One of the more ridiculous and downright deceitful narratives that has been propagated surrounding Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is that Russia is the nation fighting in defense of Christianity.
It may be a talking point more commonly espoused in Russia, but it has been raised within certain new media circles with little pushback. Here’s looking at you, Tucker Carlson.
For example, Carlson has stated, “The only remaining Christian country at scale in Europe is Russia. And they’re our main enemy?”
The notion that Russia is a large-scale Christian country is a rather interesting perspective, given the country’s communist history. Prior to communism, yes, Russia had a long history with Christianity via the Orthodox Church. This produced a degree of cultural Christianity, wherein the vast majority of Russians, over 75%, profess to be Christians.
However, it’s one thing to identify, and it’s another thing to actually live out one’s faith. A 2017 Pew Research Survey of Eastern European nations found that when it comes to weekly worship service attendance, just 7% of Russians took part. In fact, 61% of Russians said they seldom or never attend church. That places Russia near the bottom of the list of Eastern European nations among Christians who engage in weekly worship. Ukraine wasn’t much better, with 16% attending weekly.
Given these numbers, it comes as little surprise that Russia does not have a particularly good record when it comes to persecuting Christians, and especially Christians who are not part of the Russian Orthodox Church.
To make matters worse, while the Russian Orthodox Church suffered persecution under the Soviet Union, the current condition of the church may be worse. This is thanks in large part to blending the church into the state in such a fashion as to promote Putin’s expansionist war agenda as a moral crusade.
Effectively, Putin has molded the Russian Orthodox Church to bless his political agenda through the current head of the church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. This has included promoting the false narrative that Ukraine is a nation under the sway of a bunch of godless rebels, primarily because the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has refused to recognize the authority of the Russian patriarchy and has sought to officially sever ties with Moscow.
Furthermore, Ukraine has allowed much greater freedom of religion, which has resulted in more than one million protestant Christians across the country. And Russian forces haven’t looked kindly on these protestant believers, having persecuted them both in occupied Ukrainian territory as well as in Russia.
At issue for Putin is that other Christian denominations represent a threat to his power because they refuse to compromise their faith in service to his political ambitions. As was the case during the days of the old Soviet Union, the persecution of Christians in Russia continues, only under a different, more subtle guise. Putin hasn’t outright attacked the historic Russian Orthodox Church; rather, he’s co-opted it to serve his aims.
Nothing demonstrates this reality more than the Cathedral of Armed Forces in Patriot Park, Kubinka, just outside of Moscow. The massive Cathedral is a blending of Russia’s military history with Russian Orthodoxy in a manner that is downright creepy. The structure, which contains murals mixing Christian and Orthodox symbols with Russian military history and figures, is a monument to the glories of Russian military conquest. In a way, it deifies the Russian military as holy warriors.
As Bishop Stefan of Klin, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of cooperation with the Russian military, explains, “We are not talking about the geopolitical background at any particular time; we are talking about the fact that our armed forces have sacred help from above, from God and from the heavenly saints. That’s what the cathedral is about.”
A religious scholar in Moscow, Sergei Chapnin, had a decidedly different take. “For many priests, who were young in the 1970s and 1980s and personally came up against the repressive Soviet machine, which targeted the church, they are in shock and they can’t get over it,” he stated. “This is not really an Orthodox cathedral; it’s a cathedral of our new post-Soviet civil religion.”
This Cathedral first opened in June 2020 in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin and Kirill personally attended the ceremony.
Putin and his Russian forces are not fighting for Christ and Christianity. Rather, this war is about the same age-old reasons: greed and lust for power.
