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I'd like to call upon the man whose imagination and whose devotion has brought us here to this wonderful place today, Mr. John M. Templeton. [applause] Thank you, Mr. DeCann.

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My lords, ladies, gentlemen, and dear friends, On behalf of the Templeton Foundation, we welcome you today to share with us the awarding of the 12th annual prize for progress in religion to the Reverend Michael Bordeaux. The Templeton Awards are open to every child of God.

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Each year, the selection is made by a panel of distinguished judges from at least four major religions. Each of the twelve prize winners has been very different from each other. We rejoice in the increasingly rich diversity of religion. Millions of people in all nations are uplifted and inspired

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by studying the life and work of each prize recipient. The winner may benefit from the prize, But the vastly greater benefit is for the millions of heroes whose spiritual growth is enhanced by studying the life and work of each awardee.

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Millions of readers learn that religion is progressive and dynamic. Nothing is more important than learning more about our infinite, omnipotent, all-loving Creator. Every person is a child of God, therefore we are all brothers. Let us all then not only love each other but listen to each

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other. God is infinite and no human can know more than a tiny fraction of God. Therefore, in humility, let us admit our ignorance and seek to learn from every child of God who seeks to share with us his great inspirational visions. By listening, we may learn.

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Loving competition with each child trying to share with others his most beautiful insights about God may enhance the vision of us all. God is beginning to create his universe. How grateful should we be that he permits each of us to participate in some small way

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in his divine ongoing creative process. God is revealing himself more and more to the astronomers, the physicists, the geneticists. God is now revealing his creative processes of overwhelming beauty. By vast research in a single century, scientists have multiplied our knowledge of God's creations

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more than a thousandfold. His creative methods are awesome and beautiful beyond anything man previously imagined. Each revelation brings us new knowledge and new mysteries. By studying God's creations, we learn about the Creator.

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we increase not only our understanding, but also our love and gratitude for our divine Creator. The majesty of his creations commands our all, and millions of blessings and miracles surround us every day. God is millions of stars in the Milky Way and he is much more. God is thousands of millions of stars in thousands of millions of other galaxies and he is much

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more. Time and space and energy are all part of God and he is much more. The awesome mystery of magnetism, gravity, light, knowledge, imagination, memory, love, gratitude, and joy are all part of God, and He is much more. God is four billion people on Earth, and He is much more.

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God is untold billions of beings on planets of billions of other stars, and he is much more. God is all the things seen, and also the vastly greater abundance of things unseen by man. Men who dwell in three dimensions can comprehend only a little part of God's multitude of dimensions. God is the only reality. All else is fleeting shadow and imagination from our five very limited senses acting on our tiny brains.

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God is beginning to create his universe and allows each of his children to participate in some small ways in this creative evolution. God is the infinitely large and also the infinitely small. He is each of our inmost thoughts, each of our trillions of bodily cells, and each of the billions of wave patterns which make up each cell.

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God is all of you, and you are a little part of him. Today, you are most welcome, as guests of the Templeton Foundation, to participate in this ceremony in honor of the 12th Prize awardee, who will now be introduced by the Right Honorable Edward Duquesne,

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a statesman and member of Parliament for more than 28 years who has been helping the Templeton Foundation Program of Prizes for Progress in Religion since it began 12 years ago. Mr. and Mrs. DeCann have been wise and helpful advisors,

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and we are delighted that Mr. DeCann will introduce the winner. Thank you very much, Tom. [applause] Mrs. Templeton, my Lords, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to preside

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at this gathering of so many distinguished people today, and very many more we know who would like to have been here and haven't been able. The Bishop of London in particular sent his apologies. May I before all else say one personal word.

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As John Templeton has just indicated to you, I've known him for a dozen years or more, since the prize that bears his family's name was first established. And he and his dear wife are my wife's and my own respected friends. Now I've never believed that one should say behind people's backs the nice things that

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every blue moon one has the chance to say to their faces. And I'm in charge today and he can't get away. And I very badly want to say, as I'm sure you would like me to do, on behalf of us all, how much we admire and are grateful for the foresight, the wisdom, and the generosity

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which led him to establish the world's largest prize, whose aim, as you know, is to stimulate the knowledge and love of God on the part of mankind everywhere. That is a splendid objective.

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John, we salute you, and we offer you our congratulations and our very sincere thanks for what you've done. [applause] And you'll tell, John, by the length and the warmth of that applause,

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how keenly people feel about your effort. And thank you too for a very fine address. Now, faced with the necessity to make a speech at a school prize-giving recently, I found myself reflecting on the purpose of education.

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Is it merely a device to enable our young to pass their examinations? Surely not. And does it end when they leave college? Again, surely not.

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Watching my own children grow up and now reaching what they believed to be maturity, mistakenly in my opinion, I remember the reflective observation made by my wife's godmother as she contemplated the increasing and frightening speed at which the years seemed to pass as one grows older. The Almighty, she said, only lends parents their young.

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They bring with them, do they not, joy and anxiety in roughly equal doses. One moment they are, as Shakespeare wrote, mewling and puking in their nurses' arms, and the next they're wholly independent beings with ambitions and dreams and worries that are exclusively their own.

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just as one gets used to having them around the house, they're off to make their way in the world. And what can we achieve for them in the brief time that they are ours to instruct?

