“Well, none of the hostility compares to that which the Orthodox suffered under the Soviet State and the likes of the KGB.”
True, but not the same subject. The matter I raised was the propensity of the Russian Orthodox to protect their turf. I’ve never even heard that disputed.
If they were to honor the memory of millions of their Orthodox priests, theologians, and faithful who were murdered at the hands of the Soviets under the kinds of laws and restrictions Putin’s Yarovaya Law echoes - their hearts would tremble.
While the Orthodox Church should hold special status as the leading church of Russia, they would know it is not in the interest of their territory nor the faith to be bound so closely with a State that, despite the fall of the Soviet Union, has never fully divorced from the Bolshevik web from which it spawned.
I think of the countless Soviet artists and defectors, notably the composer Sergei Rachmaninov, who was devoutly Orthodox and contributed some of the most beautiful music to the Orthodox hymn canon. He had to escape his beloved land, and spent the latter part of his life here and died, in Los Angeles.
An icon of St. Panteley which belonged to him remains in one of the churches here.
America, due to its freedoms, was refuge to many like him, whose lives and contributions to Russian culture and art would have been cut short had they perished.