The Hour of the Church

This article by Vladimir Zelinsky, a Russian lay theologian, presents itself both as a theological meditation and a spiritual testimony on the religious renewal in Soviet Russia in the late 1980s. The author traces the inner journey of a generation which, having passed through the successive crises of dogmatic atheism, non-religious humanism and esoteric doctrines, arrives at a personal encounter with Christ and enters the Orthodox Church. The central idea is that this return to faith is not merely a sociological phenomenon, but a paschal dynamic: from the empty tomb to the proclamation of the Resurrection. The theological contribution lies in the articulation between individual conversion, Orthodox ecclesiology and the theology of theophany, set within the context of the millennium of the Russian Church and a society in search of repentance and renewal.