The Russian Orthodox Church is back with a vengeance
On Friday, October 29, a Moscow court sentenced blogger Ruslan Bobiev and his girlfriend, model Anastasia Chistova, to 10 months in prison for “offending religious sentiment.” The couple was convicted over a photo they posed for, pantomiming oral sex against the backdrop of St. Basil’s Cathedral. According to Holod Media, these are the first ever prison terms handed down in Russia for “offending religious sentiment.”
The Russian Orthodox Church has been a formidable ally to Vladimir Putin’s development of his authoritarian Russian kleptocracy. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has gone so far as to call the Putin era “a miracle of God.”
Indeed, the ties between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are as old as Russia itself. Throughout its history, the Russian Orthodox Church was subservient to the state and an unshakable supporter of autocracy. Starting in the 16th century, the church provided Moscow’s rulers with a political theology of Manifest Destiny, asserting that Moscow had become the Second Jerusalem and the Third Rome (after Rome and Constantinople).
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po...d-blogger/
On Friday, October 29, a Moscow court sentenced blogger Ruslan Bobiev and his girlfriend, model Anastasia Chistova, to 10 months in prison for “offending religious sentiment.” The couple was convicted over a photo they posed for, pantomiming oral sex against the backdrop of St. Basil’s Cathedral. According to Holod Media, these are the first ever prison terms handed down in Russia for “offending religious sentiment.”
The Russian Orthodox Church has been a formidable ally to Vladimir Putin’s development of his authoritarian Russian kleptocracy. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has gone so far as to call the Putin era “a miracle of God.”
Indeed, the ties between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are as old as Russia itself. Throughout its history, the Russian Orthodox Church was subservient to the state and an unshakable supporter of autocracy. Starting in the 16th century, the church provided Moscow’s rulers with a political theology of Manifest Destiny, asserting that Moscow had become the Second Jerusalem and the Third Rome (after Rome and Constantinople).
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po...d-blogger/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
