Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



April 9, 2010

The Quackery of Deepak Chopra


Chopra Blames Own Meditation for Baja Quake

April 5, 2010
AOL News
Katie Drummond

The U.S. Geological Survey is blaming day-to-day seismological changes for Sunday's 7.2 earthquake along the U.S.-Mexico border. But Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine practitioner and transcendental meditation guru, is pretty sure he knows what really happened.

"Had a powerful meditation just now -- caused an earthquake in Southern California," Chopra wrote to his nearly 179,000 Twitter followers shortly after the quake.

And then, to clarify: "Was meditating on Shiva mantra & earth began to shake," he tweeted. "Sorry about that."

Chopra might want to apologize directly to those in California, who haven't suffered significant infrastructure damage but are still bracing for more temblors, and to those in Mexico, where two are dead, hundreds are injured and thousands are still without power.

Transcendental meditation (TM) was largely popularized by Chopra, who's been dubbed "McMeditation" for the multimillion-dollar profits he's earned off books, DVDs and his Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, Calif. -- where a six-day mind-body wellness program runs around $2,500.

According to Chopra, at the crux of the meditation practice is "the field of possibilities, creativity, correlation ... where intention actualizes its own fulfillment."

Let's hope he's wrong about that, or the guru might have some explaining to do about what exactly his meditation session Sunday was hoping to actualize.

An hour after Chopra's Twitter confession, he vowed to one Twitter user, @WhiteMoon7, "Won't do it again -- promise."

But even the guru himself must not know his own strength. Since the promise, dozens of aftershocks have rattled the U.S.-Mexico border.

All the while, Chopra's staying safely above the reach of the ongoing quakes. According to his Twitter feed, the guru boarded a plane from California to Denver earlier this morning.

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