The following article is a reaction to Nadya Tolokonnova's (click here for a short biography) book, Read And Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide To Activism, of which the paperback version can be ordered (click here for the book). I will be reacting to the book as a Christian Fundamentalist and I hasten to add that other such Fundamentalists would have reacted differently to the book. In addition, I call this a reaction rather than a review because I will not be going through the book as I would if I was reviewing the it.
But first, we must talk about the state of many of my religiously conservative American Christians. Many of them are in what I call an apologetic panic. Christian Apologetics is about defending the Christian faith. But currently, we are in a panic about what to say in defense of the faith. This panic is evidenced by our tendency to try too hard to say too much either for Christianity or against those whom we regard as rivals to the faith. This apologetic panic is triggered by at least 1 of 2 causes: the past social failures of the Church in history and the success of unbelievers in addressing some of today's relevant issues.
We can see how this apologetic panic can be caused when we see the failures that the Church has experienced in the past. For example, for the past few centuries, the dominant branch of the Church in several Western nations has sided with wealth and power. We saw that preceding the French and Russian Revolutions as well as before the Spanish Revolution. An unintended consequence of siding with wealth and power made the Church a favorite target of revolutionaries once they got power. And by branches of the Church, I am referring to the Orthodox Church, the Roman Church and Protestants. And if that wasn't bad enough, the current American Evangelical trend is that of supporting the major political party that grants the most privileges to wealthy corporations in terms of tax breaks and the cutting of social responsibility ties. Of course we are talking about the Republican Party. In addition, the American conservative Church has a rich tradition of supporting racism, sexism, and classism in American history.
The other cause for our apologetic panic are the somewhat successful attempts at identifying and/or producing solutions for social injustices by individuals and groups who are outside of the Church. Many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians are being told by their leaders and influencers that Christians can ignore what these secular sources say because they have not added to what Christians have said or are saying. In addition, these leaders also often believe that even listening to or reading what they groups say can be dangerous our faith. So in essence, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians are being taught by their leaders and influencers to only listen to or read Christian sources on social justice issues.
What we are seeing in this second cause is what we see in how many religiously conservative Christian leaders and influencers interact with the social sciences. These leaders and influencers act as if they are in a turf war with the social sciences in explaining the world. Likewise, they act very similarly when interacting with secular individuals and groups whose cause revolves around social justice issues.
In the past, not seemingly all Christian leaders have reacted to secular social justice movements as if they were in a turf war. For example, when Martin Luther King Jr studied and reflected on Marxism/Communism, he ended with a different approach to it than today's religiously conservative Christians have taken to social justice workers. Now before reporting that, it should be noted that King wrongly conflated Marxism with Soviet Union Communism.
King called Marxism/Communism evil and yet he also agreed with the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who called it a 'Christian Heresy.' They called Marxism/Communism a Christian heresy because its concern for social justice and its criticisms of 19th century Capitalism should be essential parts of the Christian life. At the same time, they called it heretical because attached to its concerns for social justice and its criticisms of 19th century capitalism were beliefs that no Christian should ever hold. King wrote about his review of Marxism/Communism and how it compares with Capitalism in his book: Stride Toward Freedom (click here and go to pg 92 to find Kings discussion on Marxism. The webpage begins with pg 90 of the book).
After commenting on both Capitalism and Marxism/Communism, King concluded that we need to take a hybrid approach to our system by combining the best of Marxism with the best of Capitalism. He took that approach because he saw that while Communism forgot that life was individual, Capitalism forgets that life is social. And just perhaps, religiously conservative Christians like myself should take a similar approach to today's social justice movements and forms of wokism. That we need to at least develop hybrid approaches that include what social justice workers and leaders are saying with what we know from the Scriptures.
Such an approach is different from the current turf war approach taken now by the vast majority of religiously conservative American Christian leaders and influencers. It is different because instead of telling us that we can dismiss everything that unbelievers have to say about social justice, King's approach tells us that we should intently listen to and work with social justice concepts that were being promoted by unbelievers, especially by those who are real political leftists. To not do so while believing in evangelizing would be say to the world that they need to listen to us while we have no need to listen to them. Such an attitude can, for what can be inexplicable reasons for many religiously conservative Christians, turn off some people.
And so we come to Nadya Tolokonnikova and here book: Read And Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide To Activism. This book is specifically about being an activist. But in doing so, this book contains a lot of other useful information.
Because of some of the things that Tolokonnikova practices, stands for, and says, there are some of her ideas that no Christian should ever believe and act on. But when one reads her book and learns about the concerns she has and what she is doing to help people in need, we see a kind of approach to life that all Christians should have. And so just as King and Temple called Marxism a 'Christian heresy,' we could call Tolokonnikova and the Pussy Riot Art Collective 'Christian heretics.' Doing so would not state or imply that she is a Christian however. Seeing how she selectively uses the Scriptures and misses the foundational parts of the Gospel, we can safely conclude that she is not.
