December 12, 2018

"So perhaps instead of secularization it makes sense to talk about the fragmentation and personalization of Christianity — to describe America as a nation of Christian heretics..."

"...  if you will, in which traditional churches have been supplanted by self-help gurus and spiritual-political entrepreneurs.... There has to come a point at which a heresy becomes simply post-Christian, a moment when you should just believe people who claim they have left the biblical world-picture behind, a context where the new spiritualities add up to a new religion.... [T]he term 'paganism' might be reasonably revived to describe the new American religion, currently struggling to be born.... [The idea is] that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent. This paganism is not materialist or atheistic; it allows for belief in spiritual and supernatural realities. It even accepts the possibility of an afterlife.... What ancient paganism did successfully was to unite this kind of popular supernaturalism with its own forms of highbrow pantheism and civil-religiosity.... To get a fully revived paganism in contemporary America... the philosophers of pantheism and civil religion would need to build a religious bridge to the New Agers and neo-pagans, and together they would need to create a more fully realized cult of the immanent divine, an actual way to worship, not just to appreciate, the pantheistic order they discern."

Writes Ross Douthat in "The Return of Paganism/Maybe there actually is a genuinely post-Christian future for America" (NYT).

Douthat wants organized religion. We all have our preference on the spectrum from order to chaos. He's too much of an order guy for my taste.

72 comments:

Jersey Fled said...

Sounds to me like Ross has it just about right.

David Begley said...

The Left’s new religion is Environmentalism with Global Warming as the main sacrament. See UW post below.

tim maguire said...

Slightly off topic:

God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator,

This always disturbed me about Jesus and the idea of "God the father." The whole point of the biblical God, the God of Genesis, who created the heavens and the earth, is that Gods is above nature, not a part of it. But sex is part of nature, part of God's creation. So to say that God is male or female, that God impregnated Mary and has a child, is to reduce God, to bring him (yeah, yeah, I ain't saying "it") within nature and make him less than he was. The kinder gentler God of the New Testament is less of a God than the angry vengeful God of the Old.

iowan2 said...

Confusing faith with Church, causes the ramblings like Douthat's. It's common. Must people in church have little to no practiced faith.

traditionalguy said...

And the Eternal Creator God laughs, while His Son prepares to return to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and to Judge the quick and the dead.

Michael The Magnificent said...

The Left’s new religion is Environmentalism with Global Warming as the main sacrament.

And abortion of their own offspring as their burnt offerings, and overpopulation as a mortal sin.

Leland said...

When a person advocating for paganism proceeds to lecture me on what Christianity is; I instantly understand they are wasting both of our time.

Henry said...

Douthat wants organized religion.

Exactly my thought.

He should write a self-help book.

narciso said...

No, this how we got here, instead of where we came from.

rhhardin said...

Americans are gnostics, according to Harold Bloom (The American Religion). They all feel they were present at the creation.

Temujin said...

"We all have our preference on the spectrum from order to chaos. He's too much of an order guy for my taste."

Another way to illustrate this would be to ask if you prefer to live your life in the city Portland is becoming or the city Indianapolis is becoming?

Henry said...

He is astute to note the extent to which spiritual belief in the Western world is post-Christian. This was interesting enough as an idea for me to link through. Here's another passage:

The result is a nation where Protestant awakenings have given way to post-Protestant wokeness, where Reinhold Niebuhr and Fulton Sheen have ceded pulpits to Joel Osteen and Oprah Winfrey, where the prosperity gospel and Christian nationalism rule the right and a social gospel denuded of theological content rules the left.

The whole essay is well worth reading. Douthat observes the flotsam silliness of much of the new age movement. His suggestions to give it rigor can be summed up in an earlier paragraph:

[The absence of ritual structure and practice] points to the essential weakness of a purely intellectualized pantheism: It invites its adherents to commune with a universe that offers suffering and misery in abundance, which means that it has a strong appeal to the privileged but a much weaker appeal to people who need not only sense of wonder from their spiritual lives but also, well, help.

rhhardin said...

Pagan music tends to be whiny sitar music.

Bob Boyd said...

