Posted on 11/19/2017 4:57:14 PM PST by marshmallow
Moscow, November 16, Interfax - Contact between believers in Russia and the United States will help improve the bilateral relationship, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said at a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman.
"Our relations with the U.S. at the level of Churches' interaction were extensive even during the quite difficult Soviet period," the patriarch said.
"It was an important factor in maintaining the relations during the Cold War," he said.
The current level of relations leaves much to be desired, he said.
"It seems to me that we are now going through not the best of times. I would like to talk about the possibility of maintaining religious contacts, not least in order to exert influence on our relations," Patriarch Kirill said.
"Pious people maintain relations at the level of the heart; diplomats, at the level of the mind; business people, at the level of the stomach. We would not like to take the heart out of our relations," the patriarch said.
Today it is not just inter-state and political relations between Russia and the U.S. that are difficult, but "there is something very difficult and dangerous at a very fundamental level - that of the understanding of values," he said.
"We are alarmed by what is happening in the West. Christian values are being destroyed, the West is giving up on God, but Russia is not giving up on God," the Russian church leader said.
What is happening is a "civilizational problem," he said. "We would like, together with American religious people, [together] we could look for answers to these civilizational challenges," he said.
Russian-U.S. religious, spiritual relations have a long history, the patriarch said.
"The Russian church has special attitudes towards the U.S. Two hundred twenty years ago the Russian Orthodox Church began a mission in the Far East and then in Alaska. From Alaska, the Russian church spread to California and then onwards," Patriarch Kirill said.
The Russian Orthodox Church in the U.S. is autonomous, but maintains contact with that of Russia, he said, stressing the importance of such communications.
Huntsman, meanwhile, said that Russia and the U.S. should looking for dialogue opportunities through unifying values.
He talks a good game but like a Pharisee needs to clean up house in his own church first. Eastern Orthodox outside Moscow Patriarchate feel betrayed by Russian Orthodox reversion back to old habits of loyalty to State surpassing loyalty to Faith.
Most young people becoming Christian in today’s Russia are doing so in Protestant/Evangelical auspices, not Orthodox. And American Christian missionaries have had a large hand in that trend for better for worse.
Jon Huntsman is a Mormon. Wonder how he is as a diplomat.
One hundred years from now, historians will list the reasons for the collapse of the West. And one of those reasons will be that the US and Russia did not become allies, despite their many similarities.
Both nations have a strong Christian tradition. And both nations have common enemies: radical Islam and (in second place) China.
But instead of allying, the US and Russia pick at each other. Much like European princes picked at each other as the Ottomans sacked Constantinople.
That’s not an old habit, it’s a core tenet of Orthodox Christianity that the state and the church be intertwined, going back to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Clarification:
1) As of yesterday Ukraine soldified their commitment to the spiritual West when it made Western Christmas 12/25 an official holiday. Thank you marshmellow for the posting that news.
2) Now Kiev celebrates two Christmases: Western and Orthodox (1/7)
3) Ukraine thereby embraces its role as the bridge between the Christianities of East and West and most importantly: solidifies their divorce from Putin’s Neo-Soviet sphere of influence.
4) Poland and Ukraine have torn down all their Lenin statues and continue the work of tearing down Soviet monuments much to Russia’s dismay.
5) Meanwhile in Moscow, secular New Year celebrations (the Soviet replacement for Christmas) proceed from Lenin’s mausoeleum - where Lenin’s body remains in full display in Red Square as a reminder of the poisonous, atheist lies he lived for and his country refuses to fully part with in their quest for bygone power.
6) Putin remains allied with Turkey’s Erdogan of Istanbul.
7) Putin remains united with China in their efforts to keep Kim Jong Un’s regime alive.
Lets not forget it was Josef Stalin who installed the Kim Il Sung regime in the 1940s. Prior to that, American missionaries had referred to Pyongyang as the Jerusalem of the East due to people’s openness to Christ.
8) Russia will join the fold of Christ fully when they bury Lenin’s body once for all, repudiate Josef Stalin’s legacy, and honor the Ukrainian people’s right to self-determination and that of all Christians in former Soviet spaces who do not want to live under Kremlin tyranny.
>3) Ukraine thereby embraces its role as the bridge between the Christianities of East and West and most importantly: solidifies their divorce from Putin’s Neo-Soviet sphere of influence.
When are they going to endorse gay marriage?
Yes well not all Eastern Orthodox faithful feel obliged to the Kremlin today as some see Putin as a traitor to the faith.
There is a massive spiritual revival going on in Ukraine right now. I was watching an African missionary living there on youtube describing it. Revival opposes moral compromise.
Revival challenges dead ritualism. Like the kind characterizing cultures that take faith for granted as seen in the homosexuality-accepting churches you see here or the Stalin-accepting churches you see in Moscow.
Ukraine’s Christians of today challenge both trends.
Axios!
I was wondering if the Ukrainian nation decided to add Dec 25 as a way to honor the Eastern Rite Catholics?
I think there is growing pressure to have Lenin’s body removed from Moscow.
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