Posted on 01/31/2009 2:53:26 PM PST by kronos77
Great revival?
In 1990, the Church chose Alexiy II as its leader. He remained Patriarch until his death last month. The reconstruction of Christ the Saviour is the centrepiece of a huge programme of church restoration and rebuilding which has transformed the appearance of towns and villages across Russia.
But appearances can deceive. While the vast majority of Russians now readily identify themselves as Orthodox Christians - opinion polls regularly suggest around two-thirds - it seems largely to be a question of culture, rather than faith.
Icons may have replaced soft-porn pictures as the most common sight on a Moscow taxi dashboard, but there is no real sense of a great spiritual revival.
As he prepared for the vote which would eventually place him at the head of the Church, the new Patriarch, Kirill, noted this gap between gesture and deed.
"Millions of people have been baptised, and consider themselves Orthodox Christian," he told the Russian newspaper Trud. "But the degree of their observance leaves much to be desired."
The Church is resuming its place at the heart of Russian life
As well as spiritual challenges, the new Patriarch faces diplomatic ones too. Some hope that under Kirill, the Russian church will enjoy better relations with its Roman Catholic counterpart.
Although Russia is nominally a secular state, the Church has played a huge role in shaping the country's post-communist identity. The collapse of Marxist-Leninism left a huge ideological and - given the way that Lenin was all but deified - spiritual vacuum. The Church has sought to fill that, even it has not yet succeeded in filling up the churches.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Ping!
I know many Christian people that were invited to various cities in Russia to teach ‘morality’ in the schools. Yes, invited...
I often edit carefully any remarks made to TURD.
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