No hideouts for bums

Evening prayer at November celebration, Noah Shelter. Source.

Alternatives to Violence is a worldwide program that helps people understand how to respond to respond creatively and nonviolently in potentially violent situations. Originating with Friends in New York Yearly Meeting with a special concern for prison inmates, Alternatives to Violence Project trainers have often worked with people who, for whatever cultural or social or historical reason, may have previously assumed that violence was their only choice. Friends House Moscow has for years been part of the support network for AVP. So far, the doors to prison ministry have so far not opened to AVP here, but trainers have worked with soldiers, with people traumatized by war, with orphans, and--recently--with people living in homeless shelters.

One of the shelters visited by AVP workers is the Noah Shelter in the town of Domodedovo, not far from Moscow. For this reason, we were not happy to read this story in the official newspaper of record of Russia, Rossiiskaya Gazeta:

The "Noah" shelter is closed again
[original: www.rg.ru/2013/01/25/priyut-site.html]
25 January 2013, 4:31 p.m.

"On January 23 at 11 p.m., five police cars full of officers, then two more, drove up to our shelter in Domodedovo. The alleged reason for this sudden visit was a statement by an anonymous police well-wisher that people were being forcibly detained in the house." (Information from the Noah shelter's Web site.)

RG has twice printed stories about this unique homeless shelter, affiliated with the Church of Cosmas and Damian in Moscow, one of whose parishioners originally established the shelter. An attempt had already been made a year ago to close the shelter. After the newspaper's report appeared (RG from 20 January 2012), there was a different attitude toward the shelter. The authorities in Moscow Oblast's Mytishchi district acknowledged the value of this social initiative. Shelter organizer Emelyan Sosinski said that a much-welcomed collaboration with the local police was established: "You only have to call; we'll send someone from the precinct station right away. We understand that we're in this together."

Starting out as a shelter for homeless people, over the past year the Noah Shelter has developed into a "House of Diligence." In its first months, it subsisted on parishioners' donations, but now almost all of the residents have jobs and are able to sustain themselves. They themselves cover the house rent, which is quite expensive. Living conditions, it must be said, are quite comfortable, but on the other hand, residency requirements are harsh: Break the rules twice and you're out. During this year, Emelyan managed to secure legal status for more than 300 people who had long since lost all their documents.

Now the Noah Shelter rents five houses in different parts of Moscow. it's simply miraculous that this shelter, having gathered hundreds of representatives of a most volatile sector of society, presents no special concerns to local law enforcement.

But now it seems that the Domodedovo police have taken an abrupt dislike to them. Back in May, when Emelyan came to negotiate collaboration, the same deputy chief of the Domodedovo police who led Wednesday night's raid, Major Piskunov, declared that no "hideouts for bums" would be tolerated.

For a while the Domodedovo police continued to carry on as if they took no notice of the shelter. But more recently, as Emelyan puts it on that same Web site, "friction with the police started up."

"...Now every night, they catch our charges on their way home from work and take them to the police station to check their IDs. It's a legal and legitimate procedure, but each time we find that the police officer goes beyond what the law allows. They often keep detaining the very same people whose identities have already long since been confirmed. They hold them for more than the three-hour maximum detention. We've no choice but to write complaints. What a shame! I'd always much rather cooperate with the police than engage in hostile exchanges."

And now this: two nights ago, from a house where around a hundred people reside, they removed almost every resident, leaving only four disabled people who were not able to move. They even removed the doctor from Moscow who was there to conduct checkups. They carried away the shelter's donated computers and all their financial records.

Strange as it may seem, the cause of action ("people are being forcibly detained") was apparently forgotten during the raid. Addressing Emelyan, Major Piskunov charged that the cook on duty did not have the right to prepare meals because she did not have a chef's certification. (Of course, homeless people can always obtain food scraps "hygienically" in garbage containers.) And the major also declared that, while the lease was correctly written up, the landlord nevertheless had no right to lodge so many people in his house.