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It is, in the old English sense of that word, an awful responsibility to tutor the young, and it's a sacred duty also. Above all, I hope for my children,

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as I hope for the world's children that they should learn to have inquiring minds, the ability to tell the true from the false, the courage, whatever today's morees, to reject the unworthy, the insincere and the foolish. I hope they will spurn the contemporary vogue of cynicism,

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which, led by too many irresponsible commentators, fast becomes the daily norm. A healthy skepticism is one thing. Constant denigration of achievement

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and of sincerely held beliefs and standards is quite another, and I deplore it. But if modern society's values leave much to be desired, maybe it's our fault for not practicing or professing something better.

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Teaching is all example. Education of our youth is too important a matter to be left in the exclusive hands of secular teachers. We must all join in.

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And is it only the young who need continuous education? I think we all need it. And time always runs out sooner than we anticipate. Mortal life is so short a span.

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In the British Parliament, we open our proceedings each day with prayer. My perceptive friend, Canon Beeson, Mr Speaker's chaplain, once had to answer the cynical remark of an observer who commented that having regard to the powerless state of the British economy at that time, the prayers of MPs seemed to be pretty ineffective.

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"Consider," that wise priest replied, "how much worse it might be if no prayers were offered. Consider how anarchic society would certainly become if the majority failed to order their private lives and their daily conduct in accordance with high standards of integrity and simple honesty." In a word, in accordance with truth.

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I've always believed, like Wordsworth, that we should so live as to serve the future hour, that is, to leave one small part of the world better, if we can, for the work we do in it while we live. And that, I believe, is exactly in accordance with the Christian philosophy, and other philosophies

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too. The vagaries of the calendar prescribed this year that the Christian festival of Easter fell late, so the Easter service is still fresh in my mind. Many people, as Mr Speaker's chaplain then reminded us, find the Easter story attractive

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and comforting because of the assurance it offers about life after death. It's one of the fundamental Christian convictions that we shall share in Christ's experience after death and live forever in the closest communion with God. I'm no theologian, but I'm sure it would be a distortion of the Christian doctrine

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to suppose that its concern is merely to prepare men and women for death and the paradise that lies beyond the grave, and that it has no interest in this earthly life. Our duty surely is to live a full and creative life in the here and now. On Easter Day, my family and I and our neighbours, as we do each year in our local church, prayed

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in succession for the Queen, for the clergy, for Parliament, and there's a deserving subjective if ever there was one, and last but most appropriately in today's context, those who practice their religion in circumstances of difficulty or danger. Every year, all my life, I've joined in that prayer and many times as I've

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traveled the world as a minister in government, as a businessman, as a private citizen, I've seen in different countries those who practice their faiths under difficulties and admired so much what they do. Then comfortably at home again, it's all out of sight and out of mind. This year that prayer came vividly alive for me as I thought

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of the work of 1984's Templeton Prize winner, the Reverend Michael Bordeaux. I shall not again forget. Here's a man with the wit to separate the true from the false, a man of courage, a modest man, a man with an inquiring mind, a man by whose devotion to a single cause has brought to innumerable people, one will never know how many tens or hundreds

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or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, that most precious of all commodities, hope. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," wrote Alexander Pope in his essay on man. "Maybe, but hope cannot flourish forever in darkness.

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Despair will inevitably succeed as hope dies. Those who keep their faith alive in circumstances of difficulty or severe personal risk desperately need our prayers. Michael Bordeaux, I feel, is a practical answer to them. His message is that those who suffer for their faith are not forgotten, and they will not be forgotten. The award of this Templeton

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Prize to him is a further answer to our prayers. As a result, Michael Bordeaux's work is now now more widely known than it has ever been. We must all pray that the result of the advancement of his devotion will be increasing public support for the painstaking work

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carried out so well as it is at Keston College. As O'Shaughnessy wrote over a century ago in his poem "The Music Makers," "One man with a dream

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shall go forth and conquer a crown. So far, so good, but there's better to come. And three, with a new songs measure, can trample a kingdom down.

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When Sir Edward Elgar set those words to music, he wished his setting of the ode to be an inspiration for all who feel the tremendous responsibility of their mission to renew the world.

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renew the world we should indeed. It's wholly inconsistent, is it not, with the dignity of man that he should not be universally free to practice his chosen faith without hindrance or discouragement or penalty. Compulsory atheism is an affront to any civilised society. It's intolerable that young people in any country should grow up ignorant of religious teachings

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and of faith. One day, one day, the barriers will be broken down. One day all men will be free. And pray God this will be achieved by peaceful means. But if it comes about, it'll happen chiefly, I'm sure, by reason of example, the example we all try to set in our own lives, that in freedom there is a better way. Modern communications, the speed at which new opportunities for intercourse

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between individuals and peoples are being introduced, may be another answer to our prayers. Maybe the barriers are already yielding. Maybe, but who knows what the future will bring. Meantime, we have work to do. Of one thing we can be absolutely sure, Michael Bordeaux's faith and application are a certainty which those who are alone and those who long for reassurance

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can attach themselves to and draw inspiration from. Read his books, if you will, if you have not already done so. You'll comprehend why he writes in the first pages of his book risen indeed these words, "Suffering lies at the heart of the gospel. Without the crucifixion there can be no resurrection." In his introduction to that

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book, Lord Coggan, who so kindly said that prayer for us earlier, said this, "People like ourselves, who live in countries where there is complete freedom of religion, freedom of expression and lack of persecution, find it hard to imagine what life is like for great numbers of Christians and others who believe that those things matter,

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but who live under regimes which hate and despise them. There are many such regimes, alas. Suffering, Michael Bordeaux has said, deepens and repairs faith. Out of it has come a joy and a commitment which Christians elsewhere so often lack. The worse the suffering, the more intense their experience. Certainly we who live in freedom, and are most fortunate

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to do so, do take its blessings much for granted. If Michael Bordeaux's work has any validity in free societies, it is to remind us that we have an especial duty to use that freedom to refresh our faith in our own chosen religion and to educate others. Those who live in bondage trust us to use our freedom constructively, and to do otherwise

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is to betray that trust. Do we lack commitment? Some of us may, but Michael Bordeaux certainly does not. countrymen rarely do, Cornishmen almost never, and rugby-playing Cornishmen less than most.