"Douthat wants organized religion."

No doubt there's a role for government.

gilbar said...

Tim that's Not in Vermont said... So to say that God is male or female, that God impregnated Mary and has a child, is to reduce God, to bring him (yeah, yeah, I ain't saying "it") within nature and make him less than he was. The kinder gentler God of the New Testament is less of a God than the angry vengeful God of the Old.

Robert Graves wrote in King Jesus (and more fully in the Nazarene Bible, Restored), that it wasn't GOD that personally impregnated Mary, it was one of Herod's sons; making Jesus, LITERALLY, King of the Jews. Mary's dad (according to Graves) was one of the High Priests and thus (according to Graves) the rogue prince was doing GOD's work, was Acting as GOD, when he and Mary hooked up. Herod then Kills (another) son, and Joseph, under orders from GOD marries Mary and etc.

The disturbing thing about Graves' hypothesis is that it's so crazy it just might work

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

As long as religion isn't particularly organized, individuals remain free to say exactly what the important things mean, and what rituals are suggested or required by a certain belief. I've met Americans who consider themselves Christians who have "shopped" for the right church, that fits them; it's hard to believe Americans and other modern people would give up this kind of individualism in large numbers. Tocqueville wrote in the 1840s that Roman Catholicism was the great "other" for modern democrats, and would have some appeal for exactly this reason; today the Church of Rome may be too hip to enjoy that status, and this may help us understand the appeal of Islam.

Intellectual pantheism: OK, maybe taking a powerful form with environmentalism. We must acknowledge past mistakes in our treatment of "nature." We must at least flirt with the idea that there was a primitive life that was a lot better. More consistently, however, we want more technology, not less, in order to plan and manage forests, crops, cities, and human life with a goal that is somehow "happiness." As Douthat says, it is not strictly materialistic, but the body is a reference point: we may be afraid that big business is poisoning us, or making the earth an impossible place to live; we want our bodies to be comfortable and safe. Is sex more enjoyable in a place of safety, or a place of danger? Hmmm.....
Popular rituals, somewhat embarrassing to intellectuals: roadside memorials, possibly inspired by Catholic "stations of the Cross"; communicating with the dead. People do like to have specific things to do, to fill their time and respond somehow to spiritual or religious beliefs. When the intellectuals pay for carbon credits to make up for their (relentless) jet travel, it is a bit like the sale of indulgences to remove the taint of sin, and a bit like a weekly requirement of Confession and Mass. The relentless preaching of the progressives has clear religious overtones.

narciso said...

No that is heresy, it is relayed in mark the genealogy of jesus, going back to jacob.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

So to say that God is male or female, that God impregnated Mary and has a child, is to reduce God, to bring him (yeah, yeah, I ain't saying "it") within nature and make him less than he was.

God the Father is a metaphor. It says in the Bible that God is a spirit.

"God is spirit and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and truth."

John 4:24

No Christian thinks that God is actually an old guy with a long beard. And God didn't "impregnate" Mary. She was a virgin, that's what makes the whole thing miraculous.

mezzrow said...

The Left’s new religion is Environmentalism with Global Warming as the main sacrament.

There are competing faiths, working to the same end. The Green religion you describe competes with anti-racism, gender liberation, and that old secular church favorite, socialism. Part of the developing catechism is to pay lip service to the other faiths while tearing down the old order. When the old believers are silent or dead, the new faiths can work out their placement on the totem pole of these ideologies.

narciso said...

Heretics have to believe things more ridiculous than the bible, Catholicism relies on more institutional memory than the Word itself.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

It invites its adherents to commune with a universe that offers suffering and misery in abundance, which means that it has a strong appeal to the privileged but a much weaker appeal to people who need not only sense of wonder from their spiritual lives but also, well, help.

Christianity's first spread among the poor and slaves because its adherents offered material help and because it taught that despite their current oppressed state that God loved and cared for them. Paganism was mostly about appeasing powerful, arbitrary forces. I quit paying attention to Douthat after he came up with the "Benedict Option." Basically, in order to escape the depraved modern society and coming persecution of Christians, Christians should isolate themselves into enclaves in order to support one another. The problem with that is, if something like that was needed, it wouldn't be allowed.

gilbar said...

narciso said... No that is heresy,

IF you mean Robert Graves, that was pretty much his point; Actually he'd say that your jumbled up version of the Gospel is The Real Heresy.

