchgoers:

The new line went like this: Jesus, the carpenter, was a worker like the Communists. He was against the “money changers,” the “capitalists,” the “exploiters” of that day. That is why he drove them from the temple. The Communists are the modern day
fighters against the capitalists or moneychangers. If Jesus were living today, he would be persecuted like the Communists who seek to do good for the common people.

The end game was to “stir up race and class conflict”. The goal would be either to control a block of people who could be incorporated into a future communist regime or else, at the very least, to destabilize and harass the existing government.

Manning’s book, Color, Communism, and Common Sense, is available at the Internet Archive.

Later sources, such as the Venona files and KGB archives, have corroborated much of Johnson’s testimony about the inner workings of the CPUSA and the concerted efforts at subterfuge and espionage conducted against the US by the Soviet Union in the 1940s-1970s. We are fortunate that there was little chance of success for a full blown Communist revolution in our country. In the subsequent decades the communists would become never more than a dwindling fringe. Yet it is also a marvel what an enormous influence this tiny fringe had in energizing and galvanizing workers, intellectuals, pastors, academics, journalists, and other “fellow travelers.” They planted seeds that we are still reaping. They helped fill the sails of our ship of state and culture with a leftward breeze that is still blowing hard.

05Feb

Candlemas in the Sarum Rite

The recently observed Feast of the Presentation (also known as “Candlemas”) reminded me of an interesting YouTube video, a bit of living history, that I ran across some years ago. In 1997, a reconstruction of a Sarum rite Candlemas liturgy was conducted at Merton Chapel, Oxford.  The following link is to one portion of the service:

“Sarum” refers to medieval English worship practices centered at Salisbury Cathedral. The codification of the Sarum use was largely the work of Saint Osmund, nephew of William the Conqueror, who after the 1066 Norman conquest became Lord Chancellor of England (1070-1078) and then Bishop of Salisbury in 1078. His ceremonies and customs owe much to those of Rouen in Normandy, but were adapted in a way that he hoped would benefit both the French and the Saxons. It is noted that the Sarum rituals were more elaborate than other rites of the Roman Catholic Church, including the Tridentine.

In time the Sarum use came to dominate much of England, and the other rites (those of York, Lincoln, Aberdeen, Bangor, and Hereford, among others) were suppressed by King Henry VIII. The Sarum Rite influenced, and was in turn displaced by, the English language Book of Common Prayer after Henry’s death. Sarum usage enjoyed a brief revival from 1553-1559, under Queen Mary I.

The snippet of the Candlemas service above shows the Offertory. From the comments, I am informed that the background music is ‘Gaude, Gaude, Mater’ by John Sheppard. The musicians are from the Choir of the Church of Our Lady at Lisson Grove in London.

You can view the entire service in a series of YouTube installments, thanks to a YouTuber who calls himself “BrunoTheLabrador”.

23Nov

The First Thanksgiving Proclamation in the English Colonies

Contrary to popular belief, the earliest Thanksgiving took place at Virginia’s Berkeley plantation:

Berkeley Plantation

“…wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perputually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god.”

(Instructions to Captain Woodleaf, Virginia Papers, 1619; available online here).

03Nov

Preface to the 95 Theses

“Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

01Nov

The Church is Divided Mostly Between Conservatives and Liberals

So opines an article by Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On a variety of issues, the two camps have moved closer together theologically (see, for example, our article “Protestants and Catholics Celebrate Agreement on Justification”). Protestants have warmed toward some of the church’s historic liturgies and practices (such as the increasing popularity of observing Lent). The Roman Catholics have had their own internal reformations both in response to Luther in the 1600’s, and more recently with the reforms instituted by the Vatican II council.

Catholics have by and large embraced what might have previously been considered distinctly Protestant practices, like the use of vernacular languages in worship, personal Bible study (again, in the language of the reader rather than Latin), congregational singing of hymns, etc; and they have shed some of the more egregious practices that rankled Protestants (and also internal critics), such as the selling of indulgences. And as the article points out, “Moreover, virtually all Christians have abandoned some of the more unsavory habits of thought and deed they once shared, from aggressive anti-Semitism to active state-sanctioned persecution of “heretics.”

