A CONFERENCE to mark the 22nd anniversary of the death of a Russian Orthodox priest, Fr Alexander Men, who was murdered in 1990 ( Feature, 5 September 2008), was held in Moffat, in south-west Scotland, earlier this month.

One of the architects of religious renewal at the end of the Soviet era, Fr Men is considered by many as a modern martyr, and is remembered as a pastor, writer, philosopher, and missionary. He was seen as a voice against the Soviet atheistic domination of Russian culture in the late 1980s, under President Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika.

Themes at the conference, which was organised by Moffat Book Events in association with the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, included the dialogue between science and religion, ecumenism and interfaith relations, Christian values in social and political life, and Fr Men's message for today. Contributors from Russia, the United States, and Europe included the Revd Dr John Polkinghorne, Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, Professor Wallace L. Daniel, and Dr Ekaterina Genieva.