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How well he does us, how well he does to remind us that freedom imposes duties on the free. He and those who were with him at Keston College, and how good it is to see John Lawrence, Sir Sir John Lawrence on this platform today, one of the four founders of Keston College, who is now its president. He and Sir John Lawrence and all who work at Keston have had

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the courage to carve out the work of his life in response to his own vision of duty. We applaud his judgement and we thank him in, I think, Lord Coggan's words, for stabbing awake our conscience. Let us hope that the words in the revelation of St. John the Divine prove prescient. "Now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,

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for the accurser of our brethren is cast down." Well, that too is our prayer, but it will not happen of itself. It will need the dedication and the commitment of every one of us. Education, then, in its broadest sense, is a lifetime's career. First to seek the truth, then to help others, young ones and older ones alike, to find it, cherish it, and practice it. That

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That is what Michael Mordeau has so wonderfully taught us, and I call on him now to address us. [Applause] [APPLAUSE]

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Mr. and Mrs. John Templeton, Right Honorable Sir, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

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among whom are so many friends. How delighted I was to hear you mention Elgar's Music Makers because typical of the friends among us today are some with whom I have sung in Elgar's Music Makers.

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What an experience. But to be here with so many friends, educators, acquaintances and dearly loved friends from over the years is a wonderful moment in my life. I shall speak about the experience of the Suffering Church, of suffering believers.

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I shall go on to talk of our response to that experience and perhaps suggest some guidelines for the future. We call upon the Church of Christ to tread the path of thorns, the words of a Soviet Baptist leader written in jail a few years ago. The Christian Church was born

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in suffering and persecution. Christ died the death of a criminal. Rome oppressed Israel. For three centuries the early church faced physical extinction almost daily. Yet it's probably true that more Christians have suffered for their faith in this century than in any other in history. At the same time, in a world of

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compassion for many causes, those who do not suffer for their faith find it very difficult to stand beside those who do. In America many churches have a suite of offices usually with plush carpets and computerized records. In the Soviet Union thousands of towns and villages are permitted no church at all and even a

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duplicating machine is illegal for a believer. Yet in God's amazing providence it's a second which has more lessons of faith to teach the first than vice versa. The world is still blind to this but I think that reading the Bible should have led us to expect something like this long ago. Isaiah prepared the way for it

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more than six centuries before Christ when he wrote, "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The Russian Church, so much more surely than the Church of the West, lives in the knowledge that the path to resurrection

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leads through the door of Calvary. If you stand at the altar screen of a Russian Orthodox Church at Easter and look back at the congregation you see a myriad of faces. Each is bright in its own pool of light from a hand-held candle. Many faces bear the marks of suffering but on every single one that suffering is turned to

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joy. The joy is the certain knowledge of the resurrected and living Christ, a lesson of life and experience, not of Christian books which are virtually unobtainable anyway. Neither did the Apostles learn of the resurrection from books, not in our theological colleges nor in our synods, no not even in our

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evangelistic campaigns do we find such certainty? We may preach the gospel, they live it. All our machinery and organizations are ultimately dispensable. The body of Christ is not. The Russian Christian knows he's joined in that body by the great and noble army of recent martyrs, tens of thousands from the 20s

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and thirties and yes some from the 80s too. We've lost our nerve in affluence. They have discovered it in persecution. From where can our church today rediscover the courage it has lost? An example is before us. The very earliest pages of the written New Testament are the letters of St. Paul, some of which

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reached the early church direct from prison. Bunyan, Bonhoeffer and now Pastor Gheorghe Vince, Baptist. Profound teaching and inspiration have come from prison in recent days too. In the last decade there have probably been more such lessons than at any time since St. Paul wrote from jail in Rome.

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Father Frantisek Liesner, a Czech Jesuit, wrote a letter from an isolation cell, and in it he said that his sole companion was a thin beam of sunlight. I quote, "I'm even now amazed how quietly the sun comes to us without arousing the slightest attention, in great contrast to human behavior.

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how unobtrusively a ray of light penetrates the room, how solidly constructed and yet how delicate it is. I'd like to extend my brotherly greetings to the newly discovered particles of dust, hated here by everyone, in gratitude for their willingness to stay with us so quietly and inconspicuously. I hope that you all who remember us with love

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will benefit from these discoveries and will greet the sun's rays as messengers of our loving God. Both Isaiah's suffering servant and St. Paul in 2 Corinthians give due warning that calumny can often be the lot of the follower of Christ. "We are the impostors who speak the truth," Paul said.

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Some Christians, Russian Christians, suffer for their faith, not only at the hands of the Soviet authorities. Sometimes even their own official church leaders criticize them for breaking the unjust laws that put them in prison in the first place.