Of course, the Domodedovo police can credit themselves with having found a real "rubber house" [normally a "rubber house" is an address for formal--i.e., fictitious--registration of large numbers of guest workers or others who are actually living elsewhere in illegal housing]. True, current legislation gives Sosinski the right to welcome any number of guests, who, as Russian citizens, may reside for up to 90 days without registering. But now a campaign to eliminate "rubber houses" has been announced; and even before any campaign-related legislation has been adopted, the Domodedovo police are clearly eager to get ahead of the curve. Such zeal is surely commendable.

So then, let's close that Noah Shelter. Let its hundreds of residents, expelled to nowhere, multiply the number of homeless people freezing on the streets and in the doorways. In Moscow alone, up to 150 people get frostbite every night. No doubt there's enough cold for everyone. There's plenty of winter yet to come, as everyone knows, and severe cold snaps to spare.

Unfortunately, minds and hearts can freeze over at any time of the year.

Since this article was published, the rector of the sponsoring church, Father Alexander Borisov, met with authorities to straighten out the situation, but so far without success. We all hope for a resolution.

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"Not passing by swiftly on the other side": William Yoder writes about Martin Luther King observances in Moscow.

"What responsibility do we owe to the poor in our congregations?"

Are you 20-26 years old and interested in international affairs? Consider this year's Geneva International Summer School, July 7-19.

Roman Lunkin suggests that the role of Protestants in Russia is undervalued.

Friends Journal interviews Anne Lamott.

"Who's afraid of Kim Dotcom?" "What has happened in the Kim Dotcom case goes far beyond right vs. left, pro- or anti-American sentiment, though I acknowledge that there is a lot of noise from the fringes on these issues. This is fundamentally about rights and protecting privacy; values that many conservative elements are coming around to despite the sometimes awkward overlap with progressives and net freedom activists."

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Allman Brothers, including Derek Trucks...

Pastor-in-chief

Source.  

So it seems that a prominent Christian pastor, Andy Stanley, was reported to have told U.S. president Barack Obama that, in the words of the report, "he should be called the 'Pastor-in-Chief' for the way he has handled some of America's most tragic events." Todd Rhoades adds that Stanley has come in for criticism for this comment.

The apparent praise may have kicked up more of a reaction because it became public in the stormy wake of another celebrity pastor's controversial inauguration-day tweet--Mark Driscoll's acid comment, "Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know."

The controversies themselves are only interesting to me insofar as they reveal how far the religion industry can drift from actual attention to holiness and true religion. But they did make me think a bit about the very concept of a "pastor-in-chief."

After all, in the U.S. version of republican democracy, the president is not a monarch, not in any sense the personification of the state. The president is simply the chief executive, the head of the executive department of the tripartite executive/legislature/judiciary government structure. The president is the chief steward of the government's resources in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities. And he or she must account for this stewardship every year in a state of the union address to the legislature, and (after having served a first term) in running for reelection. The president can be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and is bound to obey laws, treaties, and court decisions.

No religious test can be applied to the president's candidacy; therefore the president cannot be required to fulfill any obligation a specific religion might want to impose on the office, other than those already imposed by law. The president claims no role in our spiritual formation beyond exhortations from his or her "bully pulpit" to fulfill our civil obligations.

If over the last half-century anyone has been the U.S. pastor-in-chief, maybe it's been Billy Graham, with varying degrees of success depending on his ability to steer a path between familiarity with presidents and politicians, and independence from them; also, between his specifically Christian calling and his evident love for the nation as a whole. These abilities were vividly on display in his leadership of Richard Nixon's funeral, which I commented on here.

In crises, the president may have the opportunity and, arguably, the responsibility to comfort devastated families and communities, to advocate worthy responses ... in short, to give voice to the nation's best heart at that moment. I hope we always elect presidents who have decency and awareness to rise to such occasions.

But I can't imagine how any president could become my pastor or my hero in any spiritual sense, no matter how decent they may seem personally. Just as they are heads of the executive branch, they are also its prisoners. No matter how much Obama abhors the spiritually repugnant practice of torture, he does not demand an accounting for its use by our forces, mercenaries, and proxies. He may shed tears for the victims of Sandy Hook, but he is certainly not the pastor-in-chief for innocent victims of drones or for Palestinian children caught in deadly crossfires.

