Many Creepers claimed Putin was the savior of Christianity and the West.
Putin talks up a good game when the West is weak. BUT does he ever acknowledge the role his beloved old USSR had in the rampant and insidious channels by which Soviet ideology infiltrated and *secularized* the WEST and moved some of our core institutions towards leftism and socialism? (And continues to!)
No, rather, he calls the fall of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the past century.
Russia has faithful Christians and priests/monastics among the population, but as a nation it will not be able to claim a leadership mantle so long as it harbors Putin’s government — which directly traces its roots to the Bolshevik terror, to Stalin, despite the collapse of the USSR.
And it’s not as though the tsars* were the much better, give or take a few.
The Russian Orthodox Church needs to forge an identity separate from the earthly whims of Empire. And the Russian State and PEOPLE need to completely divorce from the Bolshevik legacy through a process of repentance and genuine spiritual renewal.
At the moment, the Church there operates as a fascist entity with a lot of surface ritual. Lenin statues, Stalin busts, Dzherzinsky portraits stand proudly next to that of Christian saints and icons. :(
Not to mention Lenin’s body is STILL unburied and lies in full display in the center of Red Square.
Double-minded Hypocrisy at its finest.
Putin did save Christians in Syria. If you meet any Syrian Christians, they’ll tell you
Sadly, many Freepers refused to see through Putin.
I'd call that bearing false witness, among other things...and maybe you'd care to define "creeper" for those of us not fluent in chicken hawk.