Putin on Christianity

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Doug:
>[from Johnson's Russia List]
>
>PUTIN HOPES ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY WILL STRENGTHEN RUSSIA
>
>      MOSCOW. Jan  6 (Interfax)  - Acting President Vladimir Putin issued
>Christmas greetings  on Thursday to Orthodox Russians, who celebrate the
>festival on January 7.
>      "Orthodoxy has  traditionally played  a  special  role  in  Russian
>history," Putin said in an address published by his press service.
>      "It has  been not  only a  moral touchstone  for every believer but
>also an  unbending spiritual  core of the entire people and state. Based
>on the  idea of love for one's neighbor and on the commandments of good,
>mercy and  justice, Orthodoxy  has largely  determined the  character of
>Russian  civilization.   Its  eternal  truths,  which  have  become  the
>indisputable laws  of life,  have  throughout  the  centuries  supported
>people both  in sorrow  and in  joy, returning  hope to them and helping
>them acquire faith."
>      "The  transcendental   values  of   Christianity,  formulated   two
>millennia ago,  have not  lost their  deep meaning to this day. It is my
>firm belief  as we  are entering  the third  millennium today  that  its
>ideals will  make it  possible to  strengthen mutual  understanding  and
>consensus in  our society and will contribute to the spiritual and moral
>rebirth of the Fatherland."

*****   (from the Verso Spring 2000 catalog)

THE FRAGILE ABSOLUTE
Or, Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For

by SLAVOJ ZIZEK

"From now on, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,
we know him no longer in that way; everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!" Saint Paul's militant declaration from
Corinthians asserts for the first time in human history the revolutionary
logic of a radical break with the past with it, the age of Cosmic Balance
and similar pagan babble is over. What does it mean to return to this
stance today? One of the most deplorable aspects of our postmodern era is
the re-emergence of the 'sacred' in all its different guises, from New Age
paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within deconstructionism
itself. How is a Marxist to counter this massive onslaught of obscurantism?
The wager of Zizek's "The Fragile Absolute" is that Christianity and
Marxism should fight together against the onslaught of new spiritualism.
The subversive core of the Christian legacy is much too precious to be left
to the fundamentalists. Here is a fitting contribution from a Marxist to
the 2000th anniversary of one who was well aware that to practice love in
our world is to bring in the sword and fire.

Siavoj Zizek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in
Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, Everything You
Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), The
Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject.   *****

Zizek apparently thinks that he can fight obscurantism with more
obscurantism....

Yoshie