I honestly believe that Obama personally regrets torture and the death of innocents, but as he chooses his battles within the structures of power, he has evidently calculated that he gets more from pandering to the military than he would get from insisting on a vision more in keeping with the Gospel of peace.

As a Christian citizen of the USA, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have an enthusiastic and consistent evangelical man or woman serving as president, committed to nonviolence, social justice, acceptance of immigrants, and environmental stewardship. I think the powers that be would arrange an impeachment on about day two. Realistically, in most of our presidential elections, we're probably trying simply to discern who has the combination of broad empathy and executive competence that might help us get through the next four years. Competence is, of course, an ethically mixed blessing: in Obama's case, he helped save our economy, and on the other hand, he pursues al-Qaeda with a refined, extraterritorial ruthlessness that puts Cheney to shame.

His reward? As one of my own relatives puts it, "I believe that b.o. hates this country and wants it to be a sitting duck for his terrorist associates.... I believe he is an evil dictating tyrant. The sight and sound of him almost makes me nauseous."

I guess she doesn't see him as pastor-in-chief.

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"The scandal of the evangelical heart." Read the comments, too. It puts all those Christian celebrities and their twitter-tantrums in perspective, and reminds me that I put all my eggs in the Jesus basket, not in theirs.

"The situation is dangerous, unpredictable, and usual."

"Help for students." Ghost-
writing ad in our mailbox.

"Will Russia pivot east or west?" ... a strangely narrow and amoral set of choices, and one that seemingly ignores the "both-and" component that has defined the country's uniqueness. But maybe corruption has sucked away the resources needed for that costly and honorable third way.

"Academic 'ghostwriting' still going strong in Russia."

In the meantime, the "President's Council discusses religious feelings law."

"Google defies law enforcement, demands warrants for user data."

"How Islamophobia is manifest in our political culture."

"The pun conundrum." "The lowest form of wordplay, or an ancient art form embraced by the likes of Jesus and Shakespeare..."?

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Tina Turner sings a song that sounds sad and ironic in light of her own life. But, oh, what a rocker. (I featured a more recent performance by Angela Strehli and Marcia Ball here.)

No. 500

Editorial cartoonist and Friend Signe Wilkinson presented last year's William Penn Lecture at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. She was in equal parts playful and bluntly serious in her challenge to the assembled Friends: reach out or die. As she challenged them to "double the number of PYM Quakers in the next five years," she added a hopeful note: the yearly meeting's Young Adult Friends had already been able to do exactly that.

I winced a bit as she led her audience through a tour of Quaker-related Web sites ("... If you look on the pages of almost all of our institutions, you will not find on the home page what Quakers believe"), and then compared their opaqueness with some Mormon sites. Reading the "who we are" sidebar on one of those Mormon sites, she added, "You might not agree with that, but now you know what they believe."

As I was considering her video presentation, I happened to come across Brian McLaren's blog post, "Q & R: What about Unitarians?" The recitation of Unitarians' admirable features reminds me of similar lists from Friends, especially liberal Friends, so I paid close attention to McLaren's response. In part, he said, "... the degree to which a religious community deconstructs without reconstructing will put it at a disadvantage. It not only must remove negatives that other communities have: it must have positives that other communities lack." (See the whole post--the context is worth it.)

Here I'm going to beat a drum that I've already probably beaten 499 times before, but, this being my 500th post, I'm going to indulge in some recapitulation. Practically the only unique thing that justifies our existence as a movement, the major plank in our platform, is "Christ has come to teach his people himself." Are we going to live that out or not?? Everything else that we label "quakerly" is either in the service of that radical access, or it's vanity with an antiquarian deodorant.

Others have the Gospel, too--we're not in a competition here, as Wilkinson wisely points out--but we're charged with coming to the Kingdom-building task with a humble spirit and low-overhead ecclesiology based on that revolutionary trust. How do we translate this approach to Christian essentials into a home-page confession intended for an audience not already in love with us?