Donn said...

@ Ron Winkleheimer said...

"I quit paying attention to Douthat after he came up with the "Benedict Option.""

Wrong guy.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

@Donn

You are correct. It was Rod Dreher. I always get those two confused.

CStanley said...

It is likely true that Douthat prefers organized religion, much more so than Althouse...but I can’t see how that was inferred from this article, There’s very little about what Douthat prefers, and much about his observations of what he fears is happening in our culture. From the blog post and some of the comments I’m wondering if people misread him as though he was a proponent of organized paganism.

sykes.1 said...

Harold Bloom's "The American Religion" (Simon & Shuster, 1992) is well worth reading. He believes that all the Old World religions have undergone a sea change in coming to America. In particular, he thinks Gnosticism have had a rebirth in all of them. Mormonism is the quintessential American faith.

Shouting Thomas said...

More lengthy explanations for wanting to sleep in on Sunday morning instead of getting up, making yourself presentable and going to church to pray with your brethren...

It's just sloth.

etbass said...

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheath his handiwork." (Psalm 19:1). This was good enough for men three thousand years ago. But now we are so much more brilliant. We have it figured out and God has to conform to our ideas and notions rather than the other way around.

Paco Wové said...

"There are competing faiths, working to the same end. The Green religion you describe competes with anti-racism, gender liberation, and that old secular church favorite, socialism."

And radical egalitarianism. But historically pantheism has been very syncretic – the Romans were always fine with adopting new gods, as long as the old ones still got their due. So I don't see that the branches of the New Church of the Left will compete that strongly. They might – some strain might go all Bolshevik on the rest and exterminate the others – but it seems just as likely that they would co-exist in a big squabbling crowd.

Carol said...

today the Church of Rome may be too hip to enjoy that status,

After I joined the Church in 1993 I was disappointed that it wasn't the great conservative monolith that it seemed to be in 1960. The pastors assure me that's a good thing.

Oh well.

Shouting Thomas said...

Althouse is religious and belonged all her life to a religious institution.

Her religion is that bizarre, fucked up mix of gay worship and Marxist feminism.

School is and always was her religion. She worked all her life in an institution, the University of Wisconsin Law School, that, like all U.S. colleges and professional schools, demands obedience to her religious dogma and banishes the heretics.

Shouting Thomas said...

In fact, I'd say that that fucked up mess of gay worship and Marxist feminism that Althouse preaches is a best argument I've read in the past couple of decades for organized religion, specifically, Catholicism.

Althouse just keeps dithering with morality so that the people she likes can screw without offense, while she lectures the rest of us (which is to say ordinary Christians) on how we should screw.

Whirred Whacks said...

Shouting Thomas: <>

I like this comment so much that I’ll use the Althouse Portal later today. My shopping balm should soothe Anne’s butt-hurt of ST’s truthful zinger!

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...


“Confusing faith with Church, causes the ramblings like Douthat's. It's common. Must people in church have little to no practiced faith.”

Very common indeed. But try explaining it to someone who has neither faith nor religion. Secularism has built it’s own wall out of strawmen and stereotypes.

Fernandinande said...

Summary: Superstitious people are superstitious.

Mark said...

Douthat wants organized religion.

So I take it that you also want to abolish law schools (together with law professorships and law professor pensions) and go back to reading the law and apprenticeships?

Vance said...

Well, it is true that the left has embraced the old pagan gods, just under new names. Moloch for the abortionists, Baal and Ashtoreth for the libertines, Gaia/Persephone for the environmentalists, and all the Atheists are really worshipping Chaos.

The Lord God contended with all of these ideas before, and won. The same will happen again. Eventually.

Henry said...

In fact, I'd say that that fucked up mess of gay worship and Marxist feminism that Althouse preaches is a best argument I've read in the past couple of decades for organized religion, specifically, Catholicism.

Why stop at Catholicism?

Jersey Fled said...

What Vance said.

mockturtle said...

" And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.

FIDO said...

In America, it has, until recently been a Protestant nation.

A bunch of Puritans would build a New Jerusalem in Massachusetts until enough people disagreed with the pastor and they moved 10 miles down the road and started the New New Jerusalem.

This bred tolerance since you wanted the ability to your own goofy ideas, you were forced to allow those goofs down the road get it totally wrong.

It was a nation of broadly agreeing heretics. The Left has NO tolerance on their aspects of Ideology. THAT is the Organized Religion.

The Catholic Church burned ideological heretics. When Henry VIII established HIS Church, he killed heretics. When Charles II put his Screws in the Church of England, he had the Star Chamber and the Puritans went to Massachusetts in self defense.

I also read the histories. Paganism is the religion of elites. It's aspects were monarchy, polygamy, slavery and serfdom. It is the 'Buffet' Religion: where one gets to pick and choose one's morality. 'I love all life...but I can punch a 'Nazi' and celebrate the murder of my enemies as karma. Plus I get to do drugs and indulge in 'true luv' (adultery)'

No thanks.

Not saying this is not a cultural phenomena, but this is not travel in a positive direction.

JHapp said...

Too bad he didn't live to see it but Hitler won.

gbarto said...

I'd distinguish pantheism - God is everything - and panentheism - God is in everything.

I think of Luther's reaction to the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the PseudoAeropagite and wonder if this is really new.

Unknown said...

Ah, yes, that evil, corrupt organized religion that stresses community and responsibility for your fellow people. The disorganized variety mainly rejects any responsibility for your brothers and sisters.

MadTownGuy said...

Leland said...
"When a person advocating for paganism proceeds to lecture me on what Christianity is; I instantly understand they are wasting both of our time."

This.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Christianity is not an organized religion. It was rebelling against the organized religions of Jesus's time. The pharisees had become so "organized" that the rituals themselves had taken on more importance than what is in people's hearts. The Christ and His apostles went from town to town holding small group meetings in people's homes, and occasionally an outdoor gathering (like the one where the miracle of the loaves and fishes happened). Paul, in his writinfs stressed that future iterations of "the church" emulate the early Christians in their small groups, local focus, etc.

The Catholic church is organized and it is based on Christianity, but in the opinion of many it is antithetical to the non-hierarchical structure that Christ modeled. Many other "church" organizations are derivative of the Catholic model, or have split from "official" state churches in Europe. Baptists hew close to the original model, in theory, but simply by having a huge organization (Southern Baptist Convention) that invites bureaucracy and lack of focus they fail the test IMO.

So for many, "true Christianity" is unorganized, non-denominational, unaffiliated and locally focused. Hence the rise of suburban megachurches that "preach the gospel" and attend to the needs of the poor in their own communities. People who don't understand what "churches" or "Christians" are supposed to do can read the letters to the seven churches in Revelations. In them, John tells these selected churches exactly what they are doing wrong and its all relevant to today's various "churches" regardless of affiliation.

sean said...

Considering how bossy Prof. Althouse is about other people's clothing, sex lives, etc., it's strange for her to say that someone else is too much of an order guy.

mockturtle said...

Mike @ 10:05: Thank you. Very well explained. As I have said before, Christianity is NOT a 'religion'. It is a relationship with God [Yahweh, not Allah] through Christ.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Thanks Turtle. Part of Americans’ “common knowledge” used to be Biblical literacy. I lament its decline.

Mark said...

Christianity is not an organized religion. It was rebelling against the organized religions of Jesus's time.

Never mind that Jesus purposely chose 12 Apostles who were distinguished from everyday disciples/followers and who in turn chose successors. Or that Jesus also specifically spoke about establishing a church.

William said...

After death, the true believers stood in the cool, white light of the antechamber and awaited the final judgment. Then, in a moment, God appeared before them. "They told us you didn't exist and yet here You are," they cried out. "Well,they were wrong about that," God informed them. "They told us that there was no afterlife" the recently deceased said. "Well, they were right about that," God replied. Then with a puff of breath he dissolved them into atoms and evergy waves and nothingness.

mockturtle said...

Mark contends: Or that Jesus also specifically spoke about establishing a church.

The church is the body of all believers in Christ. Christ Himself is the Head of the body. Not the pope, not the RCC.

Kay said...

Interesting column. Much better than Andrew Sullivan’s hysterical, most recent take in NY Mag.

hombre said...

It’s neither mysterious nor interesting. Douthat should read the Bible.

Matthew 3:12
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Or, more succinctly, God is separating the wheat from the chaff. Chaff is not new. Call them pagans, Democrats, lefties, whatever.

glenn said...

“" if you will, in which traditional churches have been supplanted by self-help gurus and spiritual-political entrepreneurs.”

A lot of two bit hustlers among the latter and six bit hustlers among the former. But it keeps them from having to pick peaches.

n.n said...

Religion is a moral philosophy, a behavioral protocol. Whether it is liberal, progressivism, or Christianity, there is a [political correctness] religious order, and there is an established [Pro-Choice] Church (i.e. organized). There is also faith: Twilight, which is notably a conflation of logical domains, and a variety of traditions favored by each special and peculiar sect. The only difference is whether the philosopher is God, gods, or mortal gods and goddesses. #PrinciplesMatter

hombre said...

Tim Maguire wrote: “So to say that God is male or female, that God impregnated Mary and has a child, is to reduce God, to bring him (yeah, yeah, I ain't saying "it") within nature and make him less than he was. The kinder gentler God of the New Testament is less of a God than the angry vengeful God of the Old.”

God is God. What we “say” about God is not controlling. It helps to get a handle on the meaning of “omnipotent.”

Mark Nielsen said...


In Mormon practice, one meeting each month is set aside as a sort of "open mic" format where any member can share a testimonial of their faith. These "testimony meetings" form a bond among believers and serve to reinforce commonly held beliefs.

I recently attended a day-long university event meant to train us on diversity issues. I knew the vibe of the meeting felt familiar, but I didn't realize where the familiarity was coming from until about halfway through the afternoon. It was a big testimony meeting -- only the nature of the beliefs being expressed distinguished it from what I see on the first Sunday of each month.

I guess that isn't really a surprise. It's an effective mechanism to solidify beliefs that aren't (or can't be) based on observation or logic. While I'm sure there are elements of such quasi-religious phenomena on both the right and left portions of our political system, I do believe it's more obvious and well-developed on the left. The modern left shows every sign of being an emerging national religion. It has a rigidly enforced orthodoxy and treats heretics with the ruthlessness of an inquisition.

Yancey Ward said...

We will regret the fall of organized religion in the West- which means Christianity. I think the belief in an afterlife, and a belief of future consequences for those taken in this one, is one of the prime factors in civilized behavior. And I write this as someone who believes that there is literally nothing beyond this life any of us personally.

Henry said...

Looks like the church of smug certitude welcomes everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Mark said...

Who said anything about the Catholic Church, mock?

Bilwick said...

As a non-religious libertarian, I always get a chuckle out of "liberals" (by which I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators") criticizing the Religious Right for being "theocrats."

mockturtle said...

Who said anything about the Catholic Church, mock?

I did.

Rosalyn C. said...

I thought the discussion about whether organized Christianity is the church spoken about by Jesus was interesting. Probably good to recognize that organized Christianity is not the church envisioned by Jesus. He may be the Son of God but He failed to set up the religion he preached about. I find Christians’ general ideas and ignorance about Judaism, which is the foundation of Christianity, both sad and troubling, a remaining stain of ignorance lingering in the church which still forms the basis of anti-semitism, meaning hatred of the Jewish people.

If you understand Judaism from a Kabbalah or esoteric point of view, the entire creation including our world, is a 3 dimensional holographic manifestation of the divine. Literally everything is part of God, God is literally part of everything. This is in contradiction to the claim that "The whole point of the biblical God, the God of Genesis, who created the heavens and the earth, is that Gods [sic] is above nature, not a part of it …” Further proof of this is the fact that Jews put no emphasis on an afterlife, the point is living now.

