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Be Careful What You Wish For: The Downside of Kicking the Russian Orthodox Church Out of the World Council of Churches

By Katherine Kelaidis

…xpelled from the World Council of Churches (WCC) due to the support of the Moscow-based, Patriarch Kirill-led church for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This effort has in recent days garnered some prominent supporters, including former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. While it is, in light of recent events, clearly no longer sustainable for the Russian Orthodox Church to continue as part of the WCC, it’s also worth noting that the exclu…

With This Largely Overlooked Shakeup is the Russian Orthodox Church Looking to Westernize? Yes and No

By Katherine Kelaidis

…est levels in the Russian Orthodox Church is offering new insight into the Moscow-based church’s internal struggles and strategic position towards the West—and oddly no one in the West seems to care. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) has been dismissed from his duties as Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s powerful Department of External Relations. Previously considered to be the most likely successor to Patriar…

Global LGBT Recap: Asylum for Victims of Homophobia Exports; Orthodox Church Sees Anti-Gay Campaign Turned Toward Itself

By Peter Montgomery

…ers and most erudite scholars.” Kuraev was removed from the faculty of the Moscow Theological Seminary on December 31 after he wrote a post about a seminary teacher “who was fired for making homosexual advances to students and then transferred to a higher post in another diocese.” Since his firing, Kuraev has launched a public campaign against what he calls a “gay metastasis” in the church. And that, he toldRadio Free Liberty/Radio Europe, could g…

Synod ‘Fight for Soul’ of Catholic Church, Flap On English Translation of Key Report; Anti-Gay Law Advances in Kyrgyzstan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…sts Arrested for Coming Out Event; Orthodox Protesters Attack Gathering In Moscow, eight activists were arrested when they staged a Coming Out Day protest. Also in Moscow, Queer Russia reports that the Sakharov Centre hosted a meeting of the “Be open – Your World will Become Wider” campaign, which was attended by about 50 participants sharing stories of coming out. According to the LGBT group Rainbow Association, “several dozen” aggressive Orthodo…

Global LGBT Recap: Ugandan Law Unleashes Vigilantes, Anti-Gay Americans Want to Boost Homophobia Exports

By Peter Montgomery

…en about the World Congress of Families and its plans for a 2014 summit in Moscow. Writing in Mother Jones, Hannah Levintova examines the WCF’s history and the role of its leaders and other American evangelicals who fostered Russia’s anti-gay movement. WCF has lent its support to anti-gay politics elsewhere in Eastern Europe—Serbia, Lithuania, Romania—but it has had its biggest and most notable successes in Russia. Indeed, the rise of anti-gay law…

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

By Katherine Kelaidis

…go (a blink of the eye in the memory of the Christian East) located not in Moscow, but Kyiv, offered up a version of history that simply erases Ukraine from the map. Kirill blames “various forces” (i.e. outsiders, including—one would imagine—the West) that emerged in the Middle Ages for what he regards as a false division between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge there are such people as Ukrainians, referring to all involved…

Blue Jean Revolution

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…traveled well and widely after that summer, making life-changing visits to Moscow and to Albania, to see the work of creating a revolutionary new social order up close. The results were disappointing, to say the least. My friend was neither the first nor the last revolutionary whose idealism could not survive the Stalinist reality On thing that struck her most on these trips was that the symbol du jour was the blue jean. Of all things, the blue je…

Sexual Abuse is Inevitable in Christian Patriarchy; Just Take a Look at Doug Wilson’s Christ Church, and its New ‘Documentary’ ‘Eve in Exile: The Restoration of Femininity’

By Cait West

…s been entangled with allegations of abuse for decades is Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, led by patriarchal theologian and pastor Doug Wilson. Vice has reported instances of inappropriate handling of abuse in the Christ Church community, including the case of Natalie Greenfield, a fourteen-year-old girl sexually abused by Jamin Wight, a student at a Christ Church ministry training program. Instead of working to protect the victim and prevent furt…

Russian Operative Maria Butina, Who Leveraged Christian Right Connections, Sentenced For Conspiracy

By Becky Garrison

…ueller investigation, this case also exposed the various means employed by Moscow to influence U.S. policy. A sentencing memo filed on April 19, 2019 in this case describes a technique known as “spot and assess,” in which Russians who may be only loosely affiliated with the Kremlin set up private meetings to gauge who might have influence in the U.S. government and how to approach them. While the focus of the memo is on Butina’s connections to pro…

Could Patriarch Kirill’s ‘Evil Forces’ Against Russia and the Russian Church Refer to Jews?

By Katherine Kelaidis

If it wasn’t already blatantly apparent that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is not “calling for peace,” he’s now described Russia’s opponents—in its unprovoked, illegal invasion of the Ukraine—as “evil forces,” telling the faithful: “God forbid that the current political situation in brotherly Ukraine should be aimed at ensuring that the evil forces that have always fought against the unity of Russia and the Russian Church prevail.” While it seems ob…