The purpose of our Quaker community is to learn what it means to live with God at our center, and to help each other work out the implications. You are most welcome to visit, observe, participate, and see what we're about. And we'd love to know what you're asking and learning.

We do take a risk when we try to reduce the nuances of 350 years of faith and practice into one invitational paragraph (never mind the other 17 centuries of biblical anti-authoritarian witness before us). No single statement we could make, no matter how well grounded in our unique history, will satisfy everyone. But I think we've taken into insufficient account the risk of not doing so. The more vague and cerebral and evasive we are, the more we say (without necessarily meaning to) that we only welcome those who are temperamentally allergic to explicit faith. I am not saying we should ignore the hypersensitive--there are many ways to signal to those people that we are not the least bit totalitarian--but spare a thought for those whose readiness to embrace Christian faith is matched by their need for a trustworthy place to grow into full and equal discipleship.

I think it would be both fun and instructive to build some more texts to suggest for our home pages. Feel free to use the comment box or to write to me at johan at maurers dot org.

---

Here's Reedwood Friends Church's attempt to put "who we are" on page one. (We're dual members--Reedwood in the USA and Moscow Friends in Russia.)

Ohio Yearly Meeting:

The primary purpose of this website is to share with the wider world the work that God is doing in our community, and to invite others to discern what God is asking of them. We are eager to work with others who seek to follow the Lord as he guides us and teaches us today. We hope that this site will give you a better sense of who we are and what we can say about God’s gracious dealings in our midst. We look forward to getting to know you, too, as you feel moved to respond.

I love the message on Antioch Church's site, "Life is better connected." (Bend, Oregon, USA.) This is my experience, too! (By the way, I draw on their videos liberally for my gospel/blues desserts.)

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Going back a few weeks to "Cult 45"... I hadn't heard about "Gun Appreciation Day," January 19, until Donna Laine of East Whittier Friends mentioned it to me. I appreciated this link she sent: "Four things Christians need to remember about gun control." Thanks to Kent Walkemeyer for bringing this to our attention.

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"Saving Evangelicalism, part two." "Evangelicalism is always going to have its jerks, its egomaniacs, its wackos. Don’t worry about them. Instead, love."

"Blind Teen Stands Up to Putin on Adoption Ban." The more I read about this young woman, the more impressed I am.

Yet another inspiring counterbalance to the recent drumbeat of negative images of Russians: an appreciation of the late Yuri Schmidt.

And yet another: Nadezhda Mandelshtam speaks to us across the years.

Friday PS: Lev Gudkov, of Russia's Levada Center polling organization, on "The Year of Unfulfilled Expectations and a Crisis of Power."

Is this true?-- '...Christians aren’t used to "thinking of something positive to say about themselves."' (Eric Muhr's Dirt Window on "Depravity.")

Last week I linked to an article that charged the film Zero Dark Thirty with helping make torture palatable again. Here's a different take on the same concern: Paul D. Miller reviewing the film in Books  & Culture. Not having seen the film, I'm not in a position to take a stand either way, and I don't share his just-war orientation at all, but his modest approach deserves a respectful hearing: "Perhaps the very same act—like using an 'enhanced interrogation' technique--is an obligatory act of self-defense and a damnable act of revenge at the same time for different people, depending on the state of their hearts."

I started this post with Signe Wilkinson's talk at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Here's her site, with some effective messages of her own. I plan to show some of them to our students here.

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Ana Popovic, Big Pete, and the Mannish Boys:

Interpreter

"The Greeks put Truth at the center, the principle of Truth, and for the sake of that principle you can destroy a man. I have no need of a truth which destroys a man. More than that, anyone who destroys a man destroys God also. The Church bears a guilt toward the Jews!"