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This sometimes causes Western church people to echo the criticism. But in so doing, they have forgotten that the church is the body of Christ. If one limb suffers, the whole body feels the pain. Well, so it may have done in the first century, but it doesn't always do so now, not at least

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in the West. It's easier for our comfort not to be disturbed by the news that Marxism-Leninism is still, in 1984, causing extensive suffering to those who believe in God. There are at least 50 million practicing Christians in the Soviet Union today, 40 million Muslims,

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2.5 million Jews, and half a million Buddhists. Believers suffer serious discrimination under the Soviet law and may have to suffer physically for their faith at any moment. In other countries, Albania, China, North Korea, Vietnam,

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Kamchatka, Czechoslovakia, it is, or very recently has been, as bad or worse. So what voice do we hear from the suffering church? "Christos vos kriesia," Christ is risen,

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cries the priest heralding Russian Easter. "Vaistinu vaschresia" - "He is risen indeed" the people reply in Antiphon. This response from a poor church is already making many rich in St Paul's phrase. The Church of Silence, as it used to be called, has found its voice.

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There are a thousand examples to show that this cry speaks to the hearts of millions with its urgent and profound truth. while the tenets of Marxist-Leninist dogma, endlessly proclaimed in the captive Soviet media, fall as flat as a stone.

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Here's a very recent example. In 1983, news reached the West of the establishment of a group to defend the rights of the Ukrainian Catholic, often called the "Uniate" Church. The prime movers could scarcely have chosen a more inauspicious time.

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Since 1979, persecution of all human rights groups in the Soviet Union had grown steadily worse. The accession of Andropov signalled an even greater threat. The Union Church of three to four million people had been totally suppressed in the

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forties. the Vatican had excluded this problem from the agenda of its discussions with the Kremlin. The initiator of this new defence was Yossif Terelya. Already for his Christian activities he had spent no less than 19 of his 40 years in prison or in psychiatric hospital. Undeterred,

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Yosef Terelya proposed a new approach to the Soviet authorities. So the KGB noose closed in on him again. His arrest followed on the 24th of December, 1982.

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The Russian church and the Ukrainian Catholics have had an unhappy relationship in history, yet an Orthodox Christian from Moscow writes in a letter to the Pope, Yosef Terelya is an honourable, brave man and a true Christian,

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accepting any deprivation or torment in the name of good and love. He's prepared to lay down his life for his friends. In the last letters to reach us from Terelya himself, he wrote, "Despite the declarations and forecasts of some party members,

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we're living, we grow, we conquer. The trials and persecutions suffered by Catholics in the Ukraine have strengthened us even more in the faith and have given us the opportunity to sound

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the depths of God's providence. I can state without exaggeration that there's nothing greater than to die a Catholic in a communist prison. "He who loses fear gains truth and hope."

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End of quote. Two Christmases ago, a copy of a letter from a Baptist in prison to his family reached Keston College, coming in a very short time

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from a Soviet jail to our study center in Kent. It read in part, "Although here, I couldn't be with you physically, I prayed and rejoiced with tears in my eyes yesterday evening. I sang carols with you.

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I could see the children reciting poetry, the Christmas stockings. I could hear the carols below your window and see the children's delight in their presence in the morning. How great is the world!

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Yet even greater is the joy of Christmas, embracing the hearts of all who are saved. Although that evening I had only a mug of hot water and a hunk of grey bread, my joy overflowed my heart,

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and tears washed my cheeks. What rivers of joy and tears for you in your prayers, during your services, your rehearsals, your times of prayer. When I knelt in prayer with you, my soul rejoiced with you."

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End of quote. It's only the Christian church, it's not only the Christian church, which has been touched by this revival of faith.

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Other religions, as I've already indicated, are experiencing it as well. The Jewish festival of Hanukkah originated in 165 BC. According to one tradition, Antiochus Epiphanes had defiled the temple in Jerusalem

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and kept it under siege for eight days. Sheltering with his followers inside, Judas Maccabeus lit a last candle. which was more than a symbol, it was the light of life. God miraculously sustained and increased this light over the whole of the eight days. For Anatoly

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Strzanski, this miracle recurred in 1982. Strzanski, a Jewish activist of 36 years old, has come within a point of sacrificing his life for all the freedoms in which he and many of his fellow citizens believe. He wrote to his mother from within the appalling conditions of his Soviet prison. "Last Hanukkah I lit candles on all eight nights. It was

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a real Hanukkah light produced by a tiny piece of paraffin wick. Every night I had to cut it into even smaller pieces. I was afraid it wouldn't last for eight nights. But when the last night came, all the eight candles were burning, burning as brightly as on the first night. These eight candles are like the past eight years of our lives. They symbolise

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such a dear and difficult happiness and an extraordinary experience. For those eight years I am infinitely grateful to him who set us in the land of the living. He keeps our feet from stumbling for thou has put us to the proof and refined us like silver." Quoting Psalm 66 verses 9 to 10. Yes over the last 10 years there has

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even been a revival in the Islamic faith despite the continuing hostility of the Soviet system. The Sufi Brotherhoods are now amazingly strong and I learnt only today that there are over 250 Soviet sources to prove the revival of Sufism in Islam. The holy places and this revival provide an alternative focus for

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the Muslim faith, quite apart from official Islam of the mosques. Let me give an indication of this which comes from a Soviet author in good standing with the authorities. Chingiz Aitmatov from Kyrgyzstan is the only Central Asian writer with a world reputation. Each of his books is more Islamic than the last. His latest, The Day Lasts a

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Thousand Years, describes how the Soviets have unsuccessfully tried to suppress Islam beneath their ideology of materialism. Haidt-Martoff has a large international following which is growing all the time and is clearly not

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under Soviet control. Wherever we look beneath the surface, in a communist country, any communist country, there is evidence of great religious vitality.

