When you want totalitarian power in Russia, you have to subjugate the church. Lenin knew it, Stalin knew it, Putin knows it.
Synthetic news, no doubt.
EPHESIANS 6:18
Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.
But, but, Putin is the savior of freedom.
Didn’t Putin chastise obama for not be Christian?
So?
In 1988, Great Commission Ministries was classified as a cult by the American Family Foundation (AFF),[94] the (pre-Scientology) Cult Awareness Network,[95] and the Council on Mind Abuse.[84][85] The Council on Mind Abuse ceased its existence in 1992, while the CAN was taken over by Scientologists in 1996 after years of legal issues. The movement was classified as an "aberrant Christian group" by Martin J. Butz in his 1991 research paper and by Paul Martin, a former leader of the movement, in 1993.[26] [88][96](From Wikipedia).
I guess that GCM is upset that Russia classifies them as dangerous propagandists to children like Homos and radical Muslin Imams.
That Putin is a terrible meanie.
Erdogan is going to be a much bigger problem than Putin.
In the 1760s my ggggggg uncle Joseph Craig, preached his version of the Separatist Baptist faith in Virginia and was thrown in jail. He continued to preach through his cell window and people gathered from all around to hear him. Family history was that Patrick Henry defended him. Eventually Rev. Craig and his extended family including my direct ancestors, traveled to what is now eastern Kentucky on the path only a few years earlier identified by the Boone family. They settled around what is now Lexington. So religious persecution is always going to be there. I grew up knowing that my aunt, the first on either side of my family to graduate from college, could not teach in Missouri because she was a Catholic. I grew up in Texas where mine was the only Catholic family on the block. My mother was Protestant until she converted in her 70s and I listened to her aunts complain about my father being Catholic. So I have never taken religious freedom for granted. I am grateful every time I go into a church. BTW, if you go to the website of the Separatist Baptists you will find the most virulent anti-Catholicism on the web. LOL So it makes me smile to know that I’m descended from some.
The Russians have always been extremely touchy about what they consider to be attempts to destabilize Orthodoxy and that includes being hostile to Catholicism but this headline is way overblown.
The measure is aimed at keeping Islam in check and if it also makes life difficult for proselytizing American congregationalists, that's a two-fer for them.
This is not the return of the Soviet Union.
But isn't the Los Angeles Times an organization of mass unrest?