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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Nativity</title>
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		<title>Russian Nativity Play: A Tale of Two Josephs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/russian-nativity-play-a-tale-of-two-josephs/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2014 05:40:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Oleg Atbashian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christmas play]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Communism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joseph]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nativity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stalin]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248317</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What happens to a Christmas play when Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248319" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Joseph-293x350.jpg" alt="Joseph" width="221" height="264" /></a>This &#8220;life imitates the People&#8217;s Cube&#8221; moment comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. What seems to be a spoof is a legitimate story via <a href="http://ria.ru/society/20141225/1040186712.html">RIA Novosti</a>, a Russian news agency. As a historical footnote, Nativity plays are a new concept in Russia, where Joseph Stalin is more known than the biblical Joseph, which occasionally causes Freudian slips like this one.</p>
<p>A St. Petersburg student mistakenly showed up dressed as Joseph Stalin to the Christmas play where he was supposed to play the biblical character of Joseph.</p>
<p>&#8220;Yesterday, my 12-year-old son participated in a school play. He told us ahead of time that he got the role of Joseph Stalin who is talking to some woman. It wasn&#8217;t a big surprise to us, as he has played parts in school plays before, and once he was even a watermelon,&#8221; wrote the student&#8217;s father Fyodor Gavrichenko on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205116943470500&amp;set=a.1318879219340.47466.1451565715&amp;type=1&amp;fref=nf">Facebook page</a>.</p>
<p>Gavrichenko said the whole family worked on making the costume &#8211; especially the grandmother, who sewed trouser stripes to the pants, found some old army boots, made a generalissimo mustache and a red folder with a big star.</p>
<p>They didn&#8217;t realize the mistake until the last moment because the play was in German as part of the boy&#8217;s foreign language class, and no one understood what the son&#8217;s lines meant. Apparently, the boy hadn&#8217;t been paying attention in class either. Instead of bringing the costume to school before the play, he showed the teacher its picture on his cell phone. The teacher thought it was a joke and said that the costume &#8220;rocks.&#8221;</p>
<p>The family sensed trouble when they saw their son&#8217;s classmate dressed as Magi. &#8220;Who are you?&#8221; asked the Magi. &#8220;I&#8217;m Mary&#8217;s husband… Joseph Stalin,&#8221; said the boy. His confidence shaken, the classmate went to the teacher: &#8220;Our Joseph turns out to be Stalin… Is that a good thing?&#8221; &#8220;What?&#8221; asked the teacher, as he pulled the curtain revealing the Nativity scene with Joseph and Mary. It was too late to change.</p>
<p>The plot thickened before the drama began. According to the father, Stalin&#8217;s outfit was a smash. The boy&#8217;s lines were accompanied by fits of hysterical laughter through the tears from other parents, some of whom reportedly fell off their chairs.</p>
<p>Those who can read the original Facebook post in Russian will notice that the father knows as little about the Nativity story as his son, confusing characters and their roles in the story. This is rather a norm in Russia, where erstwhile official atheism is only now being replaced by the official Orthodox Church. This St. Petersburg father couldn&#8217;t tell the shepherds from angels even if his son&#8217;s play weren&#8217;t in German. But at least he&#8217;s trying.</p>
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		<title>Remembering South Vietnam with an Ecumenical Christmas Card &#8211; by Mark D. Tooley</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/remembering-south-vietnam-with-an-ecumenical-christmas-card-by-mark-d-tooley/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=remembering-south-vietnam-with-an-ecumenical-christmas-card-by-mark-d-tooley</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/remembering-south-vietnam-with-an-ecumenical-christmas-card-by-mark-d-tooley/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:08:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44490</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is the religious Left trying to atone for its sin of supporting communist tyranny?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44716" title="viet-hk1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/viet-hk1.jpg" alt="viet-hk1" width="360" height="296" /></p>
<p>The National Council of Churches (NCC) has dispatched its 2009 Christmas card and end of the year solicitation, advertising its “ecumenical efforts for our common witness in this fragile world.”  It asserts that the NCC “makes visible the gift of our unity in Christ” through fighting for “adequate health care” (i.e. Obamacare), speaking out on behalf of the poor (demanding an ever expanding Welfare State), and advancing “economic, gender and racial justice.”  It also touts its increasing Jewish-Christian and Muslim-Christian dialogues, though probably the focus is more on the latter, almost always accompanied by silence about human rights in Islamic culture.</p>