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This is a fact of the highest importance for them, but also for us. And what are we making of it? Not, perhaps, as much as we ought.

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And to that thought, I would like to dedicate some words now. But first of all, to clear away a few Western misconceptions. The West has scarcely even begun to find an adequate response to this revival of religion in the communist world.

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There are a few bright exceptions, but the enormous resources available for academic programs on Eastern Europe have largely bypassed the study of religion. But you can't understand Eastern Europe while ignoring the role of religion, especially its present dynamism.

00:43:04.480 - 00:43:33.460

became aware of the role of the Church during the first return of Pope John Paul II to Poland in 1979. But, with exceptions, it has failed to seek out the facts on other Communist countries. In a logical world, we would have seen the Christian Church joining together in songs of elation at this new proof of the power of the Cross. The Vatican, the Great British

00:43:33.460 - 00:43:57.020

missionary societies, the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches in New York, Christian Aid here, would all be joining hands in prayer and support for the suffering and they would be eager to see what they could learn. We sorely need a theology of persecution and we do not have it. It may be too early

00:43:57.020 - 00:44:15.500

to work it out in detail, but when we have fully digested what we can learn from the experience of these brothers and sisters under persecution, I am convinced that some of what passes for received wisdom in the churches of the West will be subjected to sharp questioning and in particular that

00:44:15.500 - 00:44:37.780

mission evangelism will be transformed. A more detailed examination of why the churches and the councils of churches have done so little in this field must await a later occasion. I shall consider some very positive exceptions shortly but first I would like to continue and

00:44:37.780 - 00:45:04.400

talk about some misconceptions. To the credit of our generation there has never been more openness or compassion towards suffering within our churches than there is now. There is also a response from some parts of the secular world. More than half of mankind is severely repressed. Hundreds of millions of people receive less calories

00:45:04.400 - 00:45:34.620

daily than we put in our dog's bowl. We've got puppies at home, I know that. Discrimination on grounds of colour or race disfigures many societies which proclaim democratic liberties. It's not quite so easy to gauge the misery which results from repressive political systems, though we make a greater effort to do so when these are located in South or Central America

00:45:34.620 - 00:45:53.220

or South Africa than we do for Eastern Europe. It's strange that in such a large part of our churches the suffering of believers under communism has not struck a more immediate and responsive cord. Why is it that so many of us don't feel

00:45:53.220 - 00:46:11.060

deeply the effects of repression caused by communist regimes? There are even respected Christian leaders who seem to say that people living under the harshest communist regimes feel positive to the conditions of their own society.

00:46:11.060 - 00:46:32.700

Fifteen years ago, Mao Zedong was generally portrayed as the adored leader of his grateful people, and now even Chinese subjects condemn his tyranny before television cameras and are able to blame the immorality of young people today in their country on the organized hysteria of the Cultural Revolution.

00:46:32.700 - 00:46:51.380

No Soviet citizen can today in public similarly criticize his society, past or present. And as a serious famine in the Sahel, camera teams bring the horror right into our living rooms. Many of us respond directly to this by money and prayer.

00:46:51.380 - 00:47:08.480

One of the most closed borders in history prevents the world from grasping the nature of Soviet tyranny. It's not just that television is barred from Soviet labor camps and psychiatric prisons.

00:47:08.480 - 00:47:32.160

The massive Soviet propaganda campaign stands truth on its head. Despite this, the kindness and the humanity of the ordinary Russian people engulfs everyone who encounters it. But even some Soviet church leaders have become caught up in the propaganda machine.

00:47:32.160 - 00:47:55.360

They too have become victims of the closed system in which they have had their whole upbringing. Their earliest memories were shaped in part by their Soviet formation. Later, the system deliberately seeks out and elevates those it can most easily bend to its will. They, no less than the more obvious victims, need

00:47:55.360 - 00:48:23.760

understanding. They need not condemnation, but prayer to find strength. The body of Christ needs no lies and compromise to preserve it. Yet equivocation flourishes and the influence of false concepts is pervasive. I can't discuss these in detail today but I'll list a few before passing on. The phrase the Soviet people

00:48:23.760 - 00:48:43.840

is itself a misnomer. When I look at the complex ethnic map of the Soviet Union I I see Lithuanians, I see Jews, I see Ukrainians and Armenians. Yes, I see a myriad of Muslims and of Russians. I do not see Soviets.

00:48:43.840 - 00:49:05.200

And when I hear some such phrase as "the aspirations of the Soviet people", I know that we're in the realm of newspeak. I see also an empire, no less real, because there's no sea between Moscow and its subject people. I see an empire, furthermore, in the process of decay, because there is no binding

00:49:05.200 - 00:49:33.600

loyalty which will keep it together. The Red Army, not Marxism-Leninism, provides its cement. Sixty years, many purges, and a world war on from the death of Lenin, the subject peoples retain their individuality. They retain their hopes. They still identify themselves not just by language and a few attractive folk dances, they identify themselves by their religion.

00:49:33.600 - 00:49:59.920

Religion strikes the deepest chord of all in the heart of these myriad peoples of the Soviet Union, people who will never accept Moscow along with enforced atheism. If you break the power of religion, if it were ever possible, then the Soviet melting pot might start to bubble on the stove.

