Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a general – if not uniform – fading of the presence of Christian intellectuals in the public sphere around the world. This apparent decrease in the volume of the voices of Christian intellectuals in the public space was explained and explained in various ways, referring to the desire of democracies to separate religious institutions from state institutions, modernization and secularization of society, diversification of society. religious perspectives and the revival of folk traditions, criticism of increasingly cruel religious institutions, changes in social values, the devaluation of authority in the context of the development of new communication technologies, as well as the relationship between the internal crises of religion and the conflicts of political ideologies, the triumph of science over faith as the best way to understand modern the world or the hostility of the social elite to Christian cultural influence. On this exogenous referential explanatory background, hypotheses were also formulated that Christian intellectuals themselves deliberately decided to disappear from the public space and that simply Christian intellectuals no longer know how to believe.

However, the aporias, focused on the reasons for the decrease in the presence of Christian intellectuals in the public space, should be weighed and considered in the paradigm of national spaces, as well as zones of ideological influence. For example, in Romania in the second half of the 20th century, the suppression of Christian intellectuals in the public space cannot be understood without taking into account the emergence, politically encouraged in this period, of Marxist-Leninist intellectuals, intellectuals of the formed party. or in classical higher education, university, or only in party schools. Even if this difference in the initial formation of the Romanian Marxist-Leninist intellectuals determines different relations with knowledge as well as with the institution that formed them, even if this difference is marked by clearly different sociological consequences, the accountability, at least publicly, of these intellectuals to Christianity is undifferentiated. They all subscribe to the regime’s anti-religious ideological imperative, for which religion is defined truncated and out of socio-cultural context as “opium for the people,” according to a famous phrase taken from Marx’s larger text, but which appears “briefly” in the party figure’s basic catechism. Therefore, according to the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to which the party intellectuals claim to be committed, as well as historical Marxism, the Christian faith is reduced in their thought and discourse to the level of dark superstition in the service of the reactionary classes.

however, Romanian Marxist-Leninist intellectuals maintain a primary “one-essence” closeness on the line of human nature with Christianity. The passion with which they commit themselves to political commitment is the passion of the believer, it is a natural inclination embedded in humanity, regardless of the content of the faith. The fact that their way of thinking about the world excludes belief in the Creator Principle does not prevent them from investing in communism, mostly respecting the institutional prescriptions characteristic of Christianity. Above all, they believe not in God, but in communism, which replaces God. The fact that the object of their faith, the belief in a socialist future for humanity, is guaranteed by an ideology, Marxism, which is supposedly a scientific concept of history, gives them the conviction that they are deeply de-Christianized and deeply opposed to any notion of divine transcendence. In fact, Romanian Marxist-Leninist intellectuals transferred the structural design of a Christian institution to a “civic” one, introducing specific pastoral procedures for the association of party members with their activities, creating a doctrinal orthodoxy that would guarantee the symbolic unity of faith in the golden future of humanity, the systematic organization of the corpus selected and reproduced by party schools clerics without priestly robes, establishing mechanisms for evaluating the work of conversion to communism and monitoring the population, establishing mechanisms and bodies for controlling and suppressing heresies, etc. Moreover, the Romanian Marxist-Leninist intellectuals will adore the party, they will decree an unconditional surrender of themselves to this “demiurgic” entity through a faith strongly mobilized by emotions, they will sanctify the “party spirit”, they will place revolutionary martyrs in the calendar and in the icons of the supreme saints of the cause.

The outlawing of the Communist Party of Romania after the events of December 1989 did not and could not in fact cause the instant appearance of new intellectuals in the public space, let alone Christians. The dissolution of the party, however, was a sensitive circumstance that actualized the absence of Christian intellectuals in the new public arena thirsting for transcendence, thus providing an ideal opportunity for communist intellectuals to transform their Marxist-Leninist habitus into a Christian religious habitus. The Christian institution, seduced by the miracle of the transformation of wolves into sheep, will offer these converts through a dazzling vision, like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, not only a community in place of the lost community, but also a new identity. a new Christian name and a new orientation of their political action, merging with the act of faith. Christianity, to which Marxist-Leninist intellectuals are converted, is a religion of beauty and a morality of inclusive action. The power of seducing Marxist-Leninist intellectuals converted to Christianity lies in the ability to demonstrate a faith that mobilizes Marxist analysis of society and its effectiveness in public action, without denying the role that the Christian institution assigns to Christ in human life and human history. This is a faith that includes science and technology in the canon of ways to God, a faith that should be lived not as resignation, but as rebellion, both spiritual and political. Formally and demonstratively, the former cult of the East turns into the cult of the West. _ Read the entire article and comment on it on Contributors.ro