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Pope Praises ‘Complementarity’ & Resists Gay Ambassador; Irish Religious Leaders Spar Over Marriage; Colombian Atty Gen Cites ‘Bogus’ Study Opposing Adoption; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…sty International has called on President Nursultan Nazarbayev to reject a Russian-style “Law on the Protection of Children from Information Harming their Health and Development.” From AI: With its large ethnic Russian population dating to its history as a Soviet republic and as a core member of the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union, Kazakhstan’s political, legal, and cultural developments frequently follow those in Russia. The potentially sweepi…

Putin’s Violent Holy War Rhetoric Made it to the Christian Right Fringe — And There’s Reason to Believe it’ll Go Mainstream

By Thomas Lecaque

…930049480085505?s=20&t=l2nK5nePzcjlHQldwek09w The danger of Wiles adopting Russian propaganda isn’t so much the danger of Russian influence. It’s that the language Russia is using in their internal propaganda is tailor-made for exportation. The culture war is a chain that binds the international far-right together. And Putin’s regime and its spokespeople, mostly Orthodox or even some Muslim, have taken the rhetoric of holy war and given it a cohes…

Russian Parliament Hosts U.S. Anti-Gay Activist Paul Cameron

By Chrissy Stroop

…ithstanding, there is no real upside to this story. The forces stirring up Russian homophobia for political purposes have received a boost, and the memory of Cameron’s visit may do lasting damage. That being said (this high-profile case aside) the Russian law against “propaganda” of so-called non-traditional relationships seems to be little enforced. Putin himself is most likely no true believer in the law, but rather pragmatically using widesprea…

COVID-Denying Father Sergei is Just the Latest Example of the Russian Orthodox Church’s ‘Holy Man’ Problem

By Katherine Kelaidis

…wn hierarch, Ephraim looked for friendlier faces, which he found among the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). Begun as a breakaway sect in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, ROCOR is known for a kind of fundamentalism that can really only survive among those who see themselves as the last remnant of Holy Mother Russia. Most importantly, in the 1980s ROCOR wasn’t in communion with any other Orthodox churches. They were renegad…

Russian Orthodox Church Supports Referendum on Sodomy Laws

By Chrissy Stroop

…absolute worst, most violent and oppressive elements and tendencies within Russian Orthodoxy, even when their demands go beyond what the (hardly liberal) Russian state will countenance, have the moral high ground. It’s a reprehensible message, and, while a referendum on the reinstitution of sodomy laws—they existed in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation from 1934-1993—is highly unlikely, Chaplin’s support for the idea throws a bone to the most…

Why Moscow Wants to Crack Down on Foreign Funding for Minority Religious Orgs

By Diana Dukhanova

…ad are, by the logic of this bill, presumed to also be under possible anti-Russian influence and to thus pose the threat of disseminating anti-Russian ideas. Of course, in the current public discourse foreign influence and foreign ideas have increasingly become shorthand for pro-LGBTQ sentiment and civil rights in a more general sense. However, in the case of religious organizations, anti-government sentiment is the main concern. Similar to the re…

The Russian Patriarch Just Gave His Most Dangerous Speech Yet — And Almost No One in the West Has Noticed

By Katherine Kelaidis

…in a cathedral built not so much for the glory of God as for the glory of Russian military might. Here the Patriarch said he had come to address the leaders of their Russian forces, and through them, their troops. He reminded the assembled congregation of Vladimir Putin’s favorite propaganda point in this war: that Russia was fighting fascism in Ukraine just as it had in the Second World War. And then the Patriarch, whose office was just a few ce…

Putin Theo-Propaganda Minister Kirill Invokes 600 Years of History to Lay Claim to Ukraine — Here’s What it Means

By Katherine Kelaidis

…he Putin regime. It also demonstrated, once again, the extent to which the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church rely upon a version of history that is utterly foreign to most of the West, and yet is utterly common in the Orthodox Christian world, even beyond Russia. Unfortunately, Western media have all but ignored this element of Russian propaganda, in no small part because the history itself is so foreign to its audience. They (understa…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

The Kremlin and the Church: Russia’s Holy Alliance

By Konstantin Petrenko

…to bolster their image. Opinion polls show that roughly two-thirds of the Russian population describe themselves as Russian Orthodox, and many feel that to be Russian means to be Orthodox. Disillusioned with both communism and democracy, Russians view their historic religion as a unique source of national unity, and the Church ranks second only to the president in the level of trust it enjoys among the people. Whether alleviating poverty, caring…