Bosnia: A Short History

Eastern Europe is, in general, a fascinating part of our world.  There are many reasons for this, ranging from greasy, tasty street food to dilapidated concrete housing blocks, as well as the contrasts and conflicts such as earthy traditionalism coupled with rich and vibrant cultures that have produced many world-class authors, artists, and musicians that are embedded in the cultures of the peoples of Eastern Europe.  It seems that conflict, in one form or another, has also been a fairly stable part of a history otherwise riddled with instability thanks to imperial conquest, religious disputations, and the natural result of a mixing of conflicting cultural values because of the region’s geographical location between the East and West.  The countries of the former Yugoslavia all, to one level or another, suffer from these divisions and contradictions.  Bosnia and Herzegovina may be at the forefront when it comes to so many opposing ideas, views, and cultures shoved into one country’s borders.  The Balkans’ similarities to the Caucasus have intrigued me for a while, so learning more about the history of the Bosnian people seemed like a natural fit for my curiosities.

Bosnia: A Short History by Noel Malcolm (ISBN: 0-8147-5561-5) explains just who the Bosnians are and who they have been throughout history.  Their history, like those of all the peoples of the Balkan region, is muddled thanks to it being at the crossroads of the East and the West.  Although rarely sought after militarily, both the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs brought it under control at different times.  Before that, though, Bosnia had carved out its own identity seperate from its neighbors, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia.  Bosnian history goes back to the ancient Illyrians and continues through Rome, Byzantium, and various Slavic tribes and rulers.  It continued, to a certain extent, in the short time period between World War I and the introduction of Communism.  It made it through the fall of Yugoslavia and continues its unique fractured and rather dysfunctional way today.  Religion, both Christianity and Islam, as well as earlier, pagan forms of worship, have played a major role in the forming of the Bosnian people.  The history, like much of Eastern Europe, is fragmented and often overly complicated, but it is rich and features a people who present something unique to the world.

Books about obscure topics have a tendency to by dry.  That only applied to this book in the section about the Bosnian Church.  Malcolm decided to dedicate an entire chapter to the church, which, in my opinion, was a debatable choice.  The subject matter was definitely relevant to the book’s overall argument, but there just wasn’t enough material to keep things moving in that section.  One would really have to be a specialist in the field to care enough to get into that chapter, which dragged because of arcane details about an enigmatic at best religious organization.  Other than that one flaw, I thought the book was interesting and presented on a relatively small number of pages a lot of essential information about the region and its people.  Given that the Balkans are such a complex collection of peoples, histories, religions, and modern states, it was quite a feat to get it sorted into coherent chapters and present any kind of argument.  Malcolm tried to make two major arguments.  First, Bosnians were and are a distinct ethnic group in the Balkans.  They are not some kind of off-shoot from the Serbs, Croats, or any other people.  They have a clear and distinct history.  This argument I think he succeeded at making.  Second, he contended that Bosnians have lived in relative peace with their neighbors, the Croats and Serbs, and the modern-day state of affairs, which led to the wars and attendant war crimes after the break-up of Yugoslavia were actually anomalies.  I did not quite agree with his assertion because whatever peace did exist, it seemed to live under a surface taught with tension.  Maybe the Bosnians did not enter into out-and-out warfare with their neighbors on a regular basis, but they certainly did not go out of their way to cooperate or increase connections.  In fact, his drawn-out bit about the Bosnian Church seems to support my idea in that they went for their own church not because of any great theological differences as compared to Orthodoxy or Catholocism, but simply because they preferred isolation from their neighbors, who presented a real and present threat.  The book was informative and makes one think, no matter the conlusions the reader reaches.

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The Morning Breaks

Russia and the other Slavic countries to which it is closely tied are fascinating places and they are captivating across a wide variety of fields.  Russian history is interesting with its ties to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; Russian politics, whether that be Putin or Stalin or Gorbachev, are intriguing; endless spellbinding tomes have been written about Russian spies, foreign policy, and military affairs; Russian food like pelmeni, bliny, and pirozhki is excellent; and the Russian people are equally engrossing and mind boggling with their mix of hospitality, Oriental-style ways, European sensibilities, and rude coarseness.  If one wants to study a particular angle, it can be done in Russia.  Russia also has a fairly rich religious heritage, the Soviet attempts at state-sponsored or state-enforced atheism notwithstanding.