This is the voice of a fictional figure, based on real life. The Carmelite monk Brother Daniel, supposedly summoned to Rome to answer charges of heresy, is having tea with his old friend from his Polish years, Pope John Paul II. Novelist Ludmila Ulitskaya has Daniel trying to convince the Pope that by emphasizing Hellenized doctrine and Roman dominance over Christianity's Hebrew roots, the Catholic Church has distorted the Gospel and marginalized itself in its own original homeland.

For over a month, Brother Daniel has been just one of the voices I've been hearing in my head, thanks to Ulitskaya's utterly fascinating book Daniel Stein, Interpreter,based on the life of an actual historical figure, Oswald Rufeisen. The book is not exactly a conventional novel, but rather a scrapbook of documents, letters, transcripts, police archives, sermons, lectures. All of these disparate elements are in a kind of nonchronological Brownian motion, but they all share threads with Daniel, this Jewish resistance worker, collaborator with World War II partisans fighting the Nazis while working for the Germans as an interpreter, who found shelter in a convent at a crucial moment, leading to his conversion and his ultimately becoming the priest for a wildly diverse little Catholic congregation in Israel. And that is about as compact a description as you'll get for these 416 pages. The voices tell us that Daniel is wonderful, crazy, a scary liberal, a hero, a heretic, a defender of the faith, a wise pastor, a dangerous influence,  ... but nobody seems indifferent.

This book is as contradictory as the voices that keep poking at you from inside its pages. (If you could imagine this book as a box with rubber walls, you'd see the surface pulsing here and there with the cries and debates of the characters.) On the one hand, it is absolutely riveting. I've literally never seen important conversations about faith and culture brought to life--not even in seminary--as effectively as Ulitskaya manages to do with her characters as they plead and grouse and proclaim and denounce and grieve and lecture. For example, Valentina, a Christian translator in Poland, visits her old friend Teresa, a former covert nun, now living in Israel with her Orthodox priest husband Efim, and then writes to her hosts about what the trip was like for her:

Perhaps the most amazing discovery for me was the enormous diversity of the Christian trends in Israel. Theoretically I, who all my life have been translating Christian literature for samizdat and only in recent years have seen my translations brought out by official publishing houses, on good paper and with my name as the translator, should have been well acquainted with the diversity of opinion which exists on any theological question. But it ws truly during these two weeks that I saw for myself the diversity of Christians--Greeks, Copt, Ethiopians, Italians, and Latin Americans, messianic churches, Baptists, Adventists, and Pentecostals. The history of all the splits and schisms came to life. There are neither conquerors nor conquered, the Monophysite and the Aryan, the Pharisee and the Sadducee coexist in the same time and space.

I am full of joy and perplexity. What puzzles me most of all is the fact that all this fire-breathing diversity is situated in the heart of active and self-sufficient Judaism, which appears not to notice the immense Christian world. Furthermore, all this is embedded in the domain of Islam, for which Israel is also one of the centers of life and faith. These three worlds appear to exist in the same space but almost without intersecting.

Efim answers angrily, having forbidden his wife Teresa any further contact with her old friend:

The principal and most fruitful path is that of Orthodoxy. I do not want simplified Christianity. Those of whom you speak, all those hosts of reformers and popularizers, are seekers not of God but of an easy path to God. ... You talk of a diversity which delighted you! Valentina Ferdinandovna, do you not really realize that a sumptuous, immensely rich fabric is taken, a little snippet is cut out of it, and people say, look, this is entirely sufficient! It is for this reason that I broke completely with Father Daniel Stein. His search for a narrow, minimal Christianity is a deleterious path. In that scrap which he has defined for himself as "necessary and sufficient" is contained one thousandth, one millionth part of Christianity!

Given that this same criticism has sometimes been aimed at us Quakers, I thought long and hard about this passage. Likewise, I read Daniel Stein's eloquent critique of the doctrine of the Trinity, which echoes that of William Penn--not denying the reality, but questioning both the necessity and the antiquity of church dogma's pseudo-precise formulations. Brother Daniel himself always seemed to err on the side of compassion--the role of "interpreter" writ large--including the time when he was called on to rock-climb his way to a remote cave to bury an ascetic who seemed to have founded a church that was so pure it only had three adherents.