Today, the real divide is within denominations more than between them. “The difference among Christians these days tend to break along a left-right rather than a Catholic-Protestant spectrum,” says Kilgore.

The NY magazine article quotes Atlantic writer Emma Green, who observes the same shifts in an essay entitled “Why Can’t Christians Get Along, 500 Years After the Reformation?“.

Historian Mark Noll of Notre Dame notes that Catholics and Protestants have come closer together. “In my lifetime, there has been a sea change in Protestant-Catholic relations, opening up an unimaginable array of cooperation.”

Yet these denominations are beginning to fracture over LGBTQ issues and more fundamental disagreements between traditional Christians, especially in places like Africa, and the intellectual elites in the west who embrace a more worldly and progressive stance. In reaction,

A growing number of Christians are organizing themselves based on ideological convictions, rather than a shared confessional tradition. “As a lot of denominational traditions are experiencing pressure and even fracture,” said Noll, “so also [is] interdenominational cooperation amongst like-minded people growing in leaps and bounds.”

31Oct

“God Help Me!”

Luther, on trial for his life at the Diet of Worms, refused to recant his writings. Here is the famous conclusion of his speech, as determined by Reformation Scholar Keiko Olbermann:

“Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves-I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen.”

(Luther is often quoted as saying “Here I stand, I can do no other.” While stirring, this is felt by most Luther scholars to be spurious).

See Christianity Today article “What Luther Said“.

30Oct

John Wycliffe: Forerunner of Reformation

Portrait of John Wycliffe, 1828, by Thomas Kirkby (1775–c.1848)

Known as the “morning star of the English Reformation”, Wycliffe undertook to translate the Latin (Vulgate) Bible into Middle English. His radical ideas on the papacy, transubstantiation, prayer to saints, and monastacism foreshadowed later Protestant developments.

He was born in 1320s in Yorkshire, and made his way to Oxford by 1345. He completed his Arts degree at Merton College in 1356, was named Master of Balliol College in 1361. By 1372, he obtained a doctorate in theology, and was in that year part of a commission which the English Government sent to Bruges to discuss with the representatives of Gregory XI some points of disagreement between the king and the pope.

Wycliffe began writing treatises advancing his theories on church reform, including an advocation that the church divest of property and that high secular offices not be held by clergy. These positions brought him into conflict with church authorities, but he had a strong protector in the 1st Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. He was summoned to appear before the Bishop of London, but essentially a brawl broke out and he was spared censure. A papal bull criticizing him was published by Pope Gregory in 1377, but Gregory died before much action could be taken. Furthermore, this was a time when in England the common people and royalty alike took a somewhat dim view of the papacy.

Wycliffe continued his work, and in 1380 became involved in efforts to translate the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible into Middle English. Simultaneously his position began to erode as the new Archbishop of Canterbury took action against him. His works were condemned at a synod held at Blackfriars, London, in 1382, and his writings were banned at Oxford. He retired to Lutterworth, where he was already rector of the parish church of St Mary (since 1374). There he wrote copiously until his death in 1384. He suffered a stroke while saying mass on Dec 28. About 30 years later, in 1415, he was posthumously condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance, and his remains dug up and cast into the river Swift.

His followers were known as Lollards, and were aggressively persecuted in the 15th century. Many went to the stake, and the movement went underground. “A gruesome reminder of this persecution is the ‘Lollards Pit’ in Thorpe Wood, now Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk, where men are customablie burnt.” (Wikipedia). The movement was later absorbed into the Protestant Reformation. Bishop Cuthbert of London called Lutheranism the “foster-child” of the Wycliffite heresy.