Of course not everyone has the ability to experience such depths of creation or heights of revelation. The premise of the ritual observance of Judaism is that by living according to religious principles i.e., following the Laws, and desiring with all your heart and mind to know God, ultimately a person's life experience includes an awareness and intimate relationship with God, also called "God Consciousness.” Not only Judaism, but Hinduism and Islam have that expressed goal.The premise of Hinduism is that you keep coming back until you develop the nervous system capable of that God experience. You can speed up the process through practices like meditation, yoga. Christians seem to be more interested in developing a relationship with Jesus, rejecting the world, and getting into heaven, an eternal afterlife. God consciousness doesn’t mean that you think you are God but that you do experience yourself as part of God's creation and that God is not separate from the world or you. I wouldn't call this paganism.

narciso said...

yes, it's disappointing the gospels in particular rely much on Isiah, although the books of genesis and exodus, certainly weigh in the balance, the God of Judaism or Yahweh was a fearsome god, quick to wrath, the flood the judging of Sodom and Gomorrah were emblematic,

Sebastian said...

"divinity is fundamentally inside the world"

In us.

We are all gnostics now.

As Bloom said long ago. As hardin and sykes reminded us.

On second thought, are the paganer-than-thou deep-eco Gaians gnostics?

cyrus83 said...

Religion does go through periods of disorder, as at present, but ultimately it will always tend towards organization and order. Rituals, even the modern-day BS rituals of the secular world, have an order to them, and organization is required to preserve order in religious ritual much as it is in secular ritual.

What we are seeing right now is the failure and collapse of the larger and older mainline churches, in part because they no longer hold stable beliefs, in part because they are entirely too undemanding. For the time being that is leaving people who still believe in something as free agents of a sort, but even if they themselves are comfortable remaining an island in the sea of belief, the next generation will gravitate toward something more ordered, more meaningful, more self-confident, and more demanding.

Roger Sweeny said...

An interesting post from Razib Khan in response, "A pagan psychology does not a pagan society make."

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/12/13/a-pagan-psychology-does-not-a-pagan-society-make/

Rosalyn C. said...


Blogger narciso said...
yes, it's disappointing the gospels in particular rely much on Isiah, although the books of genesis and exodus, certainly weigh in the balance, the God of Judaism or Yahweh was a fearsome god, quick to wrath, the flood the judging of Sodom and Gomorrah were emblematic,


Case in point of mainstream Christian ignorance and hostility towards Judaism. Appropriating Jewish texts without adequate understanding or appreciation of their Jewish meaning. And more importantly, being dismissive of the "God of Judaism" as if the God of Jesus was a different God -- even though Jesus stated repeatedly that his father and the God of the Jews is one and the same. The notion that the Christian God is kinder seems false considering the emphasis in Christianity on Hell. And all the Christian priests and preachers who warn people about the need to accept Jesus to gain salvation, and that God is punishing people for being Gay, etc., by giving them AIDS, causing hurricanes because of abortions, etc. Rabbis never talk like that or scare people with stories about Hell fire.

Rosalyn C. said...
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Rosalyn C. said...
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Rosalyn C. said...

I came across this page which gives an illustration into the depth of Judaism in understanding creation and the Creator, and post it for those who might wish a glimpse into Judaism:

Chapter 6 -- The Tanya of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, elucidated by Rabbi Yosef Wineberg
Published and copyrighted by Kehot Publication Society

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812) From wiki: Lyady was founded in the 17th century. It was located on the road connecting Moscow and Warsaw. It is located near the Mereya River, once the border between Russia and Poland and later between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.[1] Lyady used to have a predominantly Jewish population. It was the center of Chabad chasidism for over a decade. The first rebbe Shneur Zalman of Liadi settled there at the invitation of Prince Stanisław Lubomirski, voivode of the town, after his second imprisonment in 1800. He left the town in 1812, fleeing the French Invasion under Napoleon. After the German occupation of Belarus in the Second World War, the town's Jews were gathered into a ghetto. On April 2, 1942, the Germans and collaborators killed more than 2,000 Jews in the ghetto.[1]