00:49:59.920 - 00:50:18.800

But it's not doing so yet. Which should be no surprise to anyone who's observed the breakup of all the world's other great empires over the last half century. I'm not asking for a reversal of values,

00:50:19.360 - 00:50:50.560

or even less for less criticism of other evils, I am asking for an even-handed justice in our concerns, as much concern for the innocent suffering in the countries under Communist rule as in South Africa or Latin America. We use the phrase "anti-Soviet". That very term, without any defined meaning, is widely used as one of abuse.

00:50:50.560 - 00:51:10.080

Whatever we do, in whatever context we find ourselves, we who attempt to describe the truth and support the persecuted, are often being told that we must not become anti-Soviet or anti-Communist. To do so, we are being told,

00:51:10.080 - 00:51:36.480

is to descend into the depths of moral bankruptcy. Do you know I've heard people saying this for 20 years and I'm never sure exactly what they mean by it, not even today. Do they mean that the Soviet system is here to stay and is supported by the consensus of those living under it? Of course, there is a real sense in which the Christian must be pro-gospel and not anti-anything.

00:51:36.480 - 00:52:01.060

The Christian too, as Russian believers teach us, must love the communist while retaining our right to oppose much of what communism stands for. Yet, in an equally real sense, every Christian of principle has to be anti-Soviet, if the term "Soviet" stands, as it certainly does, for the imposition of state atheism.

00:52:01.060 - 00:52:33.180

We have stood back while propaganda has put its own special meaning into the word "anti-Soviet", and indeed many church people have uncritically accepted that anti-Soviet must mean fanatical or extremist. Misconception number three is that the Soviet Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion. First, whatever the Soviet Constitution might state in writing, it doesn't guarantee anything

00:52:33.180 - 00:53:01.820

because the Soviet system has not been able to encompass the concept of the rule of law. of law. The law is the party policy of the moment. Defence against the dictate of the state is impossible. Second, the Soviet constitution does not proclaim freedom of religion, it proclaims freedom of religious worship. This very phrase strongly implies the real fact

00:53:03.460 - 00:53:28.580

that religious education and the right to propagate the faith are banned. Third, the Soviet Constitution also proclaims the separation of church and state. In reality, Soviet jails have housed thousands of believers in recent years who have sought to exercise precisely this constitutional right.

00:53:28.580 - 00:53:52.820

The fundamentals of legislation on marriage and the family of 1968 state that every child is to be brought up in the spirit of the moral code of the builder of communism. In a court of law where the state is about to take away children from their parents and put them in a state boarding school for re-education, such a phrase can mean exactly what the prosecution

00:53:52.820 - 00:54:17.860

wants it to mean. Reason number four is that collective rights are to be defended more than individual rights, a phrase which Soviet propaganda has recently relaunched in international Christian circles. It was common fifty years ago and has now entered the arena of these relations.

00:54:17.860 - 00:54:43.460

Its purpose is to balk the investigation of cases of individual dissenters. The humanitarian ring of the phrase has attracted many Christians. The near end of this road is visible and seems to be in a pleasant landscape. Yet beyond the haze it leads straight to the Gulag.

00:54:43.460 - 00:55:07.320

The Christian message is very clear and very different. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings and not one of them is forgotten before God? even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows." Luke 12, verses 6-7.

00:55:07.320 - 00:55:32.500

Since 1979 there has been a massive Soviet campaign against dissent of all kinds. It began as a pre-Olympic purge, an attempt to expel from the cities the critics of the Soviet system before the foreign invasion during the games. This has turned into the most systematic repression since Stalin of all kinds of non-conformity.

00:55:32.500 - 00:55:59.240

Not only Christians, Jews, nationalists, those monitoring the Helsinki agreements have suffered from it, but even those seeking to establish the rights, for example, of the disabled, who are treated by Soviet society as second-class citizens. Myth number five is that religion, already the preserve of the old and the uneducated,

00:55:59.240 - 00:56:19.320

is now dying out. Lenin said exactly the same 67 years ago, seeing mainly old people in the churches. Well, his 70-year-olds would now be 130, and you still see them in the churches.

00:56:19.320 - 00:56:34.360

Something has gone wrong with his prediction. And in the churches are the young people, too. Thousands of Soviet newspaper articles still proclaim, "Religion, of course, is dying out, but..."

00:56:34.360 - 00:56:49.680

And after the "but," we find concrete evidence of the reality that young people tired of living in a moral vacuum are looking for permanent values. The Soviet press, of course, uses different terminology,

00:56:49.680 - 00:57:05.240

but it can't disguise the fact that more and more young people are returning to the fold of the Church in a way that hasn't happened in Russia in over a hundred years. Alexander Agarovnikov

00:57:05.240 - 00:57:31.020

came to belief from atheism while studying the cinema at a Moscow institute. He talked of his new faith to other young people and is now in prison for founding the Christian Seminar, a young people's movement for discussing religious and social issues. The open and full churches, too few in number, which any casual visitor to the Soviet Union

00:57:31.020 - 00:58:00.300

can observe are part of the same body of Christ as that suppressed Christian seminar. To see either in isolation is to mistake a part for the whole. The existence of both is what Russian Christians call a podvik, a miracle of faith. It's a victory won by suffering for us in the West and for the Third World, but by those

00:58:00.300 - 00:58:21.980

in the Communist bloc. I take you with me to a Baptist Sunday school in Kiev, kept open in the face of official disapproval only by the ceaseless determination of its organizers. I was there in 1977 and was invited to answer questions. "Do Christians suffer for their faith in other countries too?" I

00:58:21.980 - 00:58:53.380

was asked. Sir John Lawrence was in the room. I recounted the murder, then very recent of Archbishop Luwum of Uganda, the response in prayer was overwhelming. John knew the Archbishop personally and talked movingly of him. And then came the next question. Does your daughter speak about Christ every day in her school? I

00:58:53.380 - 00:59:08.920

had to reply, she's a bit shy, it's not so easy you know for a British teenager. Quick as a flash. We get punished for this in our school, but we still do so every day. We'll pray for her that she will be bolder.

