“Church, Politics and War” at the Novosaratovka Theological Seminary

St. Petersburg
The difficult topic of “Church, Politics, War”was at the center of the latest course of continuing education at the Novosaratovka Theological Seminary from February 26 to March 9.
These complex issues were tackled by specialists in each of their respective fields. Dr. Rainer Stahl (Erlangen, Germany) spoke about how politics is seen in the Bible; Dr. Hartwig von Schubert (Hamburg, Germany) shared his knowledge and experience in the area of the ethics of military conflict. Professor Andras Koranyi (Budapest, Hungary) told about the complex interaction of Church and politics in the history of Christianity and Professor Laima Geikina (Riga, Latvia) touched on aspects of Christian education in the social – political sphere. At the lessons of Seminary President Dr. Anton Tikhomirov participants could discuss the ambiguous phenomenon of the political sermon.
During one of the evenings, participants in the seminar were able to meet with the church's international partners, including Dirk Stelter from the Evangelical Church in Germany and the LWF director of the department of mission and development, Rev. Dr. Fidon Mwombeki.
One of the challenges of the seminar was the temperature – the exceptional cold wave that hit at that time meant that it was quite cool in the classrooms, but the teachers and the participants never lost enthusiasm, but instead encouraged each other and tried to look at the situation with a sense of humor.
In his closing sermon Andras Koranyi emphasized that our churches, whatever minority they might be in, can give a lot to the whole Christian world and the society in which they exist.
The almost unanimous response to this seminar from participants was that it was was an experience that brought them not only new knowledge, but a new way to approach difficult theological and social issues. Those who went through the course feel that the discussion of these themes are in large part an indicator of the development of mature religious self-understanding, both as a denomination and as part of society as a whole.

The next courses at Novosaratovka are planned for August 16-31 and will be dedicated to looking at the  Reformation from various – sometimes very unexpected – points of view. Teachers will come from Hungary, Estonia, Argentina and the United States.