So, again, on that one hand, it's an absorbing book. But on the other hand, it's not easy going. It took me over a month to finish. I found myself reading a couple of chapters, and then finding it necessary to dip into lighter fiction or to share an episode of Foyle's War with Judy while considering at length what I'd read. After all, Ulitskaya's book sits squarely in the middle of some of the most violently contested geographical, psychological, confessional, and intellectual territory of the past century--conflicts that cost tens of millions of lives and set new records for sheer organized cruelty. And even today, at those same intersections, we have so many eager volunteers for the role of combatant, and precious few Brother Daniels to interpret the gospel of peace.

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Photo Andrei Ribakov; source

Among all the documents and texts in Ludmila Ulitskaya's Daniel Stein scrapbook, there are even letters in the author's own voice; they represent cover letters for sections of the manuscript she's sending to a friend (perhaps an editor?). Self-referential devices are risky in any work of art, but here they serve to anchor the reader in reality, pointing gently to the line that separates fiction from history, and giving us a sense of what writing this book cost the author. They also give us a baseline reading of the author's own point of view. For example:

Poor Christianity! It can only be poor. Any victorious Church, whether of the West or the East, totally rejects Christ. That is an inescapable fact. Would the Son of Man in his worn sandals and poor raiment accept into his circle that Byzantine pack of greedy and cynical hangers-on at court who today comprise the Church establishment?

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Two views of the real-life model for Brother Daniel, thanks to the Wikipedia article linked at the top of this post: "The Strange Case of 'Brother Daniel'"; "Daniel Rufeisen Carm."

Now that Oscar season is upon us, "Learning to love torture."

"Speedy Delivery": "Gerard Depardieu’s rapid naturalization as a Russian citizen has raised ire inside and outside of Russia." Read this whole article attentively, and then ask: What about the little matter of adoptions that were about to be finalized when the fatal hammer came down? We now know how fast the bureaucracy can work when truly important issues are at stake.... (Finally, a few related links here.)

"Manifesto--the Case for An American Diaspora." Read this and help me think about whether there's something healthy in what first struck me as a tricky new variation on the old "White Man's Burden." (Thanks to the School of Russian and Asian Studies, via Facebook, for the link.)

Christianity Today's "Most Redeeming Films of 2012." (Personally, at this point I've only seen #10, plus one of the honorable mentions. Guess which one?)

"Evangelicalism is worth saving, but only if it can be reshaped." By the way, the image of a "pastor" in this article brought Ulitskaya's Brother Daniel back to mind!

Update on an old story: "Judge Weighs Sanctions Against Russia in Dispute over Religious Texts."

Consider yourself warned: "(For Real) Reality Christian Programming, Coming Soon."

"Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?"--an important case study. Thanks to Patricia Stewart for the reference.

Darrell Jackson interviews Mike Frost: "What does it mean for a church to be 'mission-shaped', 'missionary', or 'missional'?" (Mike Frost's book Exiles was my book of the year in 2006.)

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Dessert tonight comes from Barcelona:

"Don't sign this bill"

Source.  

Last week I mentioned the impending legislation that would ban Americans from adopting Russian children. Although the Russian president stated his support for the bill during its consideration in the legislature, I thought for some reason he was being coy about whether he would actually sign it. To the last minute I naively believed that wisdom would prevail. In the words of Russian Orthodox Bishop Panteleimon, eight days before the fateful Friday,

It is unacceptable to take decisions relating to the children on the basis of political considerations.

... We need the kind of law that will in each case decide what is more important for the child. And such a law must proceed not from some scandalous stories, not from rules of diplomacy, symmetrical or asymmetrical responses, but from children's interests. Of course, everyone knows there are dangers in international adoptions, there are certain problems, but these must be solved through normal processes, without resorting to hasty decisions.