00:59:08.920 - 00:59:32.100

She has their little written card of encouragement to this day. Western Christian eyes have been largely blind to the brilliant light of this podwig, the spiritual victory. our existing structures are just too bureaucratic, too influenced by politics to reflect it.

00:59:32.100 - 00:59:58.260

One day perhaps the World Council of Churches will be able to relay this podvig to the third world, but that time is not yet. Nevertheless, the blood of the suffering Church will somehow flow through the body of Christ. There are some signs, not least in today's events here in the Guildhall in London, that valves are already opening.

00:59:58.260 - 01:00:29.580

Being found in fashion as a man, Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Philippians 2 verses 8 to 9. From this physical deprivation, spiritual gifts flow out across the world in rich, abundant waves. The vast majority of mankind may be waiting to hear this

01:00:29.580 - 01:00:55.740

message when the barriers are removed because there's no doubt we are witnessing one of the great miracles of Christian history. And so the Western response. Some individuals and groups have already responded with heart and soul to this challenge of the faith. There are men and women who've never set

01:00:55.740 - 01:01:19.840

foot in the communist country, who became Christians through an encounter on paper with the faith of the East. Those letters from Father Leisner, one of which I quoted, actually converted a lady from Essex right there in her living room without her having to talk to a soul. More and more people are benefiting along

01:01:19.840 - 01:01:45.780

their spiritual path by contact with the suffering Church. I think for example of a small meeting of a house church in Croydon. A long evening of prayer and learning devoted to the message and person of Valery Barinov, a Christian rock position in Leningrad, arrested in March after years of being harassed. I think even

01:01:45.780 - 01:02:13.820

more of a response in the Third World, Singapore for example, a prayer which I witnessed of utter absorption for persecuted Roman Catholics in the Soviet Union. Why was that remarkable? Well the Singapore Discipleship Training Centre where I was belongs to a tradition some distance from the Roman Catholic faith gathered in that room where young men and women from several

01:02:13.820 - 01:02:44.020

countries of South East Asia, some having been rejected by their own family and society for embracing the Christian faith. That centre has been a beacon of prayer for the persecuted for many years and sparks from it have already carried to less privileged parts of the Third world. I think of Africa, the many places where the Christian faith is dancing to

01:02:44.020 - 01:03:08.940

renewal. Here, hunger, racial discrimination, persecution have sometimes, even so, seen Christ come as a guest into home and heart. When news of the Russian, the Ukrainian, or the Polish revival flows more freely through the veins of the body of Christ. One cannot really predict what

01:03:08.940 - 01:03:30.180

the spiritual effect of this outflow will be. I think also of the work of the missionary societies for Eastern Europe, of the radio stations whose work has been growing. Their dedication has been a factor in bringing the Christian Gospel to more and more people who cannot hear it by normal means in their own

01:03:30.180 - 01:04:02.200

societies. And yet, the sum total of all this growing work is still too small, too small by far. The official churches, Anglicans, I speak as one, Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, we need to be many times more involved. The needs of the Communist world are just as pressing as those of the Third World, though much more difficult of response.

01:04:02.200 - 01:04:18.160

We can't guess what the effect of concerted worldwide prayer for the 350 or so known Christian prisoners, and there are many more, in the Soviet Union would be. Why? Because it's never been tried.

01:04:18.160 - 01:04:42.360

What we do know for certain is that one single postcard to a prisoner somehow getting through Soviet censorship can save a life, and has done. The faintest signal can lift up a victim of injustice on the wings of prayer. Neoli Sadunaiti, the Lithuanian Catholic, describes the life-sustaining nature of those

01:04:42.360 - 01:04:55.220

contacts in her prison letters. Read them. The worldwide Jewish community has given sterling leads in demonstrating what united action can achieve

01:04:55.220 - 01:05:05.860

in one particular field. A student in Moscow in 1960, myself, would never have believed it possible that such pressure would open the floodgates,

01:05:05.860 - 01:05:18.340

since closed again, of Jewish emigration. The Vatican cannot call in quite the same way to its worldwide constituency. The issues involved are so complicated.

01:05:18.340 - 01:05:28.460

Yet the election of a Polish Pope in 1978 has brought a tide of hope flowing to Christians of more than one denomination in every corner of the communist world.

01:05:28.460 - 01:05:39.260

Despite the immense complexities of the bureaucracy of the Vatican, Pope John Paul II has given the strongest encouragement to Catholics in Eastern Europe.

01:05:39.260 - 01:05:59.980

He calls on them to be stronger and more outspoken. The Polish situation is known to us all. Less well known is the ban imposed by the Pope on the compromised peace priests in Czechoslovakia. He has told the Church there and in Hungary to stand up for its rights.

