Leningrad's religious-philosophical seminar: A place of encounter between text and mission

Through an interdisciplinary analysis using Orthodox missiology and Russian intellectual history as the primary disciplines, this dissertation proposes and supports the idea of martyria - personal witnessing of faith - as a legitimate way to recognize the role of people in the process of evangelization.;The primary focus is on Russia's creative nonconformist intelligentsia of the 1970s with particular emphasis on a group known as Leningrad's Religious-philosophical Seminar. The Leningrad Seminar's goal was to find meaning beyond the broken promises of a Soviet utopia. This influential group offered authors, whose works were rejected by the Soviet government, a place to gather, explore, and create. Leningrad's philosophically and religiously inclined thinkers, poets, writers, and artists circulated their creative works in the Seminar's samizdat (self-published) publication titled 37. This dissertation uses textual analysis to examine selected theological-philosophical writings and poetry published in 37.;I argue that these published works are examples of the various authors' martyria showing two simultaneous processes: first, the gradual personal religious conversion, and second, the expression of each individual's religious experience in his/her creative works. Having recognized this, we are able to see how the newly converted person actively participates in the conversion process then see how his/her creativity changes and reveals personal characteristics in subsequent works.;This dissertation presents conversion as the ongoing process of metanoia (repentance) beginning with God's calling followed by a person's positive response to the divine salvific plan. Working together with God (synergia), a person experiences personal spiritual changes and religious growth that affects all aspects of his/her life including creativity. The goal of this ultimate personal process is union with God, known as theosis.;A new way of understanding missiology, therefore, answers contemporary challenges by seeing missionary work as a fruit of humans and God working together (synergia). This results in a dramatic change in the converted person's life (metanoia), which in turn, is expressed through his/her creative work (martyria). Viewed through this lens, missionary work is not simply a uni-directional process, from active missionary to passive recipient, but shows the newly illumined individual as a vital and indispensible actor in the process.