<p>More telling was the art for the NCC Christmas card.  It features a Nativity scene by a Vietnamese artist, Le Van Tai, whom the card explains was resettled as a refugee in Australia in 1985 after spending four years in a Hong Kong refugee camp.   He was not reunited with his wife and family until 1992.  Le created his Nativity scene while in the Hong Kong camp, with encouragement from the Hong Kong Fellowship of Christian Artists.</p>
<p>Why did Le flee Vietnam to endure 4 years in a refugee camp?  Why was he separated from his family for 11 years?  How did he get to Hong Kong?  Of course, the NCC Christmas card does not answer these uncomfortable questions.    During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, nearly 2 million South Vietnamese escaped their new communist rulers by risking their lives on rickety boats that departed into the South China Sea at night, evading communist gun boats.  About one third of the escapees died at sea, by drowning, exposure, or piracy.    The more fortunate ones eventually got to places like Hong Kong, where they hoped for eventual resettlement in America, Australia, or elsewhere in the West.</p>
<p>Presumably Le escaped capture, had a sturdy boat, avoided pirates, and arrived in Hong Kong safely.  But he still had to languish for 4 years in a camp.  And he endured an 11 year separation from his family in Vietnam, whose communist tyrants were not always eager to allow wives, parents and children of capitalist-loving escaped boat people to rejoin their loved ones in the West, except for a price.  What would compel a Vietnamese to risk the nightmare of unsafe travel on the South China Sea, with a 30 percent chance of death, not to mention an uncertain future in a camp and years of separation from family?</p>
<p>Of course, the NCC’s Christmas card would not explain.  But after Communist North Vietnam’s “liberation” of South Vietnam in 1975, a vicious and impoverishing dictatorship was installed.  It did not murder millions as their Communist Cambodian neighbors did.   But the Vietnamese Communists did imprison over 1 million in re-education camps, and they did murder tens of thousands of suspected counter revolutionaries, not to mention enslaving an entire nation under a one party state that banned political opposition, religious freedom, private property, and free speech.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, what was the justice-seeking NCC saying about Communist-ruled Vietnam while hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees like Le were trying to escape for their lives, especially to avoid reeducation camps?   In 1977, NCC relief officials testified before a U.S. Congressional committee about a Vietnamese reeducation camp they had visited, which they likened to a “small tropical resort.”  They were much “impressed” by Vietnam’s “prudent policy” educating its people for their “new role in society.”  They further noted that the “entire process of reeducation is one reflecting the government’s commitment to encouraging and enabling people to exercise their rights, restored as full participants in Vietnam’s future.”</p>
<p>One NCC relief official even commended Vietnamese “reeducation camps” for helping “former [South Vietnamese] officers” be ”reconstituted back into society as full citizens.”   He contrasted this seamless process with ugly America, where “draft dodgers or deserters have not yet found that means to become full participants back in U.s. society.”  He concluded:  “As a churchperson, I would have to identify with the Vietnamese as those who have chosen the better way to heal the wounds of war.”</p>
<p>The head of the NCC relief agency in 1977 joined with then NCC President United Methodist Bishop James Armstrong to sign a <em>New York Times</em> ad defending the “present government of Vietnam,” which “should be hailed for its moderation and for its extraordinary effort to achieve reconciliation among all of its people.”   The NCC’s relief arm even channeled at least half a million dollars to Vietnam’s “New Economic Zones,” where South Vietnamese were forcibly herded as part of their involuntary integration into communism.</p>
<p>An NCC relief brochure of that time hailed the new Communist Vietnam as a “nation of dedicated people, hard at work, and enthusiastically building a new society from the rubble of war…’without bitterness or rancor, and eager for friendship with the United States.”   An NCC relief delegation visited Vietnam and afterwards bubbled with praise for Communist Vietnam for its “pioneering, new-nation spirit,” its “healthier economy,” its work for the “welfare of its people.”  Concluded one gullible NCC official:  “It would bring a lump to your throat to see them cooperating and working together.”  One NCC official even condemned fleeing Vietnamese refugees:  “Every country is entitled to its own people.”</p>
<p>Thankfully, Le did not share the NCC official’s view that he rightfully was the property of the Communist Vietnamese government.  He courageously escaped, enduring who knows what horrors, and survived to become an artist and poet apparently living comfortably in Australia with his family.  His painting of the Nativity, with a South Pacific motif, is quite good.  The NCC Christmas card, in featuring the picture, cites the Scripture from James 1:17:   “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above…”   By spotlighting Le’s work, is the NCC perhaps subtly atoning for its sins?</p>
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