Posted on 10/05/2015 8:58:21 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Russia – in the form of the Soviet Union – used to be America’s greatest enemy. Ronald Reagan called it the “Evil Empire.” “One nation under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 in response to “godless Communism.” The United States was different, Americans were told. We believed in God. The Russians were officially atheistic.
How times have changed. The following is from “Who’s Godless Now? Russia Says It’s U.S.”
“At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American conservatives to label the officially atheist Soviet Union a ‘godless nation.’
“More than two decades on, history has come full circle, as the Kremlin and its allies in the Russian Orthodox Church hurl the same allegation at the West.
“‘Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,’ Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a recent keynote speech. ‘Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.’
“In his state of the nation address in mid-December, Mr. Putin also portrayed Russia as a staunch defender of ‘traditional values’ against what he depicted as the morally bankrupt West. Social and religious conservatism, the former KGB officer insisted, is the only way to prevent the world from slipping into ‘chaotic darkness.’”
“As part of this defense of ‘Christian values,’ Russia has adopted a law banning ‘homosexual propaganda’ and another that makes it a criminal offense to ‘insult’ the religious sensibilities of believers.”
Russia still has its problems, but after 70 years of Communist rule, the execution of “some 200,000 clergy and believers from 1917 to 1937,” the destruction of thousands of churches, “and the churches that survived the purge had been “turned into warehouses, garages or museums of atheism,” the nation has a lot to fix.
There's a good chance that if Congress doesn't act, that churches in America could close or at least be dragged into court by refusing to acquiesce to the same-sex GayGB.
Time will tell if Russia can right itself after so many years of impoverishment, militarism, and a debased economic system.
“The separation of the secular and the religious is a fatal mistake by the West,” Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said. “It is a monstrous phenomenon that has occurred only in Western civilization and will kill the West, both politically and morally.”
But what we do know, the bullet train of secularism and moral depravity will destroy this once great nation that was described by John Winthrop (1587/8-1649) and others as “a city on a hill.”
“We shall be as a city upon a hill,” Winthrop told the passengers of the Arbella who left England in 1630 to carve a new nation out of a wilderness. “The eyes of all people are upon us."
The eyes of all the people are upon us to see how a once great nation has become a cesspool of decadence made legitimate by five puny gods that sit in judgment of the only God.
To many people, personal peace and affluence have become more important than the ideas and ideals that made the United States the envy of the world. As Cotton Mather (1663–1728) asserted, the Christian faith had brought the colonies prosperity, but “the daughter destroyed the mother — there is a danger, lest the enchantments of this world make them forget their errand into the wilderness: to build a city on a hill, an illumination for all the world.”
The light is growing dim.
But, I think he has a keen sense of the value of an extra-governmental moral authority, and repository for the culture of a nation.
I remember as a young woman that we used to pray for the conversion of Russia after every Mass.....I guess we need to start praying for the USA after every Mass because we are going downhill fast!
It seems undeniable to me.
I respect what they are trying to do but I do not think they should make it a criminal offense to insult the sensibilities of Christians. In the age of the Gaysapo that may be necessry. But better to just let people get over the insult in the normal manner with social disapproval. I do, however, agree with banning the gay propoganda. I would have defended their free speech except around children back when the courts didn’t mandate everyone side with their opinions, but now...I would favor just banning the whole thing.
The amazing image for me was the Orthodox Priests blessing the Russian fighter jets before the Syrian bombing runs.
Sad but true. I hope Russia succeeds. We can at least appreciate it from afar. Maybe things can still turn around here.
“The amazing image for me was the Orthodox Priests blessing the Russian fighter jets before the Syrian bombing runs.”
You may want to take a look at this short (about 6 mins) video. Russia is reclaiming its Christian heritage.
Must keep in mind Islam dominates and assimilates a country by sheer numbers.
The most important issue for a future America is to have a strict control of the maximum amount of muslims in the country. Like .5 percent.
Even 2% can get out of control if they are part of the government.
I was mesmerized.
September 2014
(excerpt from a long, detailed article)
First and foremost, in any review of the basics regarding Putin, the most outstanding fact is that he is a creature of the Soviet KGB, a truly diabolical organization nonpareil, which stood for murder, terror, and grand deception.
It was the Soviet Communist Party’s tool for the brutal suppression of religion, including the persecution of Christians: denying them jobs and education; spying on and entrapping them; arresting and imprisoning them; torturing them in unspeakable ways; desecrating and demolishing their church buildings; infiltrating their agents into churches to subvert them. The KGB destroyed thousands of Christian churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, and slaughtered millions of Christians.
But it did not destroy the churches utterly. There remained an underground church, whose members were always at risk of discovery, arrest, torture, and martyrdom. Above ground, the KGB took control of the Russian Orthodox Church, which became a very useful organ of the Soviet atheist state.
