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In the article in which he called the patriarch Daniel “cattle” and the “charlatan” “patriarch”, and the relics of the saints were labeled “hoits”. Cristian Tudor Popescu also speaks of Amon Ra, the sun god, of the Egyptian religion. However, one of the most important professors of theology, a professor at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology “Patriarch Iustiniano”, Alexandru Mihăilă, dismantles CTP’s atheistic exposition.
“It is completely deformed”, writes university professor Mihăilă, adding that “deep down I recognize the ideas of communist propaganda against religion … I also remember that Mr. Popescu, whom I have been following for a long time in televised speeches or in writing, he said that he was penetrated by communism to the bone and that he will never be able to get rid of it. At least in the representation of religion, I understand better what he was referring to.
Bishop Ignatie de Huși also wrote about Cristian Tudor Popescu’s “communist”, who a parallel between a journalist and one of the most feared communist torturers from “The Pitesti Experiment”.
“Mr. Cristian Tudor Popescu has a very interesting image about religion. It is starting a tirade against the leadership of the Orthodox Church with the following words: “Millennia ago, Egyptian priests scared people by predicting that Amon Ra, the sun god, would hide his face in the middle of the day because people did not worship him enough and his incarnation on Earth, the Pharaoh, the future mummy. On the foretold day, the sun went dark, the people fell to their knees, desperately groaning, but the priests begged Ra to forgive his slaves and illuminate him again, which is what happened. I do not enter into the controversy itself, but I dwell only on this presentation – completely distorted – of the Egyptian religion.
I recognize deep down ideas of communist propaganda against religion. I have been preoccupied with the history of religions since the 1990s, and atheist propaganda books, disguised as textbooks on the history of religion, have fallen into my hands, reluctantly. When reading Mr. Popescu, I remembered passages from Tokarev:
“Nowhere has the class role of Egyptian religion in support of exploitation been more strongly reflected than in the deification of the pharaoh, the supreme holder of state power. From the fifth dynasty [de fapt titlul z3 rʿ – za ra – este atestat chiar din dinastia a 4-a – nota mea], the pharaoh was considered the son of the Sun God, Ra. The belief that Pharaoh is the son of a god, a living god, dominated the entire political history of Egypt. […] The deification of the pharaohs was, in the hands of the ruling classes, one of the most powerful tools to suppress the protest of the oppressed popular masses ”(SA Tokarev, Religions in the history of the peoples of the world, Editorial Politică, Bucharest, 1974 , pp. 306-307).
Tokarev knew his mission very clearly: “In the bourgeois science of religion there is always, premeditated or unprecedented, an apologetic tendency to defend, to justify, to apologize, in one way or another, religion, if not its entirety, It is a small part of the field of religion, to perpetuate it. On the contrary, from the point of view of the revolutionary vanguard of humanity, from the point of view of Marxism-Leninism, the practical task is to shed light on the origins of religion and its essence of opium for the people, as an instrument of spiritual oppression and to uproot them.From this point of view, the study of the history of religion is inseparable from the tasks of atheistic propaganda, from the tasks of the fight against religion ”(pp. 36-37).
Tokarev continues: “For scientific-atheist propaganda it is not enough to expose the class role of the clergy, it is not enough to fight against the influence of the clergy and sectarian preachers, it is not enough to fight against certain religions, it is not enough to demonstrate the absurd character and damaging of the rituals and dogmas of the Christian religion or of any other religion.For the definitive liquidation of the religious remains, after their social roots were uprooted in the USSR, it is necessary to reveal to the end the historical roots of the emergence of religion in general, the basis of the emergence of religious beliefs in ancient times, it is necessary to show the social role religion has had throughout its history and the social roots of religious beliefs. Only in this way, explaining the legitimacy of emergence and development of religion, its roots can be fully revealed and its remnants of the workers’ consciousness can be liquidated ”(p. 37).
Religion as the opium of the peoples. This is what Marxist-Leninist propaganda sounded like. What I can say is that I am very happy that today the history of religions no longer carries this ideological burden in research. There is an extensive modern literature on Egyptian religion that no longer highlights the class struggle between astronomically savvy priests and gullible and fearful people. The historical reality is much more complex. In fact, even the cliché that the sun is deified poses many problems and requires many nuances. The celestial body was more the visible manifestation of the god, not the god himself.
I also remember that Mr. Popescu, whom I have been following for a long time in televised or written speeches, said that communism penetrated him to the bone and that he could probably never get rid of it. At least in the representation of religion, I understand better what he meant, ”says Alexandru Mihăilă on his blog.
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