Check it out:

Presidential Inauguration

The blog can be found at:

http://elections2008.tyglobalist.org/

More information about Paull can be found after the jump.

Paull Randt is a senior at Yale in Davenport College. He’ll be graduating in December ‘08 because of a semester spent last year in Beijing and in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province. He is back in China this summer as a volunteer and translator for the US Olympic Committee and is excited also to cover the 2008 Olympic Games for The Yale Globalist.

Oksana is a 25-year-old Russian woman who works as a supervisor at the career-advising department of the local government’s employment center. aresident of Yekaterinburg—a city located deep inside Russia’s heartland—she was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church when she was 11 at her aunt’s insistence.

A few years ago, Oksana started to attend the local services of the Boston Church of Christ and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. These experiences, however, were more social than religious, she said. “I never believed in God. I was raised in a family where nobody did.”

Oksana later became involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through free English classes offered by Mormon missionaries in Yekaterinburg. After more than two years of debating and discussing her spirituality with the missionaries, Oksana converted to Mormonism in 2006—but her religious experimentation has still not come to an end. “Being a Mormon was a huge step in my personal growth,” she said. “But at the moment I feel that my progress there has stopped. I hear the same things over and over again all the time, but I want to go ahead—I just don’t know where yet.”

The fall of the Soviet Union has brought a resurgence of religious activity to nearly all of the former Soviet countries. The officially atheist Soviet government heavily restricted major religions like Orthodox Christianity and Islam while quashing others, like Protestant Christianity, outright. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, traditional religions are reconnecting with latent beliefs, while Protestant evangelists are hoping their faiths will take root. Oksana’s story is just one example of the religious diversity that, today, characterizes the post-Soviet world from Yekaterinburg to Moscow, from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. The evangelists who have come to the former Soviet Union often stress individual Bible study and the importance of a highly personal relationship with God. These beliefs are a far cry from those of traditional Orthodoxy Christianity or even Islam, whose expressions in the countries of the former Soviet Union have long emphasized ritual and tradition instead.

But these differences are more than simple disagreements about doctrine. They have led to misunderstandings, tensions, and bitter feelings as different groups compete to draw in and hold onto new believers. Although missionaries have at times been met with curiosity and hospitality, leaders of traditional religions have had no shortage of resentment.

Knowing God
In Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, overt displays of religion are part of everyday life: people stop to cross themselves whenever they pass a church or religious monument, and churches are filled with the faithful even on weekday afternoons. In a city brimming with religious devotion, it is difficult to imagine that only 20 years ago, religion was almost entirely absent from daily life.

In western Ukraine, the fall of the USS R has given new life to the dominant religious tradition—that of the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church. The church was legally abolished in 1946, and much of its hierarchy was killed or exiled, leaving Russian Orthodoxy the only officially sanctioned religion. Largely thanks to its connections with the Vatican, the Uniate Church was able to survive abroad for decades and mount a remarkable resurgence in the 1990s. Today, the Church numbers about five million members in Ukraine.

“Because the Soviet Union came here later than it did to Russia, not as many generations were born under the atheist regime, so the memory of what it’s like to live religiously is very much alive,” said Lea Oksman, TC ‘06, who works for the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. It was among members of the Greek Catholic Church that Ukraine’s religious revival of the early 1990s was the strongest. “Because there were so many people who remembered very, very well what it’s like to be in the church—people who prayed for some 70 years for their church to be re-established—as soon as the Soviet Union left and Ukraine became independent, the church was back immediately, and it was back very strongly,” Oksman explained.

For some foreign missionaries, however, the rebirth of traditional churches does not constitute a true “religious revival.” Dennis Holt, along with his wife Korinne, heads the Tbilisi branch of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), an international, multi-denominational organization with about 17,000 volunteer staff members in 149 countries worldwide.

Holt believes that the Christianity of the Georgian Orthodox Church, despite its 17 centuries of history, is misconceived. “Unfortunately their whole idea of religion is to build churches,” he said, “rather than knowing God personally.” For evangelicals like Holt, the liturgy-oriented Orthodox tradition clashes with their own scripturally-centered concepts of spirituality and Christ. In Tbilisi, Church cupolas do in fact dominate the skyline and, though some structures date as far back as the sixth century, many are new, reflecting the importance with which Georgians perceive their places of worship.

“Knowing Jesus personally and being a missionary and telling people about the Lord is kind of a new concept for them in this part of the world,” Holt said. Through their YWAM Discipleship Training School, the Holts and their staff members—an American, three Georgians, and one Azeri—are working to change local perceptions, preparing students from Georgia as well as Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan for missionary work in Georgia and neighboring countries.

“We disciple them to reach out to people who do not know about God. There are many people like that in the former Soviet Union. You can say the word Jesus and they don’t really know what you mean or, because of old religious beliefs”—such as the Georgian Orthodox tradition—”they don’t know exactly who He is,” Holt explained.

Holt’s observation illustrates fundamental differences between traditional Orthodox churches and the new Protestant evangelism. In Georgia, the profusion of churches is complemented by significant attendance, and the ritual-rich Georgian Orthodox Church bears little resemblance to American Evangelicalism. Holt has found that his own ideas about religion do not reverberate with many Orthodox Georgians. “Eighty percent of Georgians call themselves Christians, yet if you said to them, ‘Are you born again?’ they wouldn’t even know what you’re talking about because they’ve never read the Bible, and they don’t teach it in the church.”

The Old and the New

Holt is not the first to note the absence of Bible study and the idea of personal conversion in the Orthodox tradition. These concepts may be paramount for proselytizing Protestant groups, but for the Orthodox churches, liturgy is theology, and the only way to properly comprehend the Bible is within the Orthodox Church.

“What we found with our efforts as missionaries was that there are a lot of people who have never really read the Bible,” said Walker Frahm, JE ‘10, who spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Romania and the former Soviet republic of Moldova. “Just reading from the Bible with them, talking about things they’d normally hear the priest talk about in church, things they’ve never really had a dialogue about, was a new experience for many people.”

The missionaries’ evangelical ideas often lead to tensions with Orthodox churches, which sometimes respond with hostility. At one point during Frahm’s tenure, the Moldovan Orthodox Church pressured the Moldovan government to expel all Mormon missionaries. The missionaries were readmitted only after six U.S. senators wrote to the government protesting the expulsion as illegal under Moldovan law.

In Russia, the Orthodox Church is similarly hostile. “The Orthodox Church is really against all other churches,” Oksana, the Mormon convert in Yekaterinburg, told the Globalist. “It considers everything that is not Orthodox to be a sect.” Oksana saw this hostility firsthand, and recounted how church members would shout at Mormon missionaries that they should go back to America. “‘The Orthodox Church has been here for 2,000 years,’ they say, ‘and now the Mormons are coming and taking people away.’ Of course it seems unfair.”

Born Again?

Although the Russian Orthodox Church continued to operate during Soviet rule, it was strictly controlled by the state: the Church could hold services on Sundays and feast days, but priests could neither evangelize nor hold Sunday school. The KGB censored sermons and placed many agents within the clergy and the church hierarchy.

Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior is widely considered a symbol of the Church’s resurgence. Soviet authorities demolished the Cathedral in 1931 and later replaced it with a swimming pool. In the early 1990s, the Orthodox Church rebuilt the cathedral with funds collected from ordinary believers. Yet many question the extent to which the fall of the Soviet Union has brought real change to the Church. Religion is not a part of most Russians’ daily lives, and it is alleged that the current patriarch, Alexei II, was a long-standing KGB agent. Perhaps most telling, the attendance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior consists mostly of tourists and elderly women.

Jordan Frandsen, MC ’08, who served as a Mormon missionary in Russia, believes Russians have a sense of inertia when it comes to religious life, something he blames on the legacy of religious repression in the USS R. “A lot of them will investigate religion in a very superficial way and won’t explore it too deeply. It’s just not a part of everyday life.”

For Oksana, it was this distinction that drew her to accept the Mormon faith. “I was really attracted by the fact that it was the only church where people really lived according to their teachings,” she said. “In the Orthodox Church, people come to church on holidays or once in a while, but they live their own lives.”

While Frandsen encountered many people who were glad to speak with him about religion and spirituality, few were willing to undertake the lifestyle changes that adherence to Mormonism requires. “Often they’d want to hear what we had to say the first time we visited, but they didn’t want to actually read anything or do anything to find out more about religion. They were generally pretty complacent in what they were doing.” The same was true, he said, of the people he met—mostly from the older generation—who were very strong believers in the Orthodox Church.

Overall, Frandsen observed that attachment to religion was largely cultural rather than spiritual. “If they were Russian, they were just Orthodox,” he said, “even if they didn’t really believe in God or have Christian faith.” Although the Russians Frandsen came across usually did not practice their religion, they felt that the Russian Orthodox Church was part of their heritage.

To Be a Kazakh

Whether or not it is actively practiced, religion is closely tied to ethnic identity in many of the former Soviet republics. The 80 percent of the Georgian population that considers itself Georgian Orthodox is roughly equivalent to the proportion of ethnic Georgians. In western Ukraine, meanwhile, being Greek Catholic is part of what it means to be Ukrainian. About 60 percent of the inhabitants of Lviv—a predominantly Uniate city—attend church every week. “If you go around town on a Sunday, people are standing outside of churches because there’s not enough room inside,” Oksman said. For inhabitants of western Ukraine, religious devotion and national identity are often inextricably linked. “It’s just part of who they are. It’s very hard to take these things apart.” Oksman clarified, however, that she spoke only about western Ukraine, andthat devotion varies nationally.

In eastern Ukraine, the tiny fraction of the population that is actively religious comprises mostly Protestants converted through missionary activity. Oksman noted that the native churches—the Uniate Church
and three Orthodox churches—are weakest in cities closest to Russia, a phenomenon she ascribes to the Soviet Union’s effectiveness at exterminating religion.

In Kazakhstan, religious practice is much less ubiquitous than it is in Ukraine, though Islam has become an important part of national identity. As a Soviet official, current Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who served as Kazakhstan’s Communist Party secretary before Kazakhstan’s independence in 1991, openly professed his atheism. In recent years, however, he has begun to call attention to his Muslim heritage and the Kazakh people’s traditional adherence to Islam.

“A popular refrain that I heard over and over again, which is said in both Kazakh and Russian, is that to be Kazakh is to be Muslim,” noted Elisabeth Stevens, PC ‘08, who spent six weeks doing missionary work with Yale Students for Christ (YSC) in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. “I think a lot of people are trying to formulate an identity around Islam because it’s considered the original religion of the Kazakhs.”

Nevertheless, like Frandsen, Stevens found that religious devotion was usually nominal. Many Kazakhs have never read the Koran, and mosque attendance is not a regular practice for much of the Muslim population. Veiled women are an almost negligible minority. Kazakh religious practice often incorporates elements of the Kazakhs’ pre-Muslim shamanistic tradition, further underlining its connections to national identity.

“Whenever we spoke to students about spirituality, a large number of them would just say that they’re Muslim and leave it at that, but I wouldn’t necessarily call any of them devout Muslims or practicing Muslims,” Stevens said.

Scott Thomson, a staff member at YSC who led the Kazakhstan trip, agreed. “There are many people for whom their Muslim faith is very much a cultural thing and there’s no real practicing. They might go to the mosque once a year, but it’s something their family has done once a year since they’ve been born and so
there’s not a deeper meaning in their hearts to that.”

Despite this apparent apathy, in speaking to students about Christianity, Thomson and Stevens found them receptive to discussing spirituality in general and Christianity in particular. “It’s a message that’s very different from what they’ve heard their entire lives,” Thomson said. “There’s a uniqueness to it, there’s a curiosity as to what Christianity is about. You can see some people who are really beginning to wrestle through these things and take the conversations pretty seriously.”

Because of the cultural importance of Islam, however, many of the students with whom Stevens spoke thought of Christianity as something foreign, referring to “the God of the Russians.” Many Kazakhs, therefore, approach the Bible with caution. Stevens knew one girl who read it only at night with a flashlight. “She knew her mother would not accept it. It was just some foreign book that would give her unhealthy ideas.” Although the group’s time in Astana did not spur a wave of conversions, Stevens is not disappointed. “Mainly I think our purpose was to air and present the idea and allow the students to come to decisions themselves,” she said.

Different Styles of Worship

According to Oksman, many of the Americans who run Protestant churches in western Ukraine are not attuned to the region’s religious and cultural milieu. Oksman visited one Lviv church run by a couple from Texas in which the songs were well translated American worship songs and the sermons were given in Texan-accented English with simultaneous translation.

“The conceptual language and the organization of the service was just what you’d expect from a nice evangelical church in New Haven,” she said. Unlike the four native churches, Protestant denominations in Ukraine do not appeal to nationalist sentiment, and, while some Protestant churches are run by Ukrainian pastors, many are run by Americans who preach in English. Oksman explained that the Ukrainian Protestant clergy, meanwhile, have a reputation for being anti-Greek Catholic. “They really like to talk about why they’re Protestant and why they don’t have icons or crosses. They claim the churches that have all these things are pagan, emphasizing that they’re not pagan. There’s a lot of antagonism there.”

These differences are sometimes an impediment to missionary activity. “Many people feel uncomfortable with the different worship style and the fact that they often identify their Ukrainian heritage with the Orthodox or Greek Catholic tradition,” said Heather Miller, who, along with her husband Tim, works with Hosanna Baptist Church in Lviv.

Oksman connects the more individualistic approach of the Protestant missions with their success in ministering to people who, because of illness, addiction, or a criminal past, have difficulty finding a place for themselves in Ukrainian society. “These churches gather the people who don’t really fit in, who maybe are a little bit on the side of social outcasts,” she explained. “In other words, if these people fit in better, they would go to their traditional church, but they don’t fit in so they don’t go.” The more corporal appeal of the sacramental churches, she said, is better suited to those who feel at ease in mainstream society.

Hosanna Baptist Church is in fact well equipped to serve those Ukrainian society might consider marginal. Although the Greek Catholic Church organizes youth groups and offers marriage counseling, the Orthodox Churches offer none of the trappings often associated with Christian churches in the United States. Meanwhile, Hosanna Baptist Church, which has a Ukrainian pastor and 119 members, offers free meals for Lviv’s homeless twice a week, in addition to regular shoe and clothing drives.
The church is building a rehabilitation center for recovering alcoholics and has an outreach program for the blind; a program for the deaf is in the works.

“People are attracted to the truth and freedom that life in Christ brings,” said Miller.“When they understand that Christianity isn’t just a bunch of rules and traditions, but about relationships, they get excited. Understanding that the God of the universe wants to be involved in their everyday life is a compelling truth and people are attracted to that.”

Despite what Miller describes as the evangelists’ appeal, established religions remain dominant across the former Soviet Union, and one cannot deny the high level of religious devotion in places like Georgia and western Ukraine. Nevertheless, it seems that the evangelist presence is becoming a permanent fixture in the former Soviet republics. After decades of religious repression, people are not only at liberty to practice their faith, but are increasingly able to opt for alternatives to traditional religions.

Yet the fact remains that the “old” and “new” religions seem to lack a common vocabulary for understanding each other’s conceptions of spirituality. While Holt may lament the lack of the notion of being “born again,” a Georgian Orthodox Christian might respond similarly upon learning that American evangelicals do not turn to priests for confession.

“I wonder how the two styles of ‘doing church,’ if you will, could learn from one another,” Oksman said. As it is now, misconceptions, misunderstandings, and hostilities often stand in the way.

Disappointed to find that the Globalist website is under construction? Please accept our sincerest apologies.

I promise you, though, you won’t be disappointed with the changes. With new ed-boards come new ideas–and our newest ed-board is no different. We’re revamping our website to bring you more news and more articles with an even better look.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to keep the blog up to date–so keep reading!

Special guests included US Governors and foreign leaders

The Conference was celebrated in the spirit of the 100 year anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt’s Conference of Governors at Yale in which a conservation partnership between states and the federal government was created. 100 years ago, the problem was the conservation of natural parks. Today in 2008, while conservation is still a concern, the most pressing issue is climate change and the consequences such a phenomenon will have on our lives.

Dr. R.K. Pachauri reminded the audience of the many effects of climate change, such as rising temperatures and rising sea levels. But he also discusses various programs that are being implemented to curtail climate change and foster sustainable development. For instance, in India, a woman in a community is given solar panels to generate electricity during the day and then sells the electricity to others in the community.

Meanwhile, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted California’s efforts in reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide and also pulled off a comparison of the body building movement with environmentalism. Schwarzenegger encouraged other states to follow California’s example in leading the fight against climate change.

I felt overall the article, ‘Coal Nation’ was very balanced, and I appreciated it.

I did cringe when I read one sentence however,

‘But for now, Prairie State is the best option Illinois has.’