In The Morning Breaks: Stories of Conversion and Faith in the Former Soviet Union by Howard L. Biddulph (ISBN: 978-1-57345-152-9), one can read about a relatively new chapter in that deep religious history.  President Biddulph was the leader of the first mission in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union (his responsibilities actually started just before the USSR fell).  He describes the miraculous nature of the early missionary work in Ukraine, often incorporating the thoughts and experiences of the first, pioneering Ukrainian Saints.  Some of testimonies of these people, always simple, are very strong.  All the experiences show the loving guidance of a Father in Heaven who wants His children to succeed in all that they undertake.  He talked of the people who made the Church successful in those wild times because of their extreme faith and true willingness to be instruments in the hands of the Almighty.  There were some of the typical-for-Eastern-Europe struggles with infinite layers of bureaucracy that were resolved; there were smaller miracles such as the sun shining through as Ukraine was dedicated for missionary work; and there were the many individualized miracles that took place each and every time a missionary decided to open his mouth one more time or an investigator decided to follow through on a commitment.  After a long period of stagnation and darkness, the Iron Curtain had fallen and the light of the gospel shone through to take its place.

The book was written in a very informal style with many excerpts from President Biddulph’s journals, his wife’s journals, and letters from or interviews with the early Ukrainian Saints.  It was, of course, intriguing for me, a former missionary in the territory of the former Soviet Union, to read about how another one of those countries came to meet the gospel.  Ukraine is fascinating from the standpoint of Church growth because it was opened to missionaries right on the heels of Russia, and is much smaller, but seems to have done much better as they had a stake there first and a temple, too.  I liked the stories, a couple of them similar to things I experienced first hand.  Missions are something it’s easy to wax nostalgic about, but they’re also something that has the power to rekindle the desires for righteousness and obedience to God’s law that were so strong while serving, and that is probably the best part of the book.

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Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns

The U.S. Constitution is an amazing document.  Worked out, written, and ratified by inspired men, it created a form of government that had never been tried before.  More importantly, it enshrined rights that men have not because some government deigns confer them, but because they are provided by God.  The Founding Fathers had very intimate experiences with governments that were tyrannical in nature and oppressed their subjects.  When they designed the Constitution and subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights, they did so knowing what could go wrong with governments.  They had also just recently experienced the Revolutionary War and knew what it took to cast off the shackles of persecution from a government that no longer serves the express purpose of government, to help its citizens “exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2).  They very clearly understood that the overthrow of a government was a very serious act, but that in extreme circumstances, it was necessary.  In fact, in the Declaration of Independence, they wrote, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  An unarmed populace was extremely unlikely to be able to carry out its right to a government that ensured liberty: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”  They therefore wrote the second amendment to the Constitution, ensuring our right to the arms necessary to protect our rights.

The Revolutionary War and an oppressive monarchist government are ancient history in the average American’s mind.  That’s kind of too bad, though, because it has warped people’s minds as to why the Founding Fathers thought it so important to bear arms.  In Control: Exposing the Truth about Guns by Glenn Beck (ISBN: 978-1-4767-3987-8), the arguments typically trotted out by those who oppose guns (they would say they just support so-called gun control, but that’s just putting a fancy name on one thing so people think one is going on about something else) are dealt with one by one with logic and facts.  In fairness, the anti-gun crowd claims to be using logic and facts, too, but the book’s careful look at various studies puts most of the anti-gun arguments to shame.  The gun massacres that make headlines are shown to be the anomalies that they truly are, for example, especially since Beck gives page after page of example debunking the idea that gun massacres are an American phenomenon and that they’ve never been stopped by a level-headed gun owner.  Beck also talks a lot about our culture of violence and debunks a lot of the patently false and simply misinformed ideas regarding violence in video games.  In the end, though, he focuses on the real point of it all.  The examples, studies, facts, statistics, and even a few opinions all point to the idea that the Founders were men who loved liberty.  They regarded liberty with such high respect that they were willing to die for it.  They knew that only liberty provided the basis for the pursuit of happiness.  When we allow the state to control the choices we make, including choices about firearms, we are surrendering our liberty, making it harder for us to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

I am usually somewhat leery of these types of books because they’re written by big-name conservatives writing for a conservative audience.  They are sometimes peppered with references to the mental shortcomings of liberals or other knocks that make little sense (as a self-described conservative, I think the leaders of the liberal movement are anything but dumb).  This book had blessedly few of those, although there were a couple times I was exasperated by an inappropriate jab at the Left.  I was very impressed with the research and sound analysis presented in the book based on study after peer-reviewed study on everything having to do with the gun debate.  I especially liked how Beck examined the very studies often cited by gun-control advocates because Beck didn’t take them out of context or go for the soundbite quote.  That is probably considered boring by some and is why it doesn’t make the talking head shows or YouTube, but it’s informative and allows the reader to make a more well-informed decision.  There was only one section in the book out of at least a score that had me scratching my head at the end.  All in all, the argumentation was strong, and that’s good because the writing suffered from an attempt to keep it from being too dry.  I say be dry and make a stronger point based purely on logic and not at all on wit, which really isn’t an argument at all, although it, sadly, works all to well.  If you want to be well informed regarding what gun control really does and does not do and why it is so unhealthy for our nation (and, really, for people anywhere in this world), this book is probably worth your time.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.