Posted on 10/01/2015 9:28:10 AM PDT by Trumpinator
As an Orthodox Christian, I have mixed feelings about the church’s blessing and participation here. In fact, I’m not sure what I think. I know about the communist infiltration and control of the Russian Orthodox Church at its highest levels during the Soviet days. The Soviets also infiltrated and controlled other religious denominations. One issue that gives me some hope that things have changed is the position of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which restored communion with the Moscow Patriarchate a few years ago. ROCOR originally broke with Moscow because of the obvious communist control of the Patriarchate, and it always remained staunchly anti-communist. Over the years, some of the hottest criticism hurled at the Moscow Patriarchate came from ROCOR. ROCOR considered the Romanovs to be saints long before Moscow did. I knew a woman whose father had served in the White Army. Knowing the intransigence of ROCOR over the years, I’d like to think that they wouldn’t have reunited with Moscow if the Russian Church was still dominated by communists.
Whether the Russian Orthodox Church has become (once again) a willing tool of Russian nationalism is another story. I’m up in the air about whether this is always a bad thing. Some of the few voices speaking for the defense of Christian civilization are coming from Eastern Europe, including Russia. Putin at least gives it lip service. Whether this is the goal of current Russian actions in Syria, I have no idea, because I’m having a real hard time getting my mind around exactly what is going on there; who are the black hats and who, if any, are the white hats.
I doubt the sincerity of the Russian Orthodox Church. Putin was very wise to get them on his “team”.
True, but why did the Western powers ally with a Muslim nation in the Crimean War? They should have joined Russia to crush the Ottomans.
Because by then, the Ottomans were in rapid decline and not a military threat to the West, whereas Russia was. Russia had the advantage of proximity to the lands of the Ottoman empire. Even if they divided up the empire equally, the Western powers could not have held their overseas lands against Russian might, because of a lack of geographical contiguity. That proximity is a key reason why the Western colonial empires are history whereas most of the Russian empire at its peak still exists within the borders of the current Russian state.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been the only support Syrian Christians have had and this is a primary interest of the church - protecting Syrian Christians. Christians from Western countries, including the American churches, have turned their back on them
They are bombing the rebels who were slaughtering the Syrian Christians.
re: They are bombing the rebels who were slaughtering the Syrian Christians.
Let me try to understand this ... the papers are reporting that the Russians, instead of bombing ISIS held territory, are bombing the places where CIA supported rebels are.
And now you’re telling us that these rebels our CIA are supporting are also slaughtering Syrian Christians.
If they’re doing that, what the heck are we doing helping these rebels in the first place?
Another way of putting this is to use the analogy of the Western alliance with the Soviets against the Nazis during WWII, despite the Soviet assistance to the Nazis embodied in the Molotov-Ribbenttop Non-Aggression Pact that enabled Germany to invade the West. (And in fact, the Soviets were the quartermaster for the Nazi invasion of the West). The reasoning was that the Nazis had conquered most of the West and threatened to erase their identities, and was therefore the greater of two evils.
That is incorrect. Western churches have been raising large sums of money for Middle Eastern Christians.
It’s like choosing between Hitler and Stalin. Either way you loose.
True, but still fighting for a Muslim country still seems unseemly to me. Why was Russia’s expansion any of their business?
It’s not that ancient. Mid 19th century. But it kind of gives you the eastern Christian view - the western Christians may be as bad as the Muslims - maybe worse - because at least with the Muslims they tell you up front they plan to kill you and conquer your lands.
And I think that maybe an underlying and unsaid prejudice - eastern Christians would line up with Russia per the thinking of some Western diplomats so its best they are either under Islam or wiped out.
Yes, Catholics were always pushing Poland and Lithuania to invade Russian lands, for the simple reason they considered the Orthodox as heretics. Maybe Catholics should have spent more energy against the West’s real enemy, but they were too busy beating on Russia.
England feared their access to Egypt and since Egypt had millions of Orthodox Christians at that time (Greek and Coptic) they feared a Russia in Jerusalem meant pretty soon a Russian force in Suez and they would be cut off from India.
France at the time of the Crimean was was recovering from the French Revolution and Napoleon III wanted to make himself the protector of Catholics in the Middle East - but chose to do so siding with the Turks.
I don’t recall any push on Poland and Lithuania to invade Russia in the 1800s to be honest. Austria was allied with Russia at one point to help share the war load against the Ottomans. Austria made a foolish choice when it succumbed to French and British pressure to declare war on previous ally Russia. In doing so they became enemies and WW1 happened and wiped them all out.
Actually, they were mainly concerned about keeping Russian mitts off their overseas possessions, as well as trying to avoid becoming Russian provinces. Using countries bordering the already huge Russian empire as buffer states was part of the Western strategy to keep Russia at bay. Russians can't understand why anyone would want to avoid becoming part of a universal Russian empire, so they attribute any opposition to that glorious objective to anti-Russian prejudice.
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