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.