RELIGION IN RUSSIA
Sut,—The election of a Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia is a significant event. As Dr. Rushbrooke writes in your issue of September loth, it witnesses to the abiding strength of religion in Russia. It now has to be admitted that the most terrible persecution, lasting for nearly a quarter of a century, to which the Christian Church has ever been subjected, has failed. For which, God be thanked.
It would be well to wait to see what further deductions may be drawn. Dr. Rushbrooke, who knows the Russian Baptists so well, hints that freedom of religious faith and propaganda for other forms of Christianity does not necessarily follow. The best-informed -book on the subject, Religion in Soviet Russia, by N. S. Timeshev, shows that there has always been a school of thought in Moscow circles which held that a controlled Church was a better method of neutralising religion than head-on attack. That method has more in common with the strong nationalist and imperialist Muscovite tradition which is in so many ways
reasserting itself in Russia.—Yours faithfully, A. S. DuNicAN-JoNEs. The Deanery, Chichester.
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