(March 3, 2016 at 4:26 pm)abaris Wrote:(March 3, 2016 at 4:00 pm)Brian37 Wrote: This is no different than what the Church did in supporting Stalin.
OK, that's just outright wrong. They never did support Stalin. They didn't have any reason to support him, since he disowned them and tore down some of their most cherrished churches. Stalin, same as Putin by the way, used some religious and nationalist symbolism during WWII. Especially when it began and he gave his first speech, he appealed to Russia's history and culture.
That is like saying Hitler had no support from the church. You keep forgetting while plenty hated him, there were plenty that liked him and or went along out of fear, but Russian Orthodoxy still never left Russia under Stalin.
Putin is a product of the Cold war, and he still has that mindset even today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecutio...viet_Union
Scroll down in the article to "World War 2 Rapproachment" in black bold, then 4th paragraph under that.
QUOTE ARTICLE "Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort and presented Russia as a defender of Christian civilization, because he saw the church had an ability to arouse the people in a way that the party could not and because he wanted western help.On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius (Stragorodsky), Alexius (Simansky) and Nicholas (Yarushevich) were officially received by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who proposed to create the Moscow Patriarchate. They received permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, that elected Sergius "