In the Moscow Times, the reliably incendiary columnist Yulia Latynina looked at some of the pro-ban arguments (including one from another Orthodox leader, Vsevolod Chaplin):

The Magnitsky Act has drawn attention to crimes Russian authorities had hoped they could conceal. Russian lawmakers have resorted to blatant lies to support their position. State Duma Deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov had the temerity to say that adopted Russian children are "slaves who are not even protected by U.S. law."

State Duma Deputy Svetlana Goryacheva went even further, saying,"60,000 children have been taken to the U.S. from Russia. And if even one-tenth of these orphans were used for organ transplants or sexual pleasure, there will remain 50,000 who can be recruited for war against Russia."

But the best comment yet in this charade came from archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who said Russian children adopted by U.S. parents "do not go to heaven." What he failed to mention is that children who are not adopted and remain in Russia get to heaven much faster than they should--many before they reach 18.

"I'd help you, son, but my hands are busy."
(Sign: "We'll save our own children!!!") 
Alexei Merinov, Moskovskii Komsomolets.

The journalist Alexander Minkin wrote a passionate open letter to the president, published in Moskovskii Komsomolets on the same day as the bishop's comment was issued. After savaging several of the arguments in favor of the ban, he closed by saying, in part:

Every child, at the very moment of birth, is a citizen of the Russian Federation. That child has the immediate good fortune of coming under the protection of the Russian Constitution--including its Article 27: "Every person is free to leave the Russian Federation."

Well, why should these legislators, in violation of the Constitution, prevent Russian citizens from traveling anywhere freely? If a citizen is a minor, only the parents can decide; if an orphan, only the legal guardian.

By law, guardianship must be based solely on the child's own interests. Neither patriotism nor malicious American laws against our crooked officials and murderers, nor UN sanctions, nor the whole of our State Duma and Federation Council, have a say in this issue.

The guardian should decide where the child will be better off--where the best care will be, the best treatment, prostheses, medications. Up to this point, the best of these things are found in the West. No wonder your own entourage goes to the West for treatment, for drugs....

And what happens here when a child is dying from a serious illness? Pleas for help are posted in the newspapers and on the radio: Please contribute for an operation abroad, please contribute toward expensive drugs! Sometimes the red tape is overcome and a bit of money is scraped together from the state budget--but sometimes it's all too late; the child dies before the Russian Federation's assistance arrives.

But if the United States adopts that sick child, we won't have to spend any of our public money on that child, thank God--all the more money to spend on the World Cup.

...

The final decision is in your hands, Mr. President. Don't sign this bill.

But last Friday, he did.

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The ban on adoptions, along with new provisions allowing summary liquidation of organizations with U.S. funding involved in activities deemed harmful to Russian interests, was a bizarrely asymmetrical reaction to the Magnitsky Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress to deny visas to officials (PDF file) linked to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

It's not surprising that the Russian leadership reacted negatively. On one level it's sadly comical that certain Russian officials should protest about being excluded from a country they describe with such venom. But on the other hand, much of the world is understandably losing patience with the USA's oblivious arrogance. We Americans comment on everyone else's human rights records, religious freedom, elections, etc., etc., but we won't support the International Criminal Court, we rig United Nations votes, threaten everyone (except Israel) with reduced aid, maintain military bases in 38 countries (and some form of military presence in roughly 120 other countries!), launch lethal drone strikes in countries without their permission, operate a notorious prison in deliberate legal limbo at Guantanamo, and continue to avoid a final accounting for Bush-era torture. We habitually compare our best ideals (due process, equal justice under law) with others' worst performance.

But the Magnitsky Act is in a somewhat different category. While its adoption by the U.S. Congress might also reflect some of that same imperial arrogance, the bill itself is sheer revenge. It's payback, pure and simple. I don't feel much sympathy for the high-flying financiers and corrupt politicians in any aspect of this Hermitage Capital case, but the persecution, torture, and murder of Magnitsky under the color of official power crossed some kind of hellish line. If I were an important businessman and my colleague were murdered to conceal official wrongdoing, and moreover nobody in power was held accountable for his murder, you can believe that I would move heaven and earth to obtain some kind of redress. This is what Hermitage Capital's Bill Browder has done. Blocked at every turn within Russia, he doggedly used his influence over a period of years to lobby for this Magnitsky Act, and I don't blame him for one minute.

