Leo van Doesburg

The conference would start today later in the afternoon. Therefore I had time to go with Henkjan van Schothorst (Roel Kuiper left home already) to visit the Red Square. It remains a powerful square with the red building of the historical museum and the St Basil cathedral. We visited the cathedral and saw the nice interior and a few of the Red Square. While Henkjan went back to the hotel to pick up some things, I visited the church service in the cathedral. After that I went to the conference. The first greeting was from the vice president of the 'Center for Slavic Culture and Literature' where the three days' event was hosted. This was followed by a Christian entrepreneur who explained that though there were many pressures, he tried to remain integer. He called the business people up not to be involved in corruption but to form a kind of Christian business club (he called it a parallel economy) where businesses were committed together to remain clean. His speech was follow...

The second day of the conference started with a lecture from Dutch Senator Roel Kuiper. He spoke about the important fact that Christians historically are wise focused on creating communities. The new movement that will be started is an example of this. He also mentioned that the main founders of the Christian social thinking can be laid by Pope Leo XIII and Abraham Kuyper. Interesting was that here in Moscow also a Leo and a Kuiper explained the basics of Christian Democracy. Christians always have been focused on the creation of communities and he wondered if the societies have become not too much based on contracts and less on covenants. The difference between a contract and a covenant is that the latter is focused on an agreement and a commitment for a longer sustainable time. Contracts are business like, short time oriented. In his eyes, moral capital is more important than social capital. Christian justice should be therefore be based on "shalom" and "cheset...

The next day, after we picked up Roel Kuiper from the hotel, we went to the place where the conference will start: the Orthodox center for Slavic languages. After the openings prayer of Father Nicholas, advisor for external affairs and the opening of Ekaterina, I was asked to give the opening lecture. The subject I chose was human dignity as base for the Christian Social thinking. I told about different views on dignity in history and talked about the catholic and Protestant view on Human Dignity and the universal declaration on human dignity recognizing that we are created in the image and likeness of God from the conception till the natural death as base for legal charters and legislation (even as base for the universal declaration for human rights) and motivate the participants to promote the principles also in Russia. Although I thought that the lecture I gave might be long and somehow heavy in the morning, the reactions were enormous encouraging. Father Nicholai said that he was v...

On 5 April in the evening i was in a taxi driving me to my destination in Moscow. The taxi driver was a very friendly man although he could not speak English. "Ich bin ein Dumkopf" ( "I'm a fool" ) he said in broken German and that was all he could say. He pointed to beautiful churches, the river 'Moskva' and we got into Moscow. While in most parts of Europe the Spring already has begun, in Moscow the weather was still cold and snowy. From 8-10 April an important conference will take place. Recently, an initiative group was formed that would bring representatives, churches and people active in politics together to discuss how Christians could have more impact in their society, social-economy and politics. The name of the conference was: "Civic responsibility of a Christian for his Russian fatherland" and was organized in collaboration with the ECPM and the Dutch Reformed Party (SGP). I arrived safely to my destination. The next d...