Posted on 08/21/2024 8:39:55 PM PDT by Cronos
Amid ideological hurdles facing Russia in occupied regions in Ukraine, evangelical churches are targets for Russian soldiers to allegedly root out anti-Russian sentiment, if not levy allegations of American havens for "spies."
"You don't run a church: You run a nest of American spies," Russian soldiers who stormed Melitopol's Church of God's Grace told its Baptist pastor Mykhailo Brytsyn during interrogation after an armed takeover
The evangelical churches are being targeted because the ideology is not in line with Putin's favored Russian Orthodox Church as Putin attempts to turn contested regions into full-hearted Russian territories after his years long war on the South and East of Ukraine.
there have been dozens of evangelical pastors abducted, tortured, exiled, and killed in an attempt at a religious whitewashing of ideological diversions from Russian orthodoxy.
There have been at least 30 Ukrainian clergy killed, 26 taken as hostages, according to a February report by the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance.
"They have to control everything," Ukrainian-American Baptist pastor Dmytro Bodyu, who was a hostage for eight days but lived to be returned, told the Journal. "If you're a Christian, you are freethinking, and can discern what is good and what is bad.
"In a country like Russia, they don't like that."
Russian denies targeting churches for religious persecution, countering it is a Ukraine narrative for its own religious war on the Russian Orthodox Church in contest regions, according to the Journal.
The evangelical church rose to be influential in eastern Ukraine after its breaking from the former Soviet Union, another mark that might create Russian animosity.
"The fear of America disappeared, and it happened very fast," Hennadiy Mokhnenko, a Ukrainian Baptist pastor told the Journal. "The doors opened from the East and the West, and a breeze passed right through Ukraine."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
An important part of Putin’s anti Christian mindset.
Putin considers himself to be the repristinization of the Byzantine Emperor.
Orthodox (whether Ukrainian or Russian) would consider evangelical Protestants to be heretical in principle (and hence "anti-Christian").
To call this attitude unique to Putin is to be too narrow.
The warm wind behind Hennadiy Mokhnenko was his own...
As an amateur historian I’ve stopped and urge other people to stop using the term Byzantine empire.
It was the Roman empire. They called and considered themselves Roman. The European, Arab, Iranian and Turkic powers called them the Roman empire.
It was only Gibbons with his extremely flawed and inaccurate book and the Germanic historians of his time in the 18th century who called it “the Byzantine empire “.
For really understanding it we must call and consider it the continuation of the Roman empire of Cincinnatus, Caesar, Cicero, Caligula and Caracalla
To a minor degree I accept your argument, primarily because the Moscow Patriarchate has called itself “The Third Rome” or, more boldly, “The New Rome”.
Interesting that your profile page is all about the inequities of Big Government yet your post here seems to support government cracking down on religion.
If its an American social organization operating in Ukraine, its most definitely co-opted by the CIA.
It was the Grand Dukes of Muscowy who coined that term after the fall of Constantinople.
Moscow considered and to a large extent considers itself to be concurrently
1. A regatherer of the Mongol khaganate. First competing with the remnants of the Golden Horde in Kazan and Astrakhan, then conquering the Chagatai khanates and into Mongolia proper
2. A gatherer of the Orthodox after 1453.
3. The ruler of pan Slavicism
These 3 have driven state policy since Napoleonic times
But more properly, I object to calling them Byzantine as it was a western European way of “othering” the Roman’s in Constantinople and forgetting that from 450 to 1200 the most powerful military and economic state in Europe was the Roman empire based in constantinople.
Interesting that you don't seem to understand the nature of the clash between the fake Ukrainian church and the Russian Orthodox church.
Ok, so you are saying that in your opinion the evangelical churches in Ukraine are coopted by the CIA?
Meaning you think the evangelical churches in Ukraine in your opinion are CIA fronts?
Evangelical churches can be found in the Ukraine?
Evangelical churches are getting pretty hard to find back here in the USA.
Interesting that you don't seem to understand the nature of the clash between the fake Ukrainian church and the Russian Orthodox church.
It's not for you, Putin, or any government official to determine which religions are "fake". I remember the good old days when conservatives supported freedom of religion and liberals wanted government thugs to tear down churches.
LOL!
The Patriarch Kirill is not a government official.
You Azovites are certainly angry about the Kursk firebag, aren't you?
The Patriarch Kirill is not a government official.
Who's that? Your boyfriend? I'm going by the article, which says Russian soldiers are attacking Ukrainian churches. Soldiers are employed by governments, not churches.
The dyslexic guy said: “Denali ain’t just a mountain in Alaska.”
FormerFRLurker
Since Aug 6, 2019
BTW - Welcome to FR, zElensky stooge.
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