Russian Orthodox Church proposes that invading Ukraine cleanses Russians from sin. At the center of this Christian fascism is impunity.
Quote:Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill’s unholy war against Ukraine
The Church has been instrumental in promoting Vladimir Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire. In 2012, Patriarch Kirill addressed Putin personally as the savior of modern Russia and compared his reign to a “miracle of God.”
The support of the Russian Orthodox Church has grown as the invasion of Ukraine has progressed, with Patriarch Kirill becoming one of the war’s most prominent promoters. In his sermons, he has accused “foreign forces” of trying to divide Russia and Ukraine, which he often describes as “one people.” These thinly veiled attempts to blame the war on the Western world while denying Ukraine’s right to an independent national identity closely echo the Kremlin’s own imperialistic talking points.
Patriarch Kirill has continued to defend the invasion despite mounting evidence of Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. He has remained unmoved by the atrocities uncovered in liberated towns such as Bucha, or the seemingly endless accounts of mass killings, sexual violence, torture chambers, child abductions, and forced deportations throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. He is silent regarding the constant missile and drone assaults against civilian targets including homes, apartment buildings, shopping centers, churches, hospitals, schools, and grain storage facilities.
Instead, Patriarch Kirill has indicated that the Russian Orthodox Church may even be willing to overlook such crimes. “The Church realizes that if someone, driven by a sense of duty and the need to honor his oath, stays loyal to his vocation and dies while carrying out his military duty, then he is without any doubt doing a deed that is equal to sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for others. And therefore, we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed,” Kirill stated in a September 2022 sermon.
Patriarch Kirill is not the only establishment figure to publicly back the invasion. On the contrary, levels of support, or at least acquiescence, among the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian society as a whole remain scandalously high.
Not one of the approximately 400 Russian Orthodox Church bishops in Russia has spoken out against the war. The Russian Orthodox Church clergy is a huge body including more than 40,000 full-time clerics, priests, and deacons internationally. Only approximately 300 members of the clergy signed a joint public statement criticizing the war, with many of the signatories based outside of Russia. Moreover, 700 university rectors have signed a public statement supporting the war.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/uk...t-ukraine/
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"