Note: Title slightly edited for length.
He has to say that or he’d be out of a job. Putin controls that church.
Political strongmen and religion go together like chocolate and peanut butter.
People who write this nonsense are more than likely entirely ignorant about even the basics of Russian politics— which are something like a Frankenstein monster where totalitarian supporting “Russian Orthodox” (only 7 percent in the entire country even bother to go to church just once a month) also tend to be Communists who march around with icons of Joseph Stalin. These same Neo-Stalinists then go into places like Ukraine and hang a guy up by his arms and legs on the wall and torture him to death, something the Neo-Stalinists even confess as occurring, and they JUSTIFY it. Here’s a better read over this nonsense:
Post-Imperial Third Romes: Resurrections of a Russian Orthodox Geopolitical Metaphor
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/1987754/posts
Excellent article and bring a Conservative there is a lot to learn from the ROC and its experience in the world after communism fell. It just goes to show that those little things that we did in this country of what seems like yesterday meaning taking God out of the Public Square has had a big effect on this country.
In some ways I would be more interested in how many Russians attend Liturgy at least four times a year (or even once a year) and, when they do, receive the Holy Mysteries after keeping the Russians’ very strict traditional discipline of preparation for Holy Communion than in how many attend monthly or weekly. Of course anyone who is studying the level of piety among Russians who is not himself Orthodox would not think to ask that.