title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe's later followers, derogatorily called Lollards by their orthodox contemporaries in the 15th and 16th centuries, adopted many of the beliefs attributed to Wycliffe such as theological virtues, predestination, iconoclasm, and the notion of caesaropapism, while questioning the veneration of saints, the sacraments, requiem masses, transubstantiation, monasticism, and the legitimacy of the Papacy. Like the Waldensians, Hussites and Friends of God, the Lollard movement in some ways anticipated the Protestant Reformation. Wycliffe was accordingly characterised as the "evening star" of scholasticism and as the morning star or of the English Reformation, an epithet first accorded to the theologian by the 16th century historian and controversialist John Bale in his "Illustrium maioris britanniae scriptorum" (Wesel, 1548).


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe's writings in Latin greatly influenced the philosophy and teaching of the Czech reformer Jan Hus ( 1369–1415), whose execution in 1415 sparked a revolt and led to the Hussite Wars of 1419–1434.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe was born in the village of Hipswell near Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, around the 1320s. He has conventionally been given a birth date of 1324 but Hudson and Kenny state only records "suggest he was born in the mid-1320s". Conti states that he was born "before 1331


title: John Wycliffe

text: ". His family was long settled in Yorkshire. The family was quite large, covering considerable territory, principally centred on Wycliffe-on-Tees, about ten miles to the north of Hipswell.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe received his early education close to his home. It is unknown when he first came to Oxford, with which he was so closely connected until the end of his life, but he is known to have been at Oxford around 1345. Thomas Bradwardine was the archbishop of Canterbury, and his book "On the Cause of God against the Pelagians", a bold recovery of the Pauline-Augustine doctrine of grace, would greatly shape young Wycliffe's views, as did the Black Death which reached England in the summer of 1348. From his frequent references to it in later life, it appears to have made a deep and abiding impression upon him. According to Robert Vaughn, the effect was to give Wycliffe "Very gloomy views in regard to the condition and prospects of the human race." Wycliffe would have been at Oxford during the St Scholastica Day riot in which sixty-three students and a number of townspeople were killed.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe completed his arts degree at Merton College as a junior fellow in 1356. That same year he produced a small treatise, "The Last Age of the Church". In the light of the virulence of the plague that had subsided seven years previously, Wycliffe's studies led him to the opinion that the close of the 14th century would mark the end of the world. While other writers viewed the plague as God's judgment on sinful people, Wycliffe saw it as an indictment of an unworthy clergy. The mortality rate among the clergy had been particularly high, and those who replaced them were, in his opinion, uneducated or generally disreputable.


title: John Wycliffe

text: He was Master of Balliol College in 1361. In this same year, he was presented by the college to the parish of Fillingham in Lincolnshire, which he visited rarely during long vacations from Oxford. For this he had to give up the headship of Balliol College, though he could continue to live at Oxford. He is said to have had rooms in the buildings of The Queen's College. In 1362 he was granted a prebend at Aust in Westbury-on-Trym, which he held in addition to the post at Fillingham.


title: John Wycliffe

text: His performance led Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, to place him in 1365 at the head of Canterbury Hall, where twelve young men were preparing for the priesthood. In December 1365 Islip appointed Wycliffe as warden but when Islip died the following year his successor, Simon Langham, a man of monastic training, turned the leadership of the college over to a monk. In 1367 Wycliffe appealed to Rome. In 1371 Wycliffe's appeal was decided and the outcome was unfavourable to him. The incident was typical of the ongoing rivalry between monks and secular clergy at Oxford at this time.


title: John Wycliffe

text: In 1368, he gave up his living at Fillingham and took over the rectory of Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire, not far from Oxford, which enabled him to retain his connection with the university. Tradition has it that he commenced his translation of the Bible into English whilst sitting in a room above what is now the porch in Ludgershall Church. In 1369 Wycliffe obtained a bachelor's degree in theology, and his doctorate in 1372. In 1374, he received the crown living of St Mary's Church, Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which he retained until his death.


title: John Wycliffe

text: In 1374 his name appears second, after a bishop, on a commission which the English Government sent to Bruges to discuss with the representatives of Gregory XI a number of points in dispute between the king and the pope. He was no longer satisfied with his chair as the means of propagating his ideas, and soon after his return from Bruges he began to express them in tracts and longer works. In a book concerned with the government of God and the Ten Commandments, he attacked the temporal rule of the clergy, the collection of annates, indulgences, and simony.


title: John Wycliffe

text: He entered the politics of the day with his great work "De civili dominio" ("On Civil Dominion"), which drew arguments from the works of Richard FitzRalph's. This called for the royal divestment of all church property. His ideas on lordship and church wealth caused his first official condemnation in 1377 by Pope Gregory XI, who censured 19 articles. Wycliffe argued that the Church had fallen into sin and that it ought therefore to give up all its property and that the clergy should live in complete poverty. The tendency of the high offices of state to be held by clerics was resented by many of the nobles, such as the backroom power broker John of Gaunt, who would have had his own reasons for opposing the wealth and power of the clergy, since it challenged the foundation of his power.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe was summoned before William Courtenay, Bishop of London, on 19 February 1377. The exact charges are not known, as the matter did not get as far as a definite examination. Lechler suggests that Wycliffe was targeted by John of Gaunt's opponents among the nobles and church hierarchy. Gaunt, the Earl Marshal Henry Percy, and a number of other supporters accompanied Wycliffe. A crowd gathered at the church, and at the entrance, party animosities began to show, especially in an angry exchange between the bishop and Wycliffe's protectors. Gaunt declared that he would humble the pride of the English clergy and their partisans, hinting at the intent to secularise the possessions of the Church. The assembly broke up and Gaunt and his partisans departed with their protégé.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Most of the English clergy were irritated by this encounter, and attacks upon Wycliffe began. The second and third books of his work dealing with civil government carry a sharp polemic. On 22 May 1377 Pope Gregory XI sent five copies of a bull against Wycliffe, dispatching one to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the others to the Bishop of London, King Edward III, the Chancellor, and the university; among the enclosures were 18 theses of his, which were denounced as erroneous and dangerous to Church and State. Stephen Lahey suggests that Gregory's action against Wycliffe was an attempt to put pressure on King Edward to make peace with France. Edward III died on 21 June 1377, and the bull against Wycliffe did not reach England before December. Wycliffe was asked to give the king's council his opinion on whether it was lawful to withhold traditional payments to Rome, and he responded that it was.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Back at Oxford the Vice-Chancellor confined Wycliffe for some time in Black Hall, but his friends soon obtained his release. In March 1378, he was summoned to appear at Lambeth Palace to defend himself. However, Sir Lewis Clifford entered the chapel and in the name of the queen mother (Joan of Kent), forbade the bishops to proceed to a definite sentence concerning Wycliffe's conduct or opinions. The bishops, who were divided, satisfied themselves with forbidding him to speak further on the controversy. Wycliffe then wrote his "De incarcerandis fedelibus", in which he demanded that it should be legal for the excommunicated to appeal to the king and his council against the excommunication; in this writing he laid open the entire case, in such a way that it was understood by the laity. He wrote his 33 conclusions in Latin and English. The masses, some of the nobility, and his former protector, John of Gaunt, rallied to him. Before any further steps could be taken at Rome, Gregory XI died in 1378.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The attacks on Pope Gregory XI grew ever more extreme. Wycliffe's stand concerning the ideal of poverty became continually firmer, as well as his position with regard to the temporal rule of the clergy. Closely related to this attitude was his book "De officio regis", the content of which was foreshadowed in his 33 conclusions. This book, like those that preceded and followed, was concerned with the reform of the Church, in which the temporal arm was to have an influential part.


title: John Wycliffe

text: From 1380 onwards, Wycliffe devoted himself to writings that argued his rejection of transubstantiation, and strongly criticised the friars who supported it.


title: John Wycliffe

text: In the summer of 1381 Wycliffe formulated his doctrine of the Lord's Supper in twelve short sentences, and made it a duty to advocate it everywhere. Then the English hierarchy proceeded against him. The chancellor of the University of Oxford had some of the declarations pronounced heretical. When this was announced to Wycliffe, he declared that no one could change his convictions. He then appealed – not to the pope nor to the ecclesiastical authorities of the land, but to the king. He published his great confession upon the subject and also a second writing in English intended for the common people.


title: John Wycliffe

text: As long as Wycliffe limited his attacks to abuses and the wealth of the Church, he could rely on the support of part of the clergy and aristocracy, but once he dismissed the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation, his theses could not be defended any more. This view cost him the support of John of Gaunt and many others.


title: John Wycliffe

text: In the midst of this came the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The revolt was sparked in part by Wycliffe's preaching carried throughout the realm by "poor priests" appointed by Wycliffe (mostly laymen). The preachers didn't limit their criticism of the accumulation of wealth and property to that of the monasteries, but rather included secular properties belonging to the nobility as well. Although Wycliffe disapproved of the revolt, some of his disciples justified the killing of Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1382 Wycliffe's old enemy William Courtenay, now Archbishop of Canterbury, called an ecclesiastical assembly of notables at London. During the consultations on 21 May an earthquake occurred; the participants were terrified and wished to break up the assembly, but Courtenay declared the earthquake a favourable sign which meant the purification of the earth from erroneous doctrine, and the result of the "Earthquake Synod" was assured.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Of the 24 propositions attributed to Wycliffe without mentioning his name, ten were declared heretical and fourteen erroneous. The former had reference to the transformation in the sacrament, the latter to matters of church order and institutions. It was forbidden from that time to hold these opinions or to advance them in sermons or in academic discussions. All persons disregarding this order were to be subject to prosecution. To accomplish this the help of the State was necessary; but the Commons rejected the bill. The king, however, had a decree issued which permitted the arrest of those in error.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The citadel of the reformatory movement was Oxford, where Wycliffe's most active helpers were; these were laid under the ban and summoned to recant, and Nicholas of Hereford went to Rome to appeal.


title: John Wycliffe

text: On 17 November 1382, Wycliffe was summoned before a synod at Oxford. He still commanded the favour of the court and of Parliament, to which he addressed a memorial. He was neither excommunicated then, nor deprived of his living.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe aimed to do away with the existing hierarchy and replace it with the "poor priests" who lived in poverty, were bound by no vows, had received no formal consecration, and preached the Gospel to the people. Itinerant preachers spread the teachings of Wycliffe. The bull of Gregory XI impressed upon them the name of Lollards, intended as an opprobrious epithet, but it became, to them, a name of honour. Even in Wycliffe's time the "Lollards" had reached wide circles in England and preached "God's law, without which no one could be justified."


title: John Wycliffe

text: In the years before his death in 1384 he increasingly argued for Scriptures as the authoritative centre of Christianity, that the claims of the papacy were unhistorical, that monasticism was irredeemably corrupt, and that the moral unworthiness of priests invalidated their office and sacraments.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe returned to Lutterworth, and sent out tracts against the monks and Urban VI, since the latter, contrary to Wycliffe's hopes, had not turned out to be a reforming pope. The literary achievements of Wycliffe's last days, such as the "Trialogus", stand at the peak of the knowledge of his day. His last work, the "Opus evangelicum", the last part of which he named in characteristic fashion "Of Antichrist", remained uncompleted. While he was saying Mass in the parish church on Holy Innocents' Day, 28 December 1384, he suffered a stroke, and died a few days later.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The Anti-Wycliffite Statute of 1401 extended persecution to Wycliffe's remaining followers. The "Constitutions of Oxford" of 1408 aimed to reclaim authority in all ecclesiastical matters, and specifically named John Wycliffe as it banned certain writings, and noted that translation of Scripture into English by unlicensed laity was a crime punishable by charges of heresy.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The Council of Constance declared Wycliffe a heretic on 4 May 1415, and banned his writings, effectively both excommunicating him retroactively and making him an early forerunner of Protestantism. The Council decreed that Wycliffe's works should be burned and his bodily remains removed from consecrated ground. This order, confirmed by Pope Martin V, was carried out in 1428. Wycliffe's corpse was exhumed and burned and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth.


title: John Wycliffe

text: None of Wycliffe's contemporaries left a complete picture of his person, his life, and his activities. Paintings representing Wycliffe are from a later period. In "The Testimony of William Thorpe" (1407), Wycliffe appears wasted and physically weak. Thorpe says Wycliffe was of unblemished walk in life, and regarded affectionately by people of rank, who often consorted with him, took down his sayings, and clung to him. "I indeed clove to none closer than to him, the wisest and most blessed of all men whom I have ever found."


title: John Wycliffe

text: Thomas Netter highly esteemed John Kynyngham in that he "so bravely offered himself to the biting speech of the heretic and to words that stung as being without the religion of Christ". But this example of Netter is not well chosen, since the tone of Wycliffe toward Kynyngham is that of a junior toward an elder whom one respects, and he handled other opponents in similar fashion.


title: John Wycliffe

text: In keeping with Wycliffe's belief that scripture was the only authoritative reliable guide to the truth about God, he became involved in efforts to translate the Bible into English. While Wycliffe is credited, it is not possible exactly to define his part in the translation, which was based on the Vulgate. There is no doubt that it was his initiative, and that the success of the project was due to his leadership. From him comes the translation of the New Testament, which was smoother, clearer, and more readable than the rendering of the Old Testament by his friend Nicholas of Hereford. The whole was revised by Wycliffe's younger contemporary John Purvey in 1388.


title: John Wycliffe

text: There still exist about 150 manuscripts, complete or partial, containing the translation in its revised form. From this, one may easily infer how widely diffused it was in the 15th century. For this reason the Wycliffites in England were often designated by their opponents as "Bible men".


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe had come to regard the scriptures as the only reliable guide to the truth about God, and maintained that all Christians should rely on the Bible rather than on the teachings of popes and clerics. He said that there was no scriptural justification for the papacy.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Theologically, his preaching expressed a strong belief in predestination that enabled him to declare an "invisible church of the elect", made up of those predestined to be saved, rather than in the "visible" Catholic Church.


title: John Wycliffe

text: To Wycliffe, the Church was the totality of those who are predestined to blessedness. No one who is eternally lost has part in it. There is one universal Church, and outside of it there is no salvation.


title: John Wycliffe

text: His first tracts and greater works of ecclesiastical-political content defended the privileges of the State. By 1379 in his "De ecclesia" ("On the Church"), Wycliffe clearly claimed the supremacy of the king over the priesthood. He also rejected the selling of indulgences.


title: John Wycliffe

text: So far as his polemics accord with those of earlier antagonists of the papacy, it is fair to assume that he was not ignorant of them and was influenced by them. It was Wycliffe who recognised and formulated one of the two major formal principles of the Reformation – the unique authority of the Bible for the belief and life of the Christian.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The battle against what he saw as an imperialised papacy and its supporters, the "sects", as he called the monastic orders, takes up a large space not only in his later works, such as the "Trialogus", "Dialogus", "Opus evangelicum", and in his sermons, but also in a series of sharp tracts and polemical productions in Latin and English (of which those issued in his later years have been collected as "Polemical Writings").


title: John Wycliffe

text: In the 1380 "Objections to Friars", he calls monks the pests of society, enemies of religion, and patrons and promoters of every crime. He directed his strongest criticism against the friars, whose preaching he considered neither scriptural nor sincere, but motivated by "temporal gain". While others were content to seek the reform of particular errors and abuses, Wycliffe sought nothing less than the extinction of the institution itself, as being repugnant to scripture, and inconsistent with the order and prosperity of the Church. He advocated the dissolution of the monasteries.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Rudolph Buddensieg finds two distinct aspects in Wycliffe's work. The first, from 1366 to 1378, reflects a political struggle with Rome, while 1378 to 1384 is more a religious struggle. In each Wycliffe has two approaches: he attacks both the Papacy and its institutions, and also Roman Catholic doctrine.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe's influence was never greater than at the moment when pope and antipope sent their ambassadors to England to gain recognition for themselves. In 1378, in the ambassadors' presence, he delivered an opinion before Parliament that showed, in an important ecclesiastical political question (the matter of the right of asylum in Westminster Abbey), a position that was to the liking of the State. He argued that criminals who had taken sanctuary in churches might lawfully be dragged out of sanctuary.


title: John Wycliffe

text: The books and tracts of Wycliffe's last six years include continual attacks upon the papacy and the entire hierarchy of his times. Each year they focus more and more, and at the last, the pope and the Antichrist seem to him practically equivalent concepts. Yet there are passages which are moderate in tone: G. V. Lechler identifies three stages in Wycliffe's relations with the papacy. The first step, which carried him to the outbreak of the schism, involves moderate recognition of the papal primacy; the second, which carried him to 1381, is marked by an estrangement from the papacy; and the third shows him in sharp contest.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe was a prominent English theologian and scholastic philosopher of the second half of the 14th century. He earned his great repute as a philosopher at an early date. Henry Knighton says that in philosophy he was second to none, and in scholastic discipline incomparable. There was a period in his life when he devoted himself exclusively to scholastic philosophy. His first book, "De Logica" (1360), explores the fundamentals of Scholastic Theology. He believed that "one should study Logic in order to better understand the human mind because ...human thoughts, feelings and actions bear God's image and likeness".


title: John Wycliffe

text: The centre of Wycliffe's philosophical system is formed by the doctrine of the prior existence in the thought of God of all things and events. While Platonic realism would view "beauty' as a property that exists in an ideal form independently of any mind or thing, "for Wycliffe every universal, as part of creation, derived its existence from God, the Creator". Wycliffe was a close follower of Augustine, and always upheld the primacy of the Creator over the created reality.


title: John Wycliffe

text: A second key point of Wycliffe's is his emphasis on the notion of divine Lordship, explored in "De dominio Divino" (c. 1373), which examines the relationship between God and his creatures. The practical application of this for Wycliffe was seen in the rebellious attitude of individuals (particulars) towards rightful authority (universals). In "De civili dominio" he discusses the appropriate circumstance under which an entity may be seen as possessing authority over lesser subjects. "Dominium" is always conferred by God. "Beyond all doubt, intellectual and emotional error about universals is the cause of all sin that reigns in the world." In some of his teachings, as in "De annihilatione", the influence of Thomas Aquinas can be detected.


title: John Wycliffe

text: He said that Democritus, Plato, Augustine, and Grosseteste far outranked Aristotle. So far as his relations to the philosophers of the Middle Ages are concerned, he held to realism as opposed to the nominalism advanced by William of Ockham.


title: John Wycliffe

text: A number of Wycliffe's ideas have been carried forward in the twentieth century by philosopher and Reformed theologian Cornelius Van Til.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe's fundamental principle of the preexistence in thought of all reality involves the most serious obstacle to freedom of the will; the philosopher could assist himself only by the formula that the free will of man was something predetermined of God. He demanded strict dialectical training as the means of distinguishing the true from the false, and asserted that logic (or the syllogism) furthered the knowledge of catholic verities; ignorance of logic was the reason why men misunderstood Scripture, since men overlooked the connection, the distinction between idea and appearance.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe was not merely conscious of the distinction between theology and philosophy, but his sense of reality led him to pass by scholastic questions. He left aside philosophical discussions that seemed to have no significance for the religious consciousness and those that pertained purely to scholasticism: "We concern ourselves with the verities that are, and leave aside the errors which arise from speculation on matters which are not."


title: John Wycliffe

text: John Wycliffe rejected transubstantiation along with the sacrament of confession, saying it was against scripture. Wycliffe was attacked as being a Donatist, however the claim was a misconception, perhaps used to discredit his views on the Eucharist.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe appears to have had similar ideas of justification as the later reformers would. According to Wycliffe faith was sufficient for salvation:


title: John Wycliffe

text: Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation.


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe was instrumental in the development of a translation of the Bible in English, thus making it accessible to laypeople. He also had a strong influence on Jan Hus. Several institutions are named after him:


title: John Wycliffe

text: Wycliffe is honoured with a commemoration in the Church of England on 31 December, and in the Anglican Church of Canada.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy is a spiritualist movement founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience. Followers of anthroposophy aim to engage in spiritual discovery through a mode of thought independent of sensory experience. While much of anthroposophy is pseudoscientific, proponents claim to present their ideas in a manner that is verifiable by rational discourse and say that they seek precision and clarity comparable to that obtained by scientists investigating the physical world.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy has its roots in German idealism, mystical philosophies, and pseudoscience including racist pseudoscience. Steiner chose the term "anthroposophy" (from Greek , 'human', and "sophia", 'wisdom') to emphasize his philosophy's humanistic orientation. He defined it as "a scientific exploration of the spiritual world", Others have variously called it a "philosophy and cultural movement", a "spiritual movement", a "spiritual science", or "a system of thought". Anthroposophical ideas have been employed in alternative movements in many areas including education (both in Waldorf schools and in the Camphill movement), agriculture, medicine, banking, organizational development, and the arts. The main organization for advocacy of Steiner's ideas, the Anthroposophical Society, is headquartered at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy's supporters include writers Saul Bellow, and Selma Lagerlöf, painters Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, child psychiatrist Eva Frommer, music therapist Maria Schüppel, Romuva religious founder Vydūnas, and former president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Several prominent members of the Nazi Party were supporters of anthroposophy and its movements, including (an agriculturalist), SS colonel Hermann Schneider, and Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller. Rudolf Hess, the adjunct Führer, was a patron of Waldorf schools. The Deputy Führer was also a staunch defender of Steiner's biodynamic agriculture. The historian of religion Olav Hammer has termed anthroposophy "the most important esoteric society in European history".


title: Anthroposophy

text: Many scientists, physicians, and philosophers, including Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, and Simon Singh have criticized anthroposophy's application in the areas of medicine, biology, agriculture, and education to be dangerous and pseudoscientific. Some of Steiner's ideas that are unsupported or disproven by modern science, including: racial evolution, clairvoyance (Steiner claimed he was clairvoyant), and the Atlantis myth.


title: Anthroposophy

text: The early work of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, culminated in his "Philosophy of Freedom" (also translated as "The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" and "Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path"). Here, Steiner developed a concept of free will based on inner experiences, especially those that occur in the creative activity of independent thought.


title: Anthroposophy

text: By the beginning of the twentieth century, Steiner's interests turned almost exclusively to spirituality. His work began to interest others interested in spiritual ideas; among these was the Theosophical Society. From 1900 on, thanks to the positive reception his ideas received from Theosophists, Steiner focused increasingly on his work with the Theosophical Society, becoming the secretary of its section in Germany in 1902. During his leadership, membership increased dramatically, from just a few individuals to sixty-nine lodges.


title: Anthroposophy

text: By 1907, a split between Steiner and the Theosophical Society became apparent. While the Society was oriented toward an Eastern and especially Indian approach, Steiner was trying to develop a path that embraced Christianity and natural science. The split became irrevocable when Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society, presented the child Jiddu Krishnamurti as the reincarnated Christ. Steiner strongly objected and considered any comparison between Krishnamurti and Christ to be nonsense; many years later, Krishnamurti also repudiated the assertion. Steiner's continuing differences with Besant led him to separate from the Theosophical Society Adyar. He was subsequently followed by the great majority of the Theosophical Society's German members, as well as many members of other national sections.


title: Anthroposophy

text: By this time, Steiner had reached considerable stature as a spiritual teacher and expert in the occult. He spoke about what he considered to be his direct experience of the Akashic Records (sometimes called the "Akasha Chronicle"), thought to be a spiritual chronicle of the history, pre-history, and future of the world and mankind. In a number of works, Steiner described a path of inner development he felt would let anyone attain comparable spiritual experiences. In Steiner's view, sound vision could be developed, in part, by practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline, concentration, and meditation. In particular, Steiner believed a person's spiritual development could occur only after a period of moral development.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In 1912, Steiner broke away from the "Theosophical Society" to found an independent group, which he named the "Anthroposophical Society." After World War I, members of the young society began applying Steiner's ideas to create cultural movements in areas such as traditional and special education, farming, and medicine.


title: Anthroposophy

text: By 1923, a schism had formed between older members, focused on inner development, and younger members eager to become active in contemporary social transformations. In response, Steiner attempted to bridge the gap by establishing an overall School for "Spiritual Science". As a spiritual basis for the reborn movement, Steiner wrote a "Foundation Stone Meditation" which remains a central touchstone of anthroposophical ideas.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner died just over a year later, in 1925. The Second World War temporarily hindered the anthroposophical movement in most of Continental Europe, as the Anthroposophical Society and most of its practical counter-cultural applications were banned by the Nazi government. Though at least one prominent member of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, was a strong supporter of anthroposophy, very few anthroposophists belonged to the National Socialist Party. According to Hans Büchenbacher, an anthroposophist, the Secretary General of the General Anthroposophical Society, Guenther Wachsmuth, as well as Steiner's widow, Marie Steiner, were “completely pro-Nazi.”


title: Anthroposophy

text: By 2007, national branches of the Anthroposophical Society had been established in fifty countries and about 10,000 institutions around the world were working on the basis of anthroposophical ideas.


title: Anthroposophy

text: "Anthroposophy" is an amalgam of the Greek terms ( 'human') and ( 'wisdom'). An early English usage is recorded by Nathan Bailey (1742) as meaning "the knowledge of the nature of man."


title: Anthroposophy

text: The first known use of the term "anthroposophy" occurs within "Arbatel de magia veterum, summum sapientiae studium", a book published anonymously in 1575 and attributed to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. The work describes anthroposophy (as well as theosophy) variously as an understanding of goodness, nature, or human affairs. In 1648, the Welsh philosopher Thomas Vaughan published his "Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a discourse of the nature of man and his state after death."


title: Anthroposophy

text: The term began to appear with some frequency in philosophical works of the mid- and late-nineteenth century. In the early part of that century, Ignaz Troxler used the term "anthroposophy" to refer to philosophy deepened to self-knowledge, which he suggested allows deeper knowledge of nature as well. He spoke of human nature as a mystical unity of God and world. Immanuel Hermann Fichte used the term "anthroposophy" to refer to "rigorous human self-knowledge," achievable through thorough comprehension of the human spirit and of the working of God in this spirit, in his 1856 work "Anthropology: The Study of the Human Soul". In 1872, the philosopher of religion Gideon Spicker used the term "anthroposophy" to refer to self-knowledge that would unite God and world: "the true study of the human being is the human being, and philosophy's highest aim is self-knowledge, or Anthroposophy."


title: Anthroposophy

text: In 1882, the philosopher Robert Zimmermann published the treatise, "An Outline of Anthroposophy: Proposal for a System of Idealism on a Realistic Basis," proposing that idealistic philosophy should employ logical thinking to extend empirical experience. Steiner attended lectures by Zimmermann at the University of Vienna in the early 1880s, thus at the time of this book's publication.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In the early 1900s, Steiner began using the term "anthroposophy" (i.e. human wisdom) as an alternative to the term "theosophy" (i.e. divine wisdom).


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophical proponents aim to extend the clarity of the scientific method to phenomena of human soul-life and spiritual experiences. Steiner believed this required developing new faculties of objective spiritual perception, which he maintained was still possible for contemporary humans. The steps of this process of inner development he identified as consciously achieved "imagination", "inspiration", and "intuition". Steiner believed results of this form of spiritual research should be expressed in a way that can be understood and evaluated on the same basis as the results of natural science.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner hoped to form a spiritual movement that would free the individual from any external authority. For Steiner, the human capacity for rational thought would allow individuals to comprehend spiritual research on their own and bypass the danger of dependency on an authority such as himself.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner contrasted the anthroposophical approach with both conventional mysticism, which he considered lacking the clarity necessary for exact knowledge, and natural science, which he considered arbitrarily limited to what can be seen, heard, or felt with the outward senses.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In "Theosophy", Steiner suggested that human beings unite a "physical body" of substances gathered from and returning to the inorganic world; a "life body" (also called the etheric body), in common with all living creatures (including plants); a bearer of sentience or consciousness (also called the astral body), in common with all animals; and the ego, which anchors the faculty of self-awareness unique to human beings.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy describes a broad evolution of human consciousness. Early stages of human evolution possess an intuitive perception of reality, including a clairvoyant perception of spiritual realities. Humanity has progressively evolved an increasing reliance on intellectual faculties and a corresponding loss of intuitive or clairvoyant experiences, which have become atavistic. The increasing intellectualization of consciousness, initially a progressive direction of evolution, has led to an excessive reliance on abstraction and a loss of contact with both natural and spiritual realities. However, to go further requires new capacities that combine the clarity of intellectual thought with the imagination and with consciously achieved inspiration and intuitive insights.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy speaks of the reincarnation of the human spirit: that the human being passes between stages of existence, incarnating into an earthly body, living on earth, leaving the body behind, and entering into the spiritual worlds before returning to be born again into a new life on earth. After the death of the physical body, the human spirit recapitulates the past life, perceiving its events as they were experienced by the objects of its actions. A complex transformation takes place between the review of the past life and the preparation for the next life. The individual's karmic condition eventually leads to a choice of parents, physical body, disposition, and capacities that provide the challenges and opportunities that further development requires, which includes karmically chosen tasks for the future life.


title: Anthroposophy

text: The anthroposophical view of evolution considers all animals to have evolved from an early, unspecialized form. As the least specialized animal, human beings have maintained the closest connection to the archetypal form; contrary to the Darwinian conception of human evolution, all other animals "devolve" from this archetype. The spiritual archetype originally created by spiritual beings was devoid of physical substance; only later did this descend into material existence on Earth. In this view, human evolution has accompanied the Earth's evolution throughout the existence of the Earth.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy adapted Theosophy's complex system of cycles of world development and human evolution. The evolution of the world is said to have occurred in cycles. The first phase of the world consisted only of heat. In the second phase, a more active condition, light, and a more condensed, gaseous state separate out from the heat. In the third phase, a fluid state arose, as well as a sounding, forming energy. In the fourth (current) phase, solid physical matter first exists. This process is said to have been accompanied by an evolution of consciousness which led up to present human culture.


title: Anthroposophy

text: The anthroposophical view is that good is found in the balance between two polar influences on world and human evolution. These are often described through their mythological embodiments as spiritual adversaries which endeavour to tempt and corrupt humanity, Lucifer and his counterpart Ahriman. These have both positive and negative aspects. Lucifer is the light spirit, which "plays on human pride and offers the delusion of divinity", but also motivates creativity and spirituality; Ahriman is the dark spirit that tempts human beings to "...deny [their] link with divinity and to live entirely on the material plane", but that also stimulates intellectuality and technology. Both figures exert a negative effect on humanity when their influence becomes misplaced or one-sided, yet their influences are necessary for human freedom to unfold.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Each human being has the task to find a balance between these opposing influences, and each is helped in this task by the mediation of the "Representative of Humanity", also known as the Christ being, a spiritual entity who stands between and harmonizes the two extremes.


title: Anthroposophy

text: This is a pedagogical movement with over 1000 Steiner or Waldorf schools (the latter name stems from the first such school, founded in Stuttgart in 1919) located in some 60 countries; the great majority of these are independent (private) schools. Sixteen of the schools have been affiliated with the United Nations' UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network, which sponsors education projects that foster improved quality of education throughout the world. Waldorf schools receive full or partial governmental funding in some European nations, Australia and in parts of the United States (as Waldorf method public or charter schools) and Canada.


title: Anthroposophy

text: The schools have been founded in a variety of communities: for example in the "favelas" of São Paulo to wealthy suburbs of major cities; in India, Egypt, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico and South Africa. Though most of the early Waldorf schools were teacher-founded, the schools today are usually initiated and later supported by a parent community. Waldorf schools are among the most visible anthroposophical institutions.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Biodynamic agriculture, the first intentional form of organic farming, began in 1924, when Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures published in English as "The Agriculture Course". Steiner is considered one of the founders of the modern organic farming movement.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophical medicine is a form of alternative medicine based on pseudoscientific and occult notions rather than in science-based medicine.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Most anthroposophic medical preparations are highly diluted, like homeopathic remedies, while harmless in of themselves, using them in place of conventional medicine to treat illness is ineffective and risks adverse consequences.


title: Anthroposophy

text: One of the most studied applications has been the use of mistletoe extracts in cancer therapy, but research has found no evidence of benefit.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In 1922, Ita Wegman founded an anthroposophical center for special needs education, the Sonnenhof, in Switzerland. In 1940, Karl König founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. The latter in particular has spread widely, and there are now over a hundred Camphill communities and other anthroposophical homes for children and adults in need of special care in about 22 countries around the world. Both Karl König, Thomas Weihs and others have written extensively on these ideas underlying Special education.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner designed around thirteen buildings in an organic—expressionist architectural style. Foremost among these are his designs for the two Goetheanum buildings in Dornach, Switzerland. Thousands of further buildings have been built by later generations of anthroposophic architects.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Architects who have been strongly influenced by the anthroposophic style include Imre Makovecz in Hungary, Hans Scharoun and Joachim Eble in Germany, Erik Asmussen in Sweden, Kenji Imai in Japan, Thomas Rau, Anton Alberts and Max van Huut in the Netherlands, Christopher Day and Camphill Architects in the UK, Thompson and Rose in America, Denis Bowman in Canada, and Walter Burley Griffin and Gregory Burgess in Australia.


title: Anthroposophy

text: ING House in Amsterdam is a contemporary building by an anthroposophical architect which has received awards for its ecological design and approach to a self-sustaining ecology as an autonomous building and example of sustainable architecture.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Together with Marie von Sivers, Steiner developed eurythmy, a performance art combining dance, speech, and music.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Around the world today are a number of banks, companies, charities, and schools for developing co-operative forms of business using Steiner's ideas about economic associations, aiming at harmonious and socially responsible roles in the world economy. The first anthroposophic bank was the "Gemeinschaftsbank für Leihen und Schenken" in Bochum, Germany, founded in 1974.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Socially responsible banks founded out of anthroposophy include Triodos Bank, founded in the Netherlands in 1980 and also active in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain and France. Other examples include Cultura Sparebank which dates from 1982 when a group of Norwegian anthroposophists began an initiative for ethical banking but only began to operate as a savings bank in Norway in the late 90s, La Nef in France and RSF Social Financein San Francisco.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Harvard Business School historian Geoffrey Jones traced the considerable impact both Steiner and later anthroposophical entrepreneurs had on the creation of many businesses in organic food, ecological architecture and sustainable finance.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Bernard Lievegoed, a psychiatrist, founded a new method of individual and institutional development oriented towards humanizing organizations and linked with Steiner's ideas of the threefold social order. This work is represented by the NPI Institute for Organizational Development in the Netherlands and sister organizations in many other countries. Various forms of biographic and counselling work have been developed on the basis of anthroposophy.


title: Anthroposophy

text: There are also anthroposophical movements to renew speech and drama, the most important of which are based in the work of Marie Steiner-von Sivers ("speech formation", also known as "Creative Speech") and the "Chekhov Method" originated by Michael Chekhov (nephew of Anton Chekhov).


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophic painting, a style inspired by Rudolf Steiner, featured prominently in the first Goetheanum's cupola. The technique frequently begins by filling the surface to be painted with color, out of which forms are gradually developed, often images with symbolic-spiritual significance. Paints that allow for many transparent layers are preferred, and often these are derived from plant materials. Rudolf Steiner appointed the English sculptor Edith Maryon as head of the School of Fine Art at the Goetheanum. Together they carved the 9-metre tall sculpture titled "The Representative of Humanity", on display at the Goetheanum.


title: Anthroposophy

text: For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active and well known in Germany, in part because he lectured widely proposing social reforms. Steiner was a sharp critic of nationalism, which he saw as outdated, and a proponent of achieving social solidarity through individual freedom. A petition proposing a radical change in the German constitution and expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was widely circulated. His main book on social reform is "Toward Social Renewal".


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy continues to aim at reforming society through maintaining and strengthening the independence of the spheres of cultural life, human rights and the economy. It emphasizes a particular ideal in each of these three realms of society:


title: Anthroposophy

text: According to Steiner, a real spiritual world exists, evolving along with the material one. Steiner held that the spiritual world can be researched in the right circumstances through direct experience, by persons practicing rigorous forms of ethical and cognitive self-discipline. Steiner described many exercises he said were suited to strengthening such self-discipline; the most complete exposition of these is found in his book "How To Know Higher Worlds". The aim of these exercises is to develop higher levels of consciousness through meditation and observation. Details about the spiritual world, Steiner suggested, could on such a basis be discovered and reported, though no more infallibly than the results of natural science.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner regarded his research reports as being important aids to others seeking to enter into spiritual experience. He suggested that a combination of spiritual exercises (for example, concentrating on an object such as a seed), moral development (control of thought, feelings and will combined with openness, tolerance and flexibility) and familiarity with other spiritual researchers' results would best further an individual's spiritual development. He consistently emphasised that any inner, spiritual practice should be undertaken in such a way as not to interfere with one's responsibilities in outer life. Steiner distinguished between what he considered were true and false paths of spiritual investigation.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In anthroposophy, artistic expression is also treated as a potentially valuable bridge between spiritual and material reality.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner's stated prerequisites to beginning on a spiritual path include a willingness to take up serious cognitive studies, a respect for factual evidence, and a responsible attitude. Central to progress on the path itself is a harmonious cultivation of the following qualities:


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner sees meditation as a concentration and enhancement of the power of thought. By focusing consciously on an idea, feeling or intention the meditant seeks to arrive at pure thinking, a state exemplified by but not confined to pure mathematics. In Steiner's view, conventional sensory-material knowledge is achieved through relating perception and concepts. The anthroposophic path of esoteric training articulates three further stages of supersensory knowledge, which do not necessarily follow strictly sequentially in any single individual's spiritual progress.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner described numerous exercises he believed would bring spiritual development; other anthroposophists have added many others. A central principle is that "for every step in spiritual perception, three steps are to be taken in moral development." According to Steiner, moral development reveals the extent to which one has achieved control over one's inner life and can exercise it in harmony with the spiritual life of other people; it shows the real progress in spiritual development, the fruits of which are given in spiritual perception. It also guarantees the capacity to distinguish between false perceptions or illusions (which are possible in perceptions of both the outer world and the inner world) and true perceptions: i.e., the capacity to distinguish in any perception between the influence of subjective elements (i.e., viewpoint) and objective reality.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner built upon Goethe's conception of an imaginative power capable of synthesizing the sense-perceptible form of a thing (an image of its outer appearance) and the concept we have of that thing (an image of its inner structure or nature). Steiner added to this the conception that a further step in the development of thinking is possible when the thinker observes his or her own thought processes. "The organ of observation and the observed thought process are then identical, so that the condition thus arrived at is simultaneously one of perception through thinking and one of thought through perception."


title: Anthroposophy

text: Thus, in Steiner's view, we can overcome the subject-object divide through inner activity, even though all human experience begins by being conditioned by it. In this connection, Steiner examines the step from thinking determined by outer impressions to what he calls sense-free thinking. He characterizes thoughts he considers without sensory content, such as mathematical or logical thoughts, as free deeds. Steiner believed he had thus located the origin of free will in our thinking, and in particular in sense-free thinking.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Some of the epistemic basis for Steiner's later anthroposophical work is contained in the seminal work, Philosophy of Freedom. In his early works, Steiner sought to overcome what he perceived as the dualism of Cartesian idealism and Kantian subjectivism by developing Goethe's conception of the human being as a natural-supernatural entity, that is: natural in that humanity is a product of nature, supernatural in that through our conceptual powers we extend nature's realm, allowing it to achieve a reflective capacity in us as philosophy, art and science. Steiner was one of the first European philosophers to overcome the subject-object split in Western thought. Though not well known among philosophers, his philosophical work was taken up by Owen Barfield (and through him influenced the Inklings, an Oxford group of Christian writers that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis).


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner believed in the possibility of applying the clarity of scientific thinking to spiritual experience, which he saw as deriving from an objectively existing spiritual world. Steiner identified mathematics, which attains certainty through thinking itself, thus through inner experience rather than empirical observation, as the basis of his epistemology of spiritual experience.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner's writing, though appreciative of all religions and cultural developments, emphasizes Western tradition as having evolved to meet contemporary needs. He describes Christ and his mission on earth of bringing individuated consciousness as having a particularly important place in human evolution, whereby:


title: Anthroposophy

text: Thus, anthroposophy considers there to be a being who unifies all religions, and who is not represented by any particular religious faith. This being is, according to Steiner, not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and of human history. To describe this being, Steiner periodically used terms such as the "Representative of Humanity" or the "good spirit" rather than any denominational term.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements:


title: Anthroposophy

text: Rudolf Steiner wrote and lectured on Judaism and Jewish issues over much of his adult life. He was a fierce opponent of popular antisemitism, but asserted that there was no justification for the existence of Judaism and Jewish culture in the modern world, a radical assimilationist perspective which saw the Jews completely integrating into the larger society. He also supported Émile Zola's position in the Dreyfus affair. Steiner emphasized Judaism's central importance to the constitution of the modern era in the West but suggested that to appreciate the spirituality of the future it would need to overcome its tendency toward abstraction.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In his later life, Steiner was accused by the Nazis of being a Jew, and Adolf Hitler called anthroposophy "Jewish methods". The anthroposophical institutions in Germany were banned during Nazi rule and several anthroposophists sent to concentration camps.


title: Anthroposophy

text: But the truth was that while Anthroposophists complained of bad press, they were to a surprising extent let be by the Nazi regime, "including outspokenly supportive pieces in the "Völkischer Beobachter"". Sicherheitsdienst purists argued largely in vain against Anthroposophy. According to Staudenmaier, "The prospect of unmitigated persecution was held at bay for years in a tenuous truce between pro-anthroposophical and anti-anthroposophical Nazi factions."


title: Anthroposophy

text: Important early anthroposophists who were Jewish included two central members on the executive boards of the precursors to the modern Anthroposophical Society, and Karl König, the founder of the Camphill movement, who had converted to Christianity. Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann, who viewed Steiner's social ideas as a solution to the Arab–Jewish conflict, were also influenced by anthroposophy.


title: Anthroposophy

text: There are numerous anthroposophical organisations in Israel, including the anthroposophical kibbutz Harduf, founded by Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, forty Waldorf kindergartens and seventeen Waldorf schools (stand as of 2018). A number of these organizations are striving to foster positive relationships between the Arab and Jewish populations: The Harduf Waldorf school includes both Jewish and Arab faculty and students, and has extensive contact with the surrounding Arab communities, while the first joint Arab-Jewish kindergarten was a Waldorf program in Hilf near Haifa.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Towards the end of Steiner's life, a group of theology students (primarily Lutheran, with some Roman Catholic members) approached Steiner for help in reviving Christianity, in particular "to bridge the widening gulf between modern science and the world of spirit". They approached a notable Lutheran pastor, Friedrich Rittelmeyer, who was already working with Steiner's ideas, to join their efforts. Out of their co-operative endeavor, the "Movement for Religious Renewal", now generally known as The Christian Community, was born. Steiner emphasized that he considered this movement, and his role in creating it, to be independent of his anthroposophical work, as he wished anthroposophy to be independent of any particular religion or religious denomination.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthroposophy's supporters include Saul Bellow, Selma Lagerlöf, Andrei Bely, Joseph Beuys, Owen Barfield, architect Walter Burley Griffin, Wassily Kandinsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Bruno Walter, Right Livelihood Award winners Sir George Trevelyan, and Ibrahim Abouleish, and child psychiatrist Eva Frommer.


title: Anthroposophy

text: The historian of religion Olav Hammer has termed anthroposophy "the most important esoteric society in European history." However authors, scientists, and physicians including Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Edzard Ernst, David Gorski, and Simon Singh have criticized anthroposophy's application in the areas of medicine, biology, agriculture, and education to be dangerous and pseudoscientific. Others including former Waldorf pupil Dan Dugan and historian Geoffrey Ahern have criticized anthroposophy itself as a dangerous quasi-religious movement that is fundamentally anti-rational and anti-scientific.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Though Rudolf Steiner studied natural science at the Vienna Technical University at the undergraduate level, his doctorate was in epistemology and very little of his work is directly concerned with the empirical sciences. In his mature work, when he did refer to science it was often to present phenomenological or Goethean science as an alternative to what he considered the materialistic science of his contemporaries.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Steiner's primary interest was in applying the methodology of science to realms of inner experience and the spiritual worlds (his appreciation that the essence of science is its method of inquiry is unusual among esotericists), and Steiner called anthroposophy "Geisteswissenschaft" (science of the mind, cultural/spiritual science), a term generally used in German to refer to the humanities and social sciences.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Whether this is a sufficient basis for anthroposophy to be considered a spiritual science has been a matter of controversy. As Freda Easton explained in her study of Waldorf schools, "Whether one accepts anthroposophy as a science depends upon whether one accepts Steiner's interpretation of a science that extends the consciousness and capacity of human beings to experience their inner spiritual world."


title: Anthroposophy

text: Sven Ove Hansson has disputed anthroposophy's claim to a scientific basis, stating that its ideas are not empirically derived and neither reproducible nor testable. Carlo Willmann points out that as, on its own terms, anthroposophical methodology offers no possibility of being falsified except through its own procedures of spiritual investigation, no intersubjective validation is possible by conventional scientific methods; it thus cannot stand up to empiricist critics. Peter Schneider describes such objections as untenable, asserting that if a non-sensory, non-physical realm exists, then according to Steiner the experiences of pure thinking possible within the normal realm of consciousness would already be experiences of that, and it would be impossible to exclude the possibility of empirically grounded experiences of other supersensory content.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Olav Hammer suggests that anthroposophy carries scientism "to lengths unparalleled in any other Esoteric position" due to its dependence upon claims of clairvoyant experience, its subsuming natural science under "spiritual science." Hammer also asserts that the development of what she calls "fringe" sciences such as anthroposophic medicine and biodynamic agriculture are justified partly on the basis of the ethical and ecological values they promote, rather than purely on a scientific basis.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Though Steiner saw that spiritual vision itself is difficult for others to achieve, he recommended open-mindedly exploring and rationally testing the results of such research; he also urged others to follow a spiritual training that would allow them directly to apply his methods to achieve comparable results.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Anthony Storr stated about Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy: "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional... But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation."


title: Anthroposophy

text: According to Dan Dugan, Steiner was a champion of the following pseudoscientific claims, also championed by Waldorf schools:


title: Anthroposophy

text: As an explicitly spiritual movement, anthroposophy has sometimes been called a religious philosophy. In 1998 People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) started a lawsuit alleging that anthroposophy is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes and therefore several California school districts should not be chartering Waldorf schools; the lawsuit was dismissed in 2012 for failure to show anthroposophy was a religion. In 2000, a French court ruled that a government minister's description of anthroposophy as a cult was defamatory.


title: Anthroposophy

text: Some anthroposophical ideas challenged the National Socialist racialist and nationalistic agenda. In contrast, some American educators have criticized Waldorf schools for failing to equally include the fables and myths of all cultures, instead favoring European stories over African ones.


title: Anthroposophy

text: In response to such critiques, the Anthroposophical Society in America published in 1998 a statement clarifying its stance:


title: Anthroposophy

text: We explicitly reject any racial theory that may be construed to be part of Rudolf Steiner's writings. The Anthroposophical Society in America is an open, public society and it rejects any purported spiritual or scientific theory on the basis of which the alleged superiority of one race is justified at the expense of another race.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Melissa Cervantes (born July 22, 1986), known by her ring name Thunder Rosa, is a Mexican professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where she is a former one-time AEW Women's World Champion. She is currently inactive due to suffering a back injury. She debuted in 2014 and has also appeared in World Wonder Ring Stardom (Stardom), Impact Wrestling (Impact), and the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA).


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes appeared in seasons 2 through 4 of the wrestling-based TV series Lucha Underground as Kobra Moon, leader of the Reptile Tribe; she won the Lucha Underground Trios Championship (with Daga and Jeremiah Snake). After the show ended, she resumed performing on the independent circuit, working in Women of Wrestling (WOW) in 2018 as Serpiente, and won the NWA World Women's Championship in 2019. Cervantes also founded and owns Mission Pro Wrestling (MPW), a Texas-based independent promotion devoted to women's wrestling.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes made her wrestling debut in late 2014, in a Supreme Pro Wrestling battle royal in Sacramento, California. In 2015, she performed regularly throughout California, and on April 12, she made her Japanese debut for World Wonder Ring Stardom (aka "Stardom").


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes joined the cast of Lucha Underground in season 2 as Kobra Moon, leader of the Reptile Tribe; she would remain on the show for the remainder of its run. She was nominated for the 2015 Southern California Rookie of the Year Award, and finished second to Douglas James.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: In 2016 Cervantes returned to Stardom to take part in its Goddesses of Stardom Tag League, teaming with Holidead. She won the 2016 Southern California Women's Wrestler of the Year Award. She was released on March 26, 2019.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On June 15, 2018, Thunder Rosa made her Ring of Honor debut on its "ROH State Of The Art" show, teaming with Kelly Klein against Sumie Sakai and Tenille Dashwood. On November 3 (which aired on tape delay on December 15) episode of ROH's eponymous weekly TV show, Rosa teamed with Holidead as "The Twisted Sisterz," defeating Britt Baker and Madison Rayne.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes worked through the October 2018 tapings on Women of Wrestling under her Kobra Moon ring name. Her first televised matched aired on March 1, 2019, where she was managed by Sophia Lopez as she defeated Azteca. With WOW renewed for a second season, Moon's name changed to Serpentine. On the September 14 episode of "WOW", Serpentine unsuccessfully challenged Tessa Blanchard for the WOW World Championship.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On April 29, 2019, Thunder Rosa made her Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling debut, teaming with Yuki Aino against Mizuki and Yuka Sakazaki. In winning the International Princess Championship on January 5, 2020, from Maki Itoh, Rosa became the first gaijin titleholder in Tokyo Joshi Pro history. On October 7, Thunder Rosa announced she had relinquished the championship as COVID-19 restrictions precluded her from traveling to Japan.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Thunder Rosa made her National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) TV debut on the October 29, 2019 episode of "NWA Power". After Marti Belle lost to Ashley Vox, Thunder Rosa entered the ring and extended her hand to Belle, which Belle declined as she left the ring. On the following episode, Rosa had her in-ring debut, defeating Ashley Vox and attacking her post-match. Rosa later attacked NWA World Women's Champion Allysin Kay, with Belle also attacking Kay and aligning with Rosa. On the November 19 episode of "NWA Power", Belle and Thunder Rosa defeated Kay and Vox, after Melina distracted Kay, and aligning herself with Belle and Rosa. At NWA Hard Times on January 24, 2020, Thunder Rosa defeated Allysin Kay to capture the NWA World Women's Championship and also becoming the first Mexican born wrestler to win the championship. She would lose the title against Serena Deeb on October 27, 2020, at UWN Primetime Live. Fightful Select reported on July 22, 2021, that her contract in NWA was bought out by All Elite Wrestling, allowing her to sign with AEW full time. NWA wished her well via their Twitter account.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Thunder Rosa made her Impact debut on July 17, 2021, at its annual Slammiversary PPV as the mystery opponent for Impact Knockouts Champion Deonna Purrazzo.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Thunder Rosa made her All Elite Wrestling (AEW) debut on the August 22, 2020, episode of "Dynamite", where she cut a promo on then-AEW Women's World Champion Hikaru Shida, and challenged her to a title match at the All Out pay-per-view show. On the September 2 episode of "Dynamite", Thunder Rosa made her AEW in-ring debut, where she defeated Serena Deeb. At All Out, Thunder Rosa unsuccessfully challenged Shida for the AEW Women's World Championship. On the September 16 episode of "Dynamite", Rosa successfully defended her NWA World Women's Championship against Ivelisse. After the match, Rosa was attacked by Diamante and Ivelisse, and was later saved by Shida, turning Rosa face in the process. A week later on "Dynamite", Rosa teamed with Shida when they defeated Diamante and Ivelisse in a tag team match. On the November 18 episode of "Dynamite", Rosa fought Deeb in a rematch for the NWA Women's Championship, but would lose following outside interference from Dr. Britt Baker. After the match, Rosa brawled with Baker.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On the March 17, 2021, episode of "Dynamite", Rosa and Britt Baker became the first women to main event "Dynamite"; Rosa defeated Baker in an intense Unsanctioned Lights Out match that was highly praised by critics, and widely viewed as breaking down sexist assumptions that women wrestlers couldn't wrestle a "hardcore" style match. Eleven months after her debut, on her 35th birthday July 22, 2021, it was announced that Rosa had officially signed a full-time deal with AEW. On the November 24 special episode of "Dynamite" being AEW Thanksgiving EVE, Rosa wrestled in the AEW TBS women's championship tournament where she faced Jamie Hayter and beat her. On the December 29 special episode of "Dynamite" being AEW New Year's Smash, Rosa faced Jade Cargill in the semi finals of the TBS tournament which Rosa lost due to interference by Mercedes Martinez.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On March 6, 2022, at Revolution Rosa faced Britt Baker for the AEW Women's World Championship however due to Baker, Jamie Hayter and Rebel distracting the referee and cheating this resulted in Rosa losing. On March 16 special edition episode of "Dynamite" being St. Patrick's Day Slam, Rosa won her first AEW Women's World Championship after she defeated Baker in a Steel Cage match in her adoptive hometown of San Antonio, Texas. On April 16, Rosa defended her championship against Nyla Rose in the main event of AEW Battle of The Belts ll which Rosa won. On May 29 at Double or Nothing Rosa defended her championship against Serena Deeb and won. On June 8 on Dynamite Rosa successfully defended her championship against Maria Shafir. At , Rosa successfully defended her championship against Toni Storm. On July 27 at Fight For The Fallen Rosa defended her championship against Miyu Yamashita which Yamashita earned a shot at after she defeated Thunder Rosa in TJPW. On August 5 at AEW Battle Of The Belts III, Rosa defeated Jamie Hayter to retain championship. On August 24 at "Dynamite," Rosa revealed she can't defend her championship due to injury, which then lead to allegations claiming the injury was fake which Rosa denied. Initially the company kept Rosa's championship reign intact in her absence while moving forward with an interim champion. This decision was rescinded three months later, as it was announced on the November 23 episode of "Dynamite" that Rosa had relinquished her championship not only presently, but retroactively as well, with both Toni Storm and Jamie Hayter having their interim title reigns recognized as fully lineal runs with the Women's World Championship.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: During Triplemanía XXX: Tijuana, Taya Valkyrie called out Thunder Rosa, asking to prove the latter is the best female wrestling from Mexico. Rosa reacted on Social Media accepting the challenge. On August 8th Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide held a media conference to confirm the match and the event's match card.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes' "Thunder Rosa" ring name is a tribute to Thunder Road, a rehabilitation center for teenagers Cervantes worked at for over 2 years, which overlapped with the training and launch phases of her wrestling career. It was a collaboration between Cervantes, her husband and a Thunder Road coworker on a car ride home after attending a wrestling show. Cervantes wanted a name that appealed to both Latinos and non-Latino Americans, would honor her work with teens, and be easy for fans to chant during her matches.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: When Cervantes’ uncle attended one of her matches (at a Lucha Underground taping), he told her it was the first time he had attended a wrestling show in years. Cervantes’ grandfather died of a heart attack at a Tijuana wrestling show; her uncle, then a child who watched wrestling weekly, was sitting on her grandfather's lap at the time. Due to the close, painful association of wrestling with his father's death, Cervantes’ uncle had hated wrestling ever since. However, watching Cervantes wrestle rekindled his childhood love of wrestling, and convinced him she had been destined to become a wrestler. The paint also symbolizes the rebirth of Cervantes’ career, after a concussion in Japan put her out of work for a month. Cervantes’ husband suggested that when she resumed performing, she also resume the face paint to stand out from other wrestlers.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On September 13, 2019, it was confirmed that Cervantes had signed with Combate Americas. Her first fight took place on November 8 in San Antonio, Texas. She lost the fight by unanimous decision against Nadine Mandiau. On October 10, 2021, Cervantes announced that she had officially retired from MMA when she signed a contract with All Elite Wrestling due to not having the time to commit to training.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: In June 2022, it was confirmed that Thunder Rosa would return to Combate to do commentary on the July 15th and 22nd shows.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Before wrestling and during the early years of her wrestling career, Cervantes was a professional social worker, doing case work with at-risk young adults struggling with mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse and other life issues. When she realized that season three of Lucha Underground would pay enough to surpass her income as a social worker, Cervantes' husband encouraged her to focus 100% of her time and effort on wrestling.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes married Brian Cervantes on December 21, 2006, and together they have a son Anakin, born on August 31, 2005.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: Cervantes graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 with a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology. She became a US citizen on February 21, 2019.


title: Thunder Rosa

text: On February 6, 2019, it was reported that Cervantes, Ivelisse Vélez, Joey Ryan, and Jorge Luis Alcantar (aka, El Hijo del Fantasma/King Cuerno) had filed a class-action lawsuit in California against Lucha Underground's coproducers: the El Rey Network and the Baba-G production company. The performers alleged that their Lucha Underground contracts were illegal under California law because they unfairly restricted their ability to work in their chosen profession. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Cervantes said that she joined Lucha Underground for season 2 under a 5-year contract. However, production of the series ended after less than 4 full seasons' worth of episodes were made. This left Cervantes, et al. -- who, as professional wrestlers in the U.S., work as independent contractors—trapped in a situation where they were effectively fired yet also contractually blocked from working for any other wrestling companies until their Lucha Underground contracts expired (i.e., at least 1–2 years later), or they each paid a $5,000 (USD) escape clause fee. By March 26, 2019, all lawsuits had been settled in the wrestlers' favor, and they were freed from their LU contracts.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Oleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov (; born 31 March 1964) is a Ukrainian politician, screenwriter, Baptist minister and economist. He is the former Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In 2005, Turchynov served as the head of the Security Service of Ukraine. Turchynov is a former acting President of Ukraine from the removal from power of President Viktor Yanukovych on 21 February 2014, until Petro Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukrainian President on 7 June 2014. He then became Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament until 27 November 2014. Turchynov also served as acting Prime Minister in 2010 (when he was the First Vice Prime Minister in the absence of a prime minister after Yulia Tymoshenko's government was dismissed on 3 March 2010) until the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) appointed Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister on 11 March 2010.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Turchynov was the first deputy chairman of the political party Batkivshchyna (All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland") and a close associate of party leader Yulia Tymoshenko. He started the new political party People's Front in September 2014, now together with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. In June 2020 Turchynov became one of the managers of the headquarters of European Solidarity, a political party led by former president Petro Poroshenko.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Oleksandr Turchynov was born in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro). He graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1986, after which he worked at Kryvorizhstal, a large Ukrainian steel producer. From 1987 to 1990, he served as head of the agitation and propaganda division of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Komsomol (Communist Youth League) Committee, which was led by Serhiy Tihipko. Tihipko and Turchynov became political advisers of Leonid Kuchma, then head of Dnipropetrovsk-based Pivdenmash missile manufacturer. Kuchma and his entire team, including Tihipko and Turchynov, moved to Kyiv in 1992, after Kuchma was appointed Prime Minister. In 1993, Turchynov was formally appointed an advisor on economic issues to Prime Minister Kuchma.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Turchynov is a long-time ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, another prominent Ukrainian political figure from Dnipropetrovsk. They used to have a common business in Dnipropetrovsk. In December 1993, Turchynov co-founded and became Vice President of Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs. In 1994 he created the political party Hromada together with Pavlo Lazarenko, a business ally of Tymoshenko. Turchynov was also director of the Economic Reforms Institute from January 1994 to March 1998 and was head of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences' Laboratory of Shadow Economy Research.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In 1998, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada as a member of Hromada. Following Lazarenko's flight from Ukraine, he left the faction and party (during May 1999) together with Yulia Tymoshenko's All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland". He was re-elected to parliament in 2002 and 2006 as part of the BYuT.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 4 February 2005, Turchynov was appointed and served as the first‐ever civilian head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). With the approval of Turchynov as the head of the SBU, he dissolved the investigation team that was investigating the Georgiy Gongadze case since 2002. According to the first deputy head of the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine Roman Shubin, Turchynov ordered not to provide operational data on the Gongadze case to the investigation group of the Security Service of Ukraine.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 15 June 2005, after the SBU had started an investigation by Turchynov in May 2005, Tymoshenko charged that Dmytro Firtash and others, including his Nicosia, Cyprus-based Highrock Holdings had been central to over $1 billion stolen from Ukraine through his Turkmenistan gas scheme involving both Eural Trans Gas and RosUkrEnergo. On 8 September 2005, Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko and subsequently, on 23 September 2005, the SBU investigation into the missing money was halted by direct order of Yushchenko according to Turchynov.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In August 2007, Turchynov replied to the accusation that his stance on same-sex marriage is typically conservative, "I do not agree. If a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy, you label them a progressive person. All of these are perversions".


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In the spring of 2008, he was the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc candidate for the Mayor of Kyiv election he placed second at the election with 218,600 votes (19.13% of total vote).


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In December 2009, during the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election campaign, Turchynov accused President Viktor Yushchenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych of coordinating their actions in their attempts to topple the Second Tymoshenko Government. From December 2009 until March 2010, the adviser to Turchynov in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was Andriy Slyusarchuk, a Ukrainian fraudster.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 4 March 2010, after the fall of the second Tymoshenko Government, Yulia Tymoshenko resigned from her post as Prime Minister on 4 March 2010, and Turchynov was empowered to fulfill the Prime Minister's duties until a new government was formed. On 11 March 2010, the Azarov Government was elected, and Mykola Azarov was appointed Prime Minister the same day.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to WikiLeaks, Prosecutor-General of Ukraine Oleksandr Medvedko ordered former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko to arrest Yulia Tymoshenko's allies – Oleksandr Turchynov and Andriy Kozhemiakin – for destroying the documents of the Security Service of Ukraine in which the connection between Tymoshenko and the criminal businessman Semion Mogilevich was proven.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In the final days of Euromaidan, on 21 February 2014 the Verkhovna Rada passed a law that reinstated the 8 December 2004 amendments of the constitution. This was passed under simplified procedure without any decision of the relevant committee and was passed in the first and the second reading in one sitting by 386 deputies. The law was approved by 140 MPs of the Party of Regions, 89 MPs of Batkivshchyna, 40 MPs of UDAR, 32 of the Communist Party, and 50 independent lawmakers. According to Radio Free Europe, however, the measure was not signed by the then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was subsequently removed from office.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: The reinstitution of the 2004 amendments was proscribed in the Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine to be adopted within 48 hours after signing of the agreement (21 February 2014). All of that was taking place during the already ongoing concealed annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Under the provision of the Constitution with 2004 amendments, a chairman of parliament is the next in succession of power in the country and such provision existed before adaptation of the Constitution back in 1996.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 22 February 2014, he was elected as speaker of Verkhovna Rada. On 23 February 2014, Turchynov was designated as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine following the impeachment of Viktor Yanukovych per the reinstated constitutional provisions of the 2004 amendments. On 25 February Turchynov assumed the (Presidential power of) command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A day earlier were also scheduled early presidential elections on 25 May, for which Oleksandr Turchynov did not register.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In early March 2014, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, stated he did not regard Turchynov as the legitimate Ukrainian President.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Following attacks on law enforcement, security institutions and capture of government buildings, Turchynov offered for the unmarked militants with Russian flags to lay down arms and vacate government buildings for negotiations. Upon refusal, he finally sanctioned a big scale anti-terrorist operation headed by the Security Service of Ukraine. Earlier on 8 April 2014 another short-term anti-terrorist operation led by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine freed up government buildings in Kharkiv.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 13 April 2014, Russia confirmed that it began a large scale military exercise in the Rostov, Belgorod and Kursk Oblasts, on the border with Ukraine, involving more than 8,000 troops and which would continue until the end of March. In April 2014, Russia announced another military exercise in the same region (Southern Russia).