In January 2009, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, better known as Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, was elected, from a short list of three candidates, to be the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the highest position of authority in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The election was called to fill the post that had been left vacant by the death of Patriarch Alexy II, who had headed the ROC since 1990.
Documents from the KGB archives have confirmed what sensible observers had long ago deduced from his actions: that Patriarch Alexy II (also spelled Alexi or Alexei) was a long-serving KGB agent (code-named Drozdov, “Blackbird”), in other words, a traitor to his Christian brethren and the God he claimed to serve. Putin’s KGB/FSB was taking no chances with his replacement. All three candidates — Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk (code-named Topaz), Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk (code-named Ostrovskii), and Metropolitan Kirill (code-named Mikhailov) — also have been reliably identified as agents of the KGB/FSB.
Russia expert David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times (of London) and the Wall Street Journal, wrote of the election in 2009 for Forbes:
According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent (as was Alexei). This means he was more than just an informer, of whom there were millions in the Soviet Union. He was an active officer of the organization. Neither Kirill nor Alexei ever acknowledged or apologized for their ties with the security agencies.
Because Patriarch Kirill is of central importance to the myth of Putin as the Saul-to-Paul, Christian persecutor-to-Christian champion, it behooves us to more closely examine the man. He has publicly presided over, and provided official benedictions and exhortations for, Putin’s cynical and Stalinesque exploitation of Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy. Josef Stalin, who had very nearly consummated the annihilation of the Russian Orthodox Church begun by Vladimir Lenin, reversed course in 1941. The reason? His erstwhile partner in crime, Adolf Hitler, had turned on him and had invaded Russia.
Stalin, needing all the help he could get, cut a deal with ROC Metropolitans Sergius, Nikolay, and Alexy. In exchange for their support in rallying the Russian people, he would cease (temporarily) the persecution and allow the reopening of churches and theological schools. In fact, Stalin’s Soviet government paid for the rebuilding of many of the churches. The ROC was thus placed even more firmly under the control of the NKVD, which was later to be reorganized and renamed as the KGB. ...”
much more at link
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“For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.
He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin’s administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004.”
“On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999.”
Jay Richards | February 2, 2010
The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.
Marxist regimes obviously benefitted from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.
A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In “The Church in Revolution,” Chapman, “a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency,” argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy’s second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.
Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America—and the Vatican’s struggles with it—and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn’t establish its truth or falsity. Still, it’s interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just history. Chapman concludes ominously:
"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.
A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, ‘‘liberation theology is alive and well.’’ The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/
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More on Liberation Theology and the Soviets
Catholic News Agency ^ | 5/15/2015 | Alejandro Bermúdez
Posted on 5/16/2015, 11:56:24 AM by observationdeck
If the Soviet bloc wasn't the mother of liberation theology, it was certainly a sinister stepmother, enlisting Catholics in a geopolitical cause and inviting them to sell their souls for funding and support.
Only the naïve can disregard the mountain of evidence connecting liberation theology with Soviet action in the region.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
It is rumored in Russia that Putin has had a vision, an ex-officio communication that drives him.
Now the Jesuits are blamed for the South American Liberation theology.
Today, Now, Russia and Russians are very grateful to be free from the yoke of Communism. they call it "the dark days".
All over Eurasia, Evangelical churches are full and the Orthodox cathedrals built with Government money are dwindling. What the news doesn't tell you is that the protestant revolution is sweeping Russia.
The article is false. Russia is more overtly Orthodox Christian, but it is not actually Orthodox Christian. Their church attendance is incredibly low in comparison to how many people identify as Orthodox. The number of people who attend church just once a month is around 7 percent out of the entire population. In comparison to the US, where the church is considered “in trouble,” it’s around 27 percent attendance, if memory serves.
Russia is a dysfunctional, extremely corrupt country where even day to day casual life is bound to include instances of criminal behavior. Russia is no “Christian” country. They simply pretend that they are. It’s really a nation of bloody (and I mean murderous) hypocrites.
Agreed.
Yeah, I don’t like the facile self-flagellation America has a weird affinity for. It’s how Obama got elected: “Shame on us, we’ve never elected a black man for President. Let’s fix that”.
Any country that turns in upon itself is perverse, as it is natural for a country to believe in itself and its place in the world (we’re talking earthly matters in a fallen world, here). Obama came slouching into town decrying our country and got elected...twice?!?!
All they needed was gullible do-gooders and a absence of resistance.
I am also convinced Putin is an atheist in the finest traditions of KGB.
But I also believe he promotes the Orthodox Church as a repository of Russian culture and the provider of moral legitimacy (within Russia) for his international adventures.
I don't think Putin sees a diffidence between a Muslim, Christian or Hindu. They are just religions to be exploited.
Putin is an atheist.
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