Wycliffe advocated a number of positions that would later be labelled “Protestant”:

  • Criticized the Church of his day for its wealth and abuses of power.
  • Criticized the practice of indulgences (remission of time spent in purgatory)
  • Criticized monasticism and advocated dissolution of the monasteries.
  • Became increasingly disenchanted with the pope, even likening him to anti-Christ by the end of his life.
  • Taught that the Bible is the supreme authority.
  • Taught that the church is the invisible community of the elect, predestined by God, in contrast to the visible institution of the Church.
  • He rejected transubstantiation, believing that the bread and wine remained bread and wine, but are instead spiritually infused with God’s presence.
  • He declared the right of every Christian to know the Bible.
  • Emphasized the importance of Christ alone as the sufficient way of salvation, without the aid of works.

His most enduring legacy is the English Bible. He was personally responsible for translating much of the New Testament. The revision of this work, after his death, has become known to history as the Wycliffe Bible.

He is commemorated by the Anglicans on December 31.

28Oct

Protestants and Catholics Celebrate Agreement on Justification

On the approach to the 500th year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, some major efforts have been made to bridge the theological divide. In July, the World Council of Reformed Churches (WCRC) joined the Lutheran World Federation, Roman Catholics, and the World Methodist Council in accepting a common view of the doctrine of justification, one of the key issues of contention between the parties. The Anglicans have passed affirming resolutions in the Anglican Consultative Council, and in the Church of England’s general synod. The Archbishop of Canterbury plans to spend Halloween celebrating the accord during a service at Westminster Abbey on the 500th anniversary of Luther’s revolt. (See article from Christian Today.)

The Protestant understanding of justification states that we are saved through faith alone (“sola fide”) by God’s grace alone (“sola gratia”). No human cooperation is of any merit. This was central to Martin Luther’s teaching.

The Roman Catholic Church grappled with this idea and soundly rejected it in the 16th century Council of Trent:

Canon IX: If anyone says that the ungodly is justified by faith alone in such a way that he understands that nothing else is required which cooperates toward obtaining the grace of justification . . . let him be condemned.

At the heart of the new agreement is an attempt to formulate a statement on justification to which both parties can assent. As a Jesuit publication, American Magazine, summarized:

The Joint Declaration effectively closes the centuries-old “faith versus works” debate by merging the Lutheran and Catholic views on salvation rather than setting them against each other.
“By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part,” its key passage said, “we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to good works.”

The Catholic church states that the anathemas in the 16th century Council of Trent do not apply to Protestants who agree with the Joint Declaration.

The Joint Declaration is not without criticism from both sides. One need not look too far to find Catholics who feel that this betrays the Catholic doctrines advocated in the 16th century Council of Trent. One example is the theologian Dr. Christopher Malloy of the University of Dallas:

“In fact, I am quite concerned that many people–even many Catholics and perhaps some of those who have recently become Catholic–are under the misimpression that, since the JD, Catholicism now holds that humans stand just before God by “faith” apart from charity and apart from observance of the commandments. Many high-caliber theologians have contended that Catholicism has changed some of its dogmas on justification. Catholics are rightly horrified”.

Furthermore, he is concerned about the diverse views held by Lutherans:

“We do not have a consensus of interpretation on the very identity of Lutheranism. Therefore, the JD’s claim to reconcile Lutheran and Catholic positions on justification begs the question: Which Lutheranism?”
(Source: 2007 interview by Ignatius Insight).

A very good summary of the issues, and criticism of the accord can be found in a 1999 essay penned by the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, entitled “Two Languages of Salvation: The Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration.”

On the Protestant side, there is considerable dissent as well. The more conservative Lutheran and Reformed bodies (such as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) have repudiated it. In an essay entitled “Betrayal of the Gospel” Paul McLain charges,

“In fact, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is a fraud. It was a sell-out by revisionist Lutherans to Rome.”

In the end, this accord is largely a symbolic gesture, but then symbols do matter. It is encouraging that the heirs of the disagreement that so bitterly raged centuries ago have agreed to seek common ground and soften their condemnations of each other. I don’t foresee Protestants and Catholics achieving institutional unity, as a great many other serious issues divide us.

Still, I might echo the statement of a prominent evangelical (who was recalling a similar rapprochement between evangelicals and Catholics):

“There is enough commonality that evangelicals and Catholics with a living faith can recognize one another as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ with a common Lord and common grace that brought them together.”
(Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Timothy George, quoted in Christianity Today).