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 14 April 2014, while talking on the phone with Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Turchynov asked for the United Nations's support regarding the crisis in eastern Ukraine, to which the Secretary-General replied that peacekeepers may be sent in should Russia withhold its veto. Meanwhile, Turchynov issued a deadline to the pro-Russian insurgents to disarm and dismantle their barricades, but the deadline passed without incident. Before he issued a deadline, which was scheduled for 9 am, he tried to negotiate with insurgents and even proposed to hold referendum on the same day as elections which will be on 25 May. His proposition was questioned by journalists who feared that the referendum might be sabotaged by pro-Russia insurgents.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Petro Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine on 25 May 2014. Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukrainian President on 7 June 2014, this ended the presidential powers of Turchynov.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In an interview with the BBC, Turchynov admitted that in 2014, when the first volunteers went to war, he was personally giving them weapons, but not all were clean in the eyes of the law: "And I personally signed the orders for the weapons, many were worried about what would happen if they did not follow those orders with a weapons. Indeed, we didn't check anyone at that time, if they were convicted previously or not – whoever said that they are ready to defend the country, signed up, received weapons and went to the East of our country." In an interview given to VICE, he declared concerning his decision: "If it happened again, I would do the same thing"


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 21 September 2014, he said that Russia doesn't admit that their soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. He also stated that Russia is the main aggressor, and that during the conflict, Ukraine had lost over 1,000 lives with hundreds missing. During the same Facebook message, he compared the conflict to the butterflies, a metaphor to one of Ray Bradbury's works.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 16 December 2014, President Poroshenko appointed Turchynov as Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to the social poll of the "Sofia" centre, in June 2017, only 0.9% of respondents said that they completely trust Turchynov, 9.5% trust him, 24.1% do not trust him, 57.4% do not trust him at all.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 1 November 2018, Turchynov was included in the Russian sanctions list in connection with Ukraine's unfriendly actions towards citizens and legal entities of the Russian Federation.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 11 December 2018, in response to the fact that 66 city councils and 12 regional councils had adopted the term "gender" instead of "sex", he published on his website an article he wrote called "Neo-Marxism or a trip to the abyss". In this article he drew a parallel between Marxists and "neo-Marxists", and declared the latter "offe[r] society a struggle for the rights of the new "oppressed", assigning to them the role of emancipated women, homosexuals, lesbians, transgender people, and others like that."


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In his article he also criticized LGBT activists and compared the "invented subjects" of gender studies to the academic degrees of "Scientific Communism" and "Marxist-Leninist philosophy". He also called for the restoration of the term "sex" instead of the term "gender" in the national registration where the term "gender" was in use. In response to this, 160 church communities and 130 public organizations publicly supported his article. In March 2019, at the All-Ukrainian Forum of the Family, Turtchynov declared he opposed the "hundreds of genders" in the Ukrainian legislation and declared his support for "eternal gospel values".


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 17 May 2019, after the Ukrainian elections, he resigned from his office as secretary of the NSDC; his resignation was accepted on 19 May.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In June 2020 Turchynov became head of the 2020 Ukrainian local elections headquarters of the party European Solidarity. Turchynov stated he was "not interested in a parliamentary mandate or public positions, but to help the unification process and train quality staff of effective managers".


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 10 September 2014, Oleksandr Turchynov published a letter in which he urged retailers to take a closer look at the products of "Tarasove Dzherelo", a small producer of mineral water. He proposed to conclude deals with that company. Some market experts assessed the actions of Turchynov as lobbyism.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to the journalistic investigation, Turchynov's mother-in-law, Tamara Beliba, owns the largest data center in the Baltic states — "MC-office". Beliba owns the "Ekonomikos Institutas" company, which owns a data center located in Kaunas, Lithuania. The total volume of investments was $200 million. Tamara Beliba is also the owner of the company "Ekostilkom", which in turn owns a house near Kyiv with a size of 1,000 m with a plot of land of 0.5 hectares. Turchynov's mother-in-law is the owner of warehouses with a total area of 6,000 m in Kyiv on the Akademika Koroleva Prospect. Another company of Tamara Beliba owns three facilities with the size of more than 200 m each in the centre of Kyiv on Konovalets street.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to the "United State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations" of Ukraine, the entire business in the Turchynov family is executed on his mother-in-law Tamara Beliba, mother Valentina and wife Anna. The family is engaged in economic research, film production, providing communication services and building data centres. This business is related with economic research, film production, the provision of telecommunications services and data centers.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 1 May 2017, the journalistic investigation of the program "Our money with Denis Bigus" (channel "24") proved the connection between Oleksandr Turchynov and people's deputy Ruslan Lukyanchuk with three large companies ("Absolut Finance", "Magnate" and "Octave Finance") that own 1,200 exchange points of 3,500 legal currency exchange offices in Ukraine. These points exchanged currencies without cash registers, which violates the requirements of the law, since in this case automatic tax reporting is not provided to the State Fiscal Service. All these companies are listed on the nominees — Oksana and Ilona Brodovskaya and Hryhoriy Pron'ko (Oksana's father). However, their connection with the joint business of Turchynov and Lukyanchuk was proved by journalists — Oksana and her husband Valentin Brodovsky were assistants of Ruslan Lukyanchuk during four convocations of the Verkhovna Rada. Investigations on this subject were published in the Ukrainian media earlier.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: Oleksandr Turchynov's father-in-law Vladimir Beliba together with businessman Ihor Tynnyy opened in 2013 in the center of Kyiv a restaurant of Italian cuisine "Montecchi v Capuleti". This was reported in May 2016 by the journalists of "Nashi hroshi" project.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to media reports, Turchynov is involved in establishment of the following companies: "Institute for Economic Reforms" LLC, "Information Technologies of the 21st Century" CJSC, "Pharmacor" LLC, "ZET" LLC, "Europe-X" LLC, "Editorial board of Vecherniye Vesti newspaper" LLC, "VV" LLC, "SVV" LLC, "Janus" Real Estate Agency LLC.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In June 2003, the Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin announced his intention to send the proposal to the Ukrainian Parliament an idea to bringing to trial the deputies Oleksandr Turchynov, Stepan Khmara and Mykolay Rudkovsky. According to Shokin, the People's deputies were insulting and beating the staff of the Lukyanivska Prison. Deputies demanded the release of Gennady Tymoshenko and Antonina Bolyura. They were incriminated with three cases of the Criminal Code: "Capturing state buildings", "Threat to law enforcement officers", and "Excess of power with the use of weapons and verbal insulting of law enforcement officers."


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 13 September 2003, tax officials detained at the office of the "Fatherland" party Ruslan Lukyanchuk, one of the assistants of Oleksandr Turchynov. He was charged with involvement in illegal currency exchange. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine Svyatoslav Piskun then stated that the detention of Turchynov's assistant was part of a planned process of initiating a criminal case. According to Piskun, about hundreds of thousands of illegally converted dollars were sent to the office of the "Fatherland" party.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In February 2006 state prosecutors opened a criminal case against Turchynov and his SBU deputy Andriy Kozhemyakin for destroying a file about FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich, from the SBU archive. The case was dismissed four months later. WikiLeaks documents mention Turchynov, then head of Ukraine's SBU, as having destroyed documents implicating Yulia Tymoshenko's alleged connections to Mogilevich.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: According to the "Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine" newspaper referring to deputy mayor of Kyiv Leonid Chernovetskyi, Mr. Turchynov is related to unlawful construction in the Landscape Valley ("Peyzazhna aleya") district of Kyiv. In autumn of 2004 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine signed an investment contract with JSC "Ukrainian Property" (OAO "Ukrayinsʹke mayno") on the construction of an apartment building in this district. With this the share of the MFA in the project made just 20%. The Ministry actually became a cover for the businessmen.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: As of 1 January 2007, 91.1% of the JSC "Ukrainian Property" shares belonged to "Eclad Invest Ltd." (USA), and 8.2% to Valery Kovalenko. Previously, the shares of JSC "Ukrainian Property" belonged to JSC "Financial holding "L-Holding"", the largest shareholder of which was JSC "Centre of Financial Technologies". Oleksandr Turchynov owned 26.2% of the shares of this company. On 23 April 2008, the Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled that Oleksandr Turchynov had no personal relationship with the construction of the Landscape Valley.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In 2005, Oleksandr Turchynov ordered to organize an illegal wiretapping of the journalist of "Segodnya" newspaper Oleksandr Korchinsky. This fact was made public at a press conference by Viktor Shokin, former Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The telephone of the journalist was tapped from 25 June – 12 July 2005. Turchynov personally took this decision. The journalist's phone was bugged without sanctions of the court. On 14 March 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine have opened a criminal case on the fact of illegal wiretapping of senior officials. Most of these wiretapping took place in 2005, when Oleksandr Turchynov was the head of SSU.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In August 2016, journalists of the "Economichna Pravda" ("Ukrayinska Pravda" project) accused Oleksandr Turchynov of influencing the leadership of the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine (DSTSZI). Despite the introduction of the system of electronic declarations on the incomes of civil servants and officials, those declarations without a DSTSZI's security certificate could not have legal force in court cases. A number of analysts accused Turchynov of disrupting the launch of the e-declaration system.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: On 15 August 2016, Serhiy Kaplin, Secretary of the Committee for National Security and Defense of the Verkhovna Rada, published an open appeal to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General demanding to confirm the attitude of Oleksandr Turchynov to private arms manufacturers. Turchynov actively lobbies the entry of these manufacturers to the market. Kaplin also demands the Prosecutor General to open cases against Turchynov and Serhiy Pashynskyi on the surrender of Crimea and Donbas.


title: Oleksandr Turchynov

text: In March 2017, former people's deputy Oleksandr Shepelev accused Turchynov and Ruslan Lukyanchuk of stealing and withdrawing $800 million from the state budget with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund. According to Shepelev, in 2009 Turchynov and Lukyanchuk "were taxed by the heads of ministries and state enterprises", and received money from them to the accounts of the "European Bank for Rational Financing" (EBRD). There, hryvnias were converted into the cash dollars, which then were withdrawn to offshores through the Baltic banks and shell companies. The largest of these companies was "Fortex", owned by Lukyanchuk and registered in the UK. Turchynov urged the NABU to investigate the charges against him.