Having read her book, followed her Twitter page, and listened to her speak in videos, it is downright easy to underestimate the kind of person she is when one sees her references to sex work, her use of the word 'pussy' in talking about it beating fascists, and some of her performances with the art collective known as Pussy Riot. But to underestimate her would be to rob oneself of opportunities to learn from her. For Tolokonnikova is an an exceptionally strong person and a woman of great substance.
We can see in her the kind of strength that one would see in any man who has suffered through and triumphed over the physical and mental grind and torture that she has experienced. She is the founding member of an art collective that practices activism, she has started a prisoner rights group and a media company (click here for Media Zone), she has helped provide contributions to various charities, she has studied philosophy, she is well read, and she has a good analytical grasp of what is going on in parts of the world in addition to her understanding of her home nation. And despite her time in prison, which she used to further her understanding of people, she is speaking out against authoritarianism, oligarchy, and consumerism though some of that could result in her reliving her prison experience or worse.
She has been interviewed numerous times by cable news channels, given a TED talk, spoken to the US Congress as well as the British and European Parliaments, has been a recipient of a LennonOno Grant for peace, and is a co-recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.
She understands what real artists are suppose to do. For real artists are not there to use their abilities to entertain in order to anesthetize their audiences from real life. Rather, real artists are the first line of society's secular prophets who tell us where society and the state have gone wrong. And so she uses her art to more vividly expose her audiences to the real world in order to get them to react. She makes a good point in saying that perhaps the anxiety that many people suffer from are signs that the world, not those feeling the pain, needs to change. Her artistic efforts are sometimes silly, gross, or absurd. But she uses the bizarre to illustrate what is ludicrous in the world. She uses what is ridiculous but tolerable stunts to illustrate absurdities that should never be tolerated.
Though much of the world is either impressed or intimidated by Putin, she logically demonstrates what a weak man he is. That he lacks all of the good characteristics that most of us associate with being human. And because of their similarities, she is also able to provide a good analysis of Trump too.
In short, she has suffered much and despite that she has accomplished much more than many people who have not suffered at all have.
But of course her book has some shortcomings. She explicitly states that she is distrustful of experts. This is especially true as it pertains to medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. At the same time, she seems to accept what climate science experts have to say and makes a great point that we must reduce our consumption to address climate change. And what is implied by that is that if we were to downsize our consumption, which strikes at the heart of capitalism, we must share more of our wealth and resources to work against poverty at the same time.
But this distrust of experts would go against one of the people whom she reads and learns a lot from: Erich Fromm. In speaking against authoritarianism, Fromm made it a point to distinguish blind loyalty to authoritarian leaders from distrust of experts. It isn't that experts are always right. But they often are and a blind distrust of them can be harmful.
For example, the blind distrust of medical science during the pandemic helped contribute to America having one of the highest death rates from Covid during the pandemic. Believers in conspiracy theories from the Left, Liberals, and the Right chalked up the precautions and/or vaccines as government attempts to gain more control of us. This was especially prominent among Trump-loving Republicans but that dismissal of warning or suggestions from medical experts could be seen in people from all ideological persuasions.
That blind distrust in experts also enabled many people to participate in the January 6th Insurrection. For there, opinions from both experts in law, including judges appointed by Trump, and other government officials were blindly dismissed by those who were convinced, without evidence, that the election of Biden was because of fraud.
The point being made here is that there are times in Tolokonnikova's book where she tends to exercise some types of all-or-nothing thinking. Such think disables from making important distinctions such as which experts we can trust or what parts of the feminism she promotes should be followed and which parts should not. Sometimes, a kind of all-or-nothing thinking is part of a response to suffering trauma and the person employs that thinking so as to avoid making mistakes that could lead to suffering more traumas.
And, of course, we Christians could never accept her sexual mores or suggested alternative to families which came from an early Communist who was a feminist. It at this point that her use of the Scriptures and references to Christianity show a great selectivity. For while she will argue for equality between the sexes using a passage in Galatians where Paul states that there is no male or female, she neglects passages that talk about sexual purity and about the roles Paul designates for husbands and wives. But here, we Christians also have a distinction to make. We have to be able to tell the difference between Scriptural rules that just apply to Christians from those Scriptural rules that should also be applied to all in society.
Are there other things in her book that Christians cannot accept? Certainly. Are there ideas that she promotes that would not be good for society? Yes. But over all, Tolokonnikova has not only offered an inside view of the Pussy Riot Art Collective, she has provided an insightful view of as well as challenges to us in the world that would make the world a much better place should we follow some of them. I found it very worthwhile to read the book. And I believe that many religiously conservative Christians would benefit from reading it.
