Church and Culture

Abstract

‘Scientific atheism’ which claims to possess scientifically explicit explanations and definitions for every concept and phenomenon, especially for such a fundamental one as culture and culture’s relation to religion, has proved incapable of evolving a unified conception of culture after seventy years of Marxism’s intellectual near-monopoly in the Soviet Union. The above seminar has demonstrated that the simplistic original Marxist description of all cultural phenomena as a superstructure on the materialist base, satisfies no one today, and is unable to explain the tenacity of the pre-Marxist and non-Marxist culture, especially the religious-Christian-based culture in the Soviet Union.

Culture is: A way of fulfilment of existence. A way of assimilation to the world. A distinctive mechanism singling out a given community of people from the outside world. Incarnation of positive results of human activity.

(Definitions of culture proposed at the 1981 Azov philosophical seminar on ‘Culture and Religion’)