Seraphima’s Extraordinary Adventure: A Christian Viewpoint to Totalitarian Resistance
Alexandra Strapko
With tears in her eyes, listening to the booming voices of her peer’s yell “God’s not real!” echo throughout the large ballroom of the orphanage, Seraphima could feel the weight of evil on her shoulders begin to tear down her faith. In the next moment, the floor beneath her began to glow and with some external, spiritual force backing every ounce of humanity in her she stated: “God exists!” while holding up her cross the headmistress had confiscated from her days prior. In the film, Seraphima’s Extraordinary Adventure, Orthodox Christian values and beliefs are highlighted, such as steadfastness and forgiveness, to be important for Seraphima’s faith in God and her relationships with others, respectively, therefore resisting totalitarian ideology rooted in atheistic and anti-religious framework, specifically through the abolition of religion as Shafarevich explains it in his philosophical work, The Socialist Phenomenon, because religion is “the bedrock of resistance” as Rod Dreher explains it in his work, Live Not By Lies. Seraphima’s remembered faith allows her to connect with and lean on her patron saint, Saint Seraphim, to resist the pressure of her peers and her superiors to renounce God, as well as give her the strength to forgive Rita for betraying their friendship after giving away her secret to the overseer of the orphanage. Seraphima’s strong faith allowed her to have the courage and spiritual background to resist the powerful suggestion of faithlessness and atheism, which are the arguments made by Shafarevich and Dreher in their respective works on socialist viewpoints and which social institutions resist that rhetoric. In today’s society there is a great threat to the survival of the human race especially by the legal operation of same-sex marriages and abortion which are severely anti-religious at their core; diminishing religiosity poses a threat to our society in being susceptible to totalitarian ideals and practices by minimizing morals and values.
The headmaster of the orphanage walked up to Seraphima standing over her with authority and asked her directly if she renounced her faith in God; she adamantly admitted that he exists and clung to her beliefs with great tenacity. Seraphima’s steadfast belief in God allowed her to reject the opportunity to renounce her faith, therefore resisting the atheistic rhetoric impressed upon her via the attempted abolition of religion incited by the Soviet regime. In this scene Seraphima was willing to put her faith above anything else, even if that meant she was to be sent away to prison or a camp for her belief (51:25). Her faith was so strong nothing was going to divert her from being different from her peers and even encouraged others with her tenacity. Similarly, in The Gulag Archipelago, there is a description of those who have especially strong faith are the most dangerous people to the Communist Party. Those with exceedingly tenacious faith are willing to give up that “survive at any price” mentality and allow God’s will to guide them, if that means starvation and death then so be it; he writes: “Because…what hold do they have on you?” (Solzhenitsyn 308). This exactly correct, what hold does one have over another if they do not even fear death? This absence of fear when confronted with a situation such as death, or in Seraphima’s case being ostracized from her fellow peers or being sent to a correctional facility where she would be all alone, defines and solidifies one’s identity as a Christian who puts those beliefs and values that God’s law teaches trumps all, even one’s life. This is especially impressive to witness a child of her age to have such a robust and pious Christian identity in spite of losing both her mother and father and moving to a foreign place where she knew no one. Moreover, Seraphima’s reluctance to let fear overcome her and renounce God in times of hardship reinforces her faith and identity as an Orthodox Christian.