01:05:59.980 - 01:06:25.180

Hundreds of young people have been applying for permission to enter the theological seminaries in Czechoslovakia, putting such pressure on the authorities that they allowed a doubled intake in 1983, 60 with many more students studying clandestinely. An ecumenical initiative of significance has come from the British Council of Churches

01:06:25.180 - 01:06:44.220

when it commissioned a detailed report on the Church in Eastern Europe, published under the chairmanship of Sir John Lawrence in 1974 as Discretion and Valour, recently updated and reissued. Despite the strictures I've already made on the response of journalism to the religious

01:06:44.220 - 01:07:00.420

revival in Eastern Europe, there are signs of awareness, at least in Australia, in Britain and in some parts of Western Europe. The Church Times of London blazed a trail in the 1960s. The other church newspapers have followed suit.

01:07:00.420 - 01:07:27.340

The BBC now reports on the subject regularly, both in its overseas and domestic programmes. The Times in recent weeks has produced a string of articles and editorials leading the rest of the secular press by some margin. One would like to see a major American or European university rise to the challenge and take on a serious study of religious life under communism. The

01:07:27.340 - 01:08:04.340

work of Keston College links and perhaps stimulates these endeavours. Its enterprise, now 15 years old has reached the end of its beginning. The subject, I do believe, is on the map at last. And a few concluding words on the international situation. The issue of religion in Eastern Europe does not lie in a sealed container. We must consider it in a broader context.

01:08:04.340 - 01:08:23.140

The world could well be on the brink of catastrophe, moral or physical. Never in human history has there been a time when it's been more urgent to look back to first principles. In the last two decades, the energies of the Christian West have gone to furthering various

01:08:23.140 - 01:08:38.300

causes of the moment. The communist-Christian dialogue of the 1960s came to naught before the end of the decade. The Helsinki Accords of 1975 had been equally disappointing, though we must go on working for them.

01:08:38.300 - 01:09:05.100

They didn't prevent the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, nor the arrest and ten-year sentence on Father Gleb Yakunin, the leading Russian Orthodox defender of religious liberty. The Soviets have now cleared their central stage of the major groups of dissenters. Those dedicated to monitoring the Helsinki Agreements no longer exist as an organisation.

01:09:05.100 - 01:09:29.460

And where there is continuing activity, it's mostly underground or in the non-Russian republics. But we come to a question sharply, face to face with it, one which we at Keston College are often asked. Doesn't your work damage East-West relations, make détente recede even further over the

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horizon? To which I reply with a phrase which I have used and I hope applied over the last 20 years. We need reconciliation, but we can never build reconciliation on anything other than the truth.

01:09:48.260 - 01:10:05.940

Keston College, every working day, has to cut through the scheme of propaganda. And one of its realities, one of the realities we see, is that religion in the communist world, especially the Christian faith, but not only so, is becoming more important for the people.

01:10:05.940 - 01:10:29.120

The dogmatic tenets of Marxism, less so. And over the last 20 years that I've been studying the subject, the change is palpable. And so the compelling conclusion to this is that for the Soviet Union to grant real religious liberty would bring world peace substantially closer, not drive it further away.

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This thought may horrify those who hold power in the Kremlin, but the reality might not harm them nearly as much as they think. The potential of this new religious belief to change Soviet society for good can already be perceived by those who look long and clear.

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A Soviet Union in which Christian and Jew, Muslim and Buddhist had their full say would not be making such threatening noises towards the USA, nor would the USA be tempted to reply in kind. Furthermore, a truly combined program by the superpowers to staunch world hunger might succeed

01:11:11.480 - 01:11:32.900

as nothing yet has looked like succeeding, if there was real initiative between the United States and the Soviet Union, with Christians and believers of all varieties behind that in both countries. An essential religious and political initiative for the mid-1980s is therefore to press the

01:11:32.900 - 01:12:02.040

the Soviet regime on the issue of religious liberty and human rights. One doesn't expect praise or popular acclaim for doing so. Witness the continuing criticism of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, my immediate predecessor on this platform. One must accept that pressing the Soviet Union in this way will make immediate relations more difficult. The tactics need very careful

01:12:02.040 - 01:12:28.320

thought, but I am certain that the eventual change in the Soviet Union into a country which enjoys the right to believe would make it a safer place for its own people and rulers, as well as making the world a safer place for everyone. That's why the work of Keston College, very small though it is in a world context, does stand on the front line.

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The prize money which I received this afternoon from the Duke of Edinburgh will go into a trust fund, the income from which will help persecuted believers through our work. But in the very truest sense, the Templeton Prize today has been awarded not to me or to the College,

01:12:55.660 - 01:13:14.020

but to those believers living now under communism. Theirs is the progress in religion. The prize goes especially to those who've sacrificed liberty and some, even life itself, for their faith.

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It's for them that I speak. Insofar as I have the power and insight to do so, it's their hopes, their sorrows, their joys, which I have placed before you this afternoon. God bless them, and God bless you all.

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(applause) (applause) (applause) (applause)

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(rain falling) (applause) (applause) (rain falling)

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(applause) (applause) You showed by your applause, ladies and gentlemen, as you did when John Templeton spoke earlier, how much you appreciated all Michael Bordeaux's work.

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That was a very important speech that he's just made, and I think all of us who are able to be here today have felt privileged to have been able to listen to it. Michael Bordeaux, we wish you and your associates every good fortune in that very significant work which you have launched and which you're carrying through.

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Now ladies and gentlemen, I call on Dr. Howard Williams, if he'll be kind enough, to speak the benediction. Will you stand please? Go forth into the world in peace, be of good courage, hold fast to that which is is good. Render to no man evil for evil. Strengthen the faint-hearted. Support the weak. Help

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the afflicted. Honor all men. Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. May the gifts of courage, gaiety, and a quiet mind, which are the Father's own gifts to his children be yours today and evermore. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]

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