Even Joe Stalin was smart enough to reopen the churches when the Nazis were breathing down their necks.
“One of the great strengths of the United States,” the President said, “is ... we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
I’ve been there four times.
I have close ties with the Slavic Baptist community here in the states.
Russia is definitely more Christian than the U.S.
Consider.
The Communists made abortion freely available, funded by the State. But when I asked an orphanage worker where all the babies came from, he told me that many of them come from prostitution. I asked why the prostitutes didn’t take advantage of the state-funded abortions.
He bristled at me and answered gruffly, “There are some things even a WHORE would not do.”
At that point I was able to deduce that the average American politician has a lower moral standard than the average Russian street whore.
I shared this story with a “liberal” co-worker some years ago. He has not spoken to me since.
The Russians realize that their Christian religion is still the basis of their culture. Destroy a country’s culture and you have destroyed the country. If they can stop the decline of their culture, they will gone a long way to stopping the decline of their country.
sadly well said!
I have seen many on here in the past make less than nice remarks about Vladimir Putin, but I do know he did have a traditional wooden Russian Orthodox chapel built on the property at his country home.
Zero won’t go to church much less have a freestanding chapel built on his own property.
How Christian of the Russians to severely restrict the activities of Christians.
Even in the 1960s, astronauts were worried about whether Madalyn Murray O'Hair would successfully sue to stop their Christian activities in space.
In the 2000s, cosmonauts were displaying icons and crucifixes in Zero-G.
That a political leader is openly religious is just common sense. It is an evidence of America’s decline that an elected leader here can skip church on a major holiday and not suffer a massive opprobium, while a de-facto dictator in Russia either genuinely shares the religion of his country or at least considers it unsafe to flout it.
Either way, a very good sign for Russia, awful sign for the US.
Russia is experiencing a sustained religious revival quite apart from what Putin and Medvedev do. Also, the Soviet government is directly responsible for the near-destruction of the Christian identity of Russia, so it comes naturally for the government of Russia to allocate funds to restore that injustice. The comparisons to the US laws that separate government and religion funds are simply out of context, since America (so far) has not suffered from militant Atheist dictatorship.
Yes, as Dumb_Ox noted, however glorious America’s past is as a beacon of freedom; however dark Russia’s past is as a overscale jailhouse, at this point it is the EU that is emerging as a new force for militant Atheism, and Obama’s US closely second.