I see a parallel with the Wikileaks scandal over secret documents revealing awkward realities about the war in Iraq and other imperial misdeeds. We can regret the theft of documents, and certainly it's true that not everyone involved in those revelations is a blessed angel. But when powerful people kill others with apparent impunity, thank God there are finally consequences. Now it is truly tragic that children have been caught up in the aftermath of Magnitsky, but it lays bare what kind of people we're dealing with. And judging by what I'm hearing here in Russia, many people are utterly without illusion on that count.

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Andrei Zubov on Dozhd television.

Just as I was working myself into a real depression about the chill in Russia-US relations and the agony of families with adoptions frozen in mid-process, a friend of mine sent me an open letter from a former colleague of his. This New Year's greeting was written by Andrei Zubov, a historian at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, and director of its Center for Church and International Relations. He also teaches comparative religion at the Russian Orthodox Institute of St. John the Divine. You can find the Russian text here. Here's my translation:

A heartfelt Happy New Year to you--and, in addition, Christmas greetings to those who've just celebrated Christmas by the Western calendar. I hope to send out my Christmas greetings [for Orthodox Christmas, January 7] very soon.

Dear friends, to say simply that this year was difficult would be reducing things to a cliche. The past year was full of expectations and hopes. As always, we had expected more than we gained, but what we gained was significant. The year will go down in Russian history for more than just its anniversaries [perhaps specifically the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino]. I think it will be studied as a year when Russian society was able to wake up, or at least begin to wake up. Our terrible totalitarian past no longer constrains our souls, especially the souls of young people. In principle, it's sad--but it's also healing--that society became more detached from government, more disillusioned with the authorities, and less inclined to hope that the problems of simple people will be decided by guardians in high places. People realized that these guardians have always, and will always, put the priority on solving their own problems--and at our expense. This is our bitter but useful experience.

During this year, the credibility of the Russian Orthodox Church and its Primate suffered a tragic decline. On the other hand, the level of cynicism in society also fell. More and more people became involved in volunteer activities, in social programs. Again this particularly involved young people. Also, faith in God did not decline, but for very many people (almost a third of our citizens) whose background was a lukewarm and nominal orthodoxy, their faith became non-denominational. I think this is generally better and more honest, although it demands an accounting from those who continue to consider themselves members of the Church. For them--for us--the time has come to take on some very serious work.

Our society no longer believes in words but looks all the more attentively at deeds and the actual lives of people in the public eye--including their private lives.... In this past year, many reputations were shaken and destroyed. Is it possible that this new year will be a year not for the destruction of old things, but the creation of new things?--perhaps the creation, the crystallization of a new, more kind, self-sacrificing and honest public life? All the prerequisites are in place; the realization depends on us.

Every morning we wake up, all of us, young and old; we feel that we have been given a new day and a new playing field, on which we can distinguish ourselves or discredit ourselves to the benefit or detriment of ourselves and others. As the new year dawns, a whole year's playing field opens up; symbolically, the world is created anew. In this new world, which comes to us and into which we enter, it's my wish that you will find happiness unblemished by shame, and you will find meaning that does not pass away like morning dew. Time is something that is given to us, but the future is something we ourselves build. May we find joy in this work during this New Year 2013.

Cordially yours,
Andrei Zubov

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Susanne's Quaker Musings: "Moderating as clerking."

"Growing Up and Realizing that Criticism Won't Kill Me."

"Why Is the Pentagon Off the Table?" "The Pentagon now spends more money than it did confronting the Soviets under Reagan or at the peak of fighting in Vietnam."

Lynn Gazis-Sax comments on a fascinating dialogue about guns, self-defense, and St. Augustine: "Scattered Thoughts on a Dialogue Between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jeffrey Goldberg on Guns."

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Readers in Tokyo: Pamela MacCarthy's birthday concert is coming up on January 9.

This sample comes from a performance last month: