Lord Herbert wrote on Feb 7
th, 2016 at 10:38am:
sir prince duke alevine wrote on Feb 7
th, 2016 at 10:34am:
Lord Herbert wrote on Feb 7
th, 2016 at 10:29am:
sir prince duke alevine wrote on Feb 7
th, 2016 at 7:49am:
Precisely.
Autonomous Muslim republics infinitely more different in every way to white, Christian Russia than Australia is to Britain.
You obviously missed the entire point.
Thanks for the 'heads up' on what is the host country of 'Russia' - as opposed to the 'cling-on' mini-States down south where the barbarians have their territorial ghettoes.
Vladimir Putin was born and raised in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., now known as St. Petersburg, Russia.
Putin had, in classic Soviet fashion, a secular upbringing. His father was a “model Communist” and a “militant atheist,” though his mother was a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian1 and she had young Putin secretly baptized into that church.2
It was merely symbolic, however, as Putin went through the bulk of his adult life–rising through the ranks of the KGB and the Soviet Communist Party–conforming to Soviet secular convention.
It wasn’t until the double-whammy of 1) his wife’s car accident in 1993 and 2) a life-threatening house fire in 1996 that Putin began questioning his atheism. During a vulnerable moment before Putin departed for a diplomatic trip to Israel, his mother gave him a baptismal cross. He said of the occasion:
I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.3
Now, Putin has become a bit of a zealot. He seems to want to reestablish a pre-Soviet combination of church and state, saying:
First and foremost we should be governed by common sense. But common sense should be based on moral principles first. And it is not possible today to have morality separated from religious values.4
Furthermore, Putin has proposed compulsory religion and ethics classes for Russian students.5
There are many reports of collusion between the Russian Orthodox clergy and the Russian government, with each of them fighting the other’s battles for them. The most recent example to receive worldwide attention was the Pussy Riot debacle, in which the girl-punk band sang at a church in Moscow: “Mother of God, Blessed Virgin, drive out Putin.”6 Both the church and the government were outraged and the band was sentenced to two years of prison labor.7
The western world erupted in outrage and, recalling Soviet oppression of artists and intellectuals, condemned the sentence as theocratic totalitarianism. Even the Obama administration weighed in, saying:
While we understand the group’s behavior was offensive for some, we have concerns about the way these young women were treated by the Russian judicial system.8
Still, Putin’s religiosity is a blessing to some in the international community. The Eastern Orthodox Church has asked him to protect Christians worldwide, and he has agreed. Russia’s controversial support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria is due to Putin’s concern that the Christian minority in that country will be persecuted if Assad is toppled