Salon

There has not been a single major bestseller recently, which hasn't sparked some kind of religious controversy. Dan Brown's rather dumb "Da Vinci Code," whose sole purpose seemed to be to entertain, drew responses from the Vatican, while the Harry Potter saga has been the subject of writings by Russian Orthodox priests and even a hostile spin-off titled "Children Against Wizards." This claimed to be a translation from Greek but was in fact a Russian novel telling the story of good Orthodox kids beating the hell out of bad Western magicians.

Recently, in a disquieting incident, a schoolgirl from St. Petersburg went to court with a demand to stop evolution being taught in schools. In an open letter, venerable scientists including two Nobel laureates wrote to the Russian president asking him to rein in the creeping advance of religion on education and other secular institutions.

Russian literature has always been interested in spiritual issues, and readers and critics endlessly discuss writers' religious views and affiliations. Most of the time, such debates turn up conundrums: Alexander Pushkin, for example, dabbled in atheism in his youth and wrote a bawdy poem on the Immaculate Conception. Later in life, though, he penned several heartfelt poems full of deep religious feeling. Even more contradictory was the life and work of Leo Tolstoy: An ardent Christian and, in a sense, a founder of his own sect, he was nevertheless bitterly opposed to the official church, which resulted in his excommunication in 1901.

The trend continued into the 20th century when no major author could avoid at least some comment on issues of faith. Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" was deliberately written as a Christian novel, with Zhivago compared to Jesus Christ more than once, including in the poems attached to the novel, while Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" directly dealt with the story of Christ, his doctrine and the fight between good and evil.

While Russian literature is so rich in religious overtones, many students in high school and even university fail to understand the most basic references because the Christian tradition has been severed. The study of the precepts of Christianity and other religions is certainly something a cultured person cannot do without.

However, the fears expressed in the scientists' letter are also quite understandable, since there is an unfortunate national tradition of aggressively preaching one belief at the expense of all others. And the Russian Orthodox Church's record on tolerance and cross-cultural communication is not impressive. As usual, we are left with a conundrum.