https://www.premierchristianity.com... hope 2.3.2022&dm_i=16DQ,7R62G,UEFLOW,VM9EZ,1
Personally, I have never had doubts about the fact that the former KGB officer is a professional liar and murderer, and his pretence of converting to Christianity, without even a hint of repenting his bloodstained KGB record, was a rather hasty disguise.
Now, at last, the daylight has broken through. Putin has cast off his mask of a Christian prince. He addresses his troops as “comrades”, ordering them to re-take Ukraine as a stray administrative unit of the USSR. The church bells ring in Ukrainian towns to sound the alarm against incoming enemy strikes. Tearful Russian prisoners of war recall, on camera, how they were forced into Ukraine by threats of execution, or tricked into invading on the pretence of it being only a training exercise. Ukrainian heroes sacrifice their lives to stop advancing tanks with their bare hands.
It no longer matters that Putin once indulged in some blasphemous political flirting with Christianity. His version of Christianity is too different from Christ’s. He is prepared to be a patron of the Church because having a ‘strong’ church is useful for an empire. But there are conditions attached to that: there may be only one church, subject to strict hierarchical discipline not dissimilar to Putin’s secular power structures. That church must obey and serve the secular government. Christ is permitted to be there, but only as a loyal helper to Caesar. For example, when 100 brave Russian Orthodox priests signed an open letter urging Christian charity towards imprisoned opposition protestors in 2019, the iron fist of the ‘loyal’ church hierarchy promptly came down upon many of the signatories.
It is in this context that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow spoke this week of cursing the “evil forces” which resist the Russian offensive in Ukraine. His sermon was deeply reminiscent of the worst examples of the subjugation of the Church to Stalin and other secular tyrants.
Just substitute Trump for Putin in this description and you have an explanation of what's been happening here in America for the last 5 years.
Personally, I have never had doubts about the fact that the former KGB officer is a professional liar and murderer, and his pretence of converting to Christianity, without even a hint of repenting his bloodstained KGB record, was a rather hasty disguise.
Now, at last, the daylight has broken through. Putin has cast off his mask of a Christian prince. He addresses his troops as “comrades”, ordering them to re-take Ukraine as a stray administrative unit of the USSR. The church bells ring in Ukrainian towns to sound the alarm against incoming enemy strikes. Tearful Russian prisoners of war recall, on camera, how they were forced into Ukraine by threats of execution, or tricked into invading on the pretence of it being only a training exercise. Ukrainian heroes sacrifice their lives to stop advancing tanks with their bare hands.
It no longer matters that Putin once indulged in some blasphemous political flirting with Christianity. His version of Christianity is too different from Christ’s. He is prepared to be a patron of the Church because having a ‘strong’ church is useful for an empire. But there are conditions attached to that: there may be only one church, subject to strict hierarchical discipline not dissimilar to Putin’s secular power structures. That church must obey and serve the secular government. Christ is permitted to be there, but only as a loyal helper to Caesar. For example, when 100 brave Russian Orthodox priests signed an open letter urging Christian charity towards imprisoned opposition protestors in 2019, the iron fist of the ‘loyal’ church hierarchy promptly came down upon many of the signatories.
It is in this context that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow spoke this week of cursing the “evil forces” which resist the Russian offensive in Ukraine. His sermon was deeply reminiscent of the worst examples of the subjugation of the Church to Stalin and other secular tyrants.
Just substitute Trump for Putin in this description and you have an explanation of what's been happening here in America for the last 5 years.
