By Kaylee Hayes | Reporter
In the Armstrong Browning Library on Thursday afternoon, Dr. Wallace Daniel gave a lecture based on his newest book, “Freedom and the Captive Mind: Fr. Gleb Yakunin and Orthodox Christianity in Soviet Russia.”
The book has a focus on religious persecution and freedom, communism and what happens when the upper echelons of any religion become tightly knit with the government. It is Fr. Gleb Yakunin’s story, but it is Daniel who got to tell it.
Daniel was formerly a distinguished professor here at Baylor. He began his teaching career at Baylor in 1971 and spent 37 years teaching at Baylor.
During those 37 years, he held the Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History position, and he simultaneously served as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1996 to 2005, as noted by Dr. Julie deGraffenried, the associate professor and department chair of history.
DeGraffenried, who introduced Daniel, said that Daniel is currently the “foremost scholar of dissident Orthodoxy during the Soviet Union.”
“For decades at Baylor, Dr. Daniel was a superb teacher of Soviet history, mentoring countless students, including me, who went on to careers related to studying and understanding modern Russian and East European history,” deGraffenried said.
According to Daniel, Yakunin was born in Moscow in 1936. He was originally an atheist, but he converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, largely in part to a man named Alexander Men, who was “one of the great theological minds of the 20th century.”
When he was 26, Yakunin became a priest. Daniel spoke about how Yakunin had a particular interest in Eastern religion and nature. He also sought out controversial books or even illegal books. Daniel described him as a non-conformist.
At the time, the Soviet Union had claimed there was no religious persecution within the Soviet Union, Daniel said. Yakunin shattered that fantasy through his valiant effort of collecting and writing down many instances of religious persecution that were facilitated by the Soviet Union. Yakunin and many other brave individuals helped to smuggle those writings out of Russia.
“There were over 2,000 pages,” said Daniel.
The pages were smuggled to San Francisco and then organized into twelve volumes. Baylor holds nine of the 12 volumes at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society which can be found on the third floor of Carroll Library. Stanford has the remaining three, Daniel said.
Daniel closed by warning that when people become captivated by the intensity and reach of power, a whole society will fall apart, noting the relevancy of this notion present day, not just in the context of Russia, but in the U.S. too.