I can see Peabody’s PR people using quotes like, ‘Prairie State called the ‘…best option Illinois has’ by the Yale Globalist.’ right alongside their false ‘Clean Coal’ mantra and ‘Environmental Care’ tagline.

At least one other new coal plant was permitted in Illinois around the same time as Prairie State that has better pollution control technologies in place. Prairie State has already degraded the local environment by repeatedly violating their National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit and their Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP), in place to protect wildlife habitat and drinking water quality. This is evidenced by the fact that the Illinois EPA (IEPA) has had to put them on a monthly inspection plan to babysit them and they have still failed over and over again to comply with their permit and protect the local environment on their own as required.

Watching Prairie State day after day, month after month, fail to put best practices in place prior to and during construction activities as required by their permit, and then watching them scramble on a Saturday just prior to a scheduled IEPA site inspection to make it look as they have had required measures in place all along, has come to represent this whole thing to the neighbors of Prairie State Energy Campus. It is a joke–but its not funny.

Prairie State is not the best option Illinois has.

– Mike Murphy

Congratulations to the members of the new editorial board.

Editor-in-Chief

Katharine Kendrick

Managing Editors

Maria Blackwood

Amila Golic

Jesse Marks

Pete Martin

Features Editors

George Bogden

Rishabh Khosla

Alex Soble

Emma Sokoloff-Rubin

Senior Editors

Annie Carney

Catherine Cheney

JT Kennedy

Nathan Tek

Emma Vawter

Executive Director

Amira Valliani

Publisher

Gemma Bloemen

Assistant Publisher

Brad Schecter

Production Editor

Dana Wu

Events Planners

Hayeon Lee

Alice Walton

Web Editor

Oscar Pocasangre

Image details: Leaders Gather For NATO Summit served by picapp.com

There has been a lot of disapproval over Greece’s veto. The dispute between Greece and FYROM is due, however, to a long-standing name dispute. FYROM, which calls itself the “Republic of Macedonia,” wanted to join NATO under its self-proclaimed name. Greece firmly opposed this proposal and asked for a compound name such as “Upper Macedonia” or “New Macedonia.”

The problem is that the historically-defined region of Macedonia is located in both Greece and FYROM. Although 51% percent of the land belongs to Greece and 38% to FYROM, the latter ultimately wants to have the name. Nevertheless, the Greek veto was mostly seen as an overreaction that acted against NATO’s goals for peace in the region, and several leaders have accordingly criticized the Greek action over the past few days. Nevertheless, I believe the Greeks may have more than enough reason to act the way they did.

I did not fully grasp the nature of this problem until I did some research and talked to some of my Greek friends over the weekend. It is not, as many believe, a historical problem. Greeks don’t care much about whether the people of FYROM refer to themselves as the only descendants of Alexander the Great. Greeks don’t like it, but it doesn’t keep them awake at night.

What does keep Greeks awake at night is the fact that, in 1992, after its independence, FYROM pretended to put into circulation a bill with the White Tower of Thessaloniki–the capital of Greek Macedonia–boldly printed on it. What keeps Greeks watchful is the fact that FYROM textbooks and maps depict Greek Macedonia as though it were part of FYROM. Finally, what gets them outraged is the fact that there are posters in Skopje, FYROM’s capital, displaying a swastika superimposed on the Greek flag.

NATO’s goal is the security of its member countries. I simply don’t see how we can assure Greece any future security by welcoming into the alliance a country that is a real threat. Greeks are over any feeling of indignation caused by the FYROM propaganda. They are not angry. They are not bothered. They are simply uneasy because they feel FYROM will one day try to appropriate Greek Macedonia and any action that would strengthen FYROM, like a membership in the NATO, is like handing a weapon to an enemy.

Even though changing their name will not per se cut short FYROM apparent desire to take over Greek Macedonia, it will at least give Greece the assurance that FYROM will not try to do this by appealing to the implications of a name like the “Republic of Macedonia.” By having FYROM take a name that limits its geographic boundaries, Greece can at least prevent some possible future quarrels.

Nonetheless, Greece is still taking a chance by allowing FYROM to join NATO, even under a different name. There is no assurance that FYROM will not one day, perhaps when they are stronger, try to claim the territory that they deeply believe is theirs. Greece has nothing to be ashamed of, contrary to what the New York Times says. In fact, the opposite may be true. Greece should be commended for allowing such a self-declared enemy the possibility of being in an alliance with them.