Vladimir Putin is allying himself with the Russian Orthodox church. From Putin Enlists the Church in His Power Grab:
Two stunning initiatives from the Russian government over the past few weeks illustrate a disturbing fusion of religion and politics as Vladimir Putin’s regime makes a final effort to consolidate dictatorship.
First, the government announced that it would consult the Russian Orthodox Church before introducing any legislative proposals in parliament, in essence giving the church a veto on legislation and allowing the church to promote an openly religious agenda in parliament.
Then, the regime declared it would begin teaching Orthodox religion in schools, ignoring the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. Study of other Christian faiths, like Protestantism and Catholicism, has already been ruled out, and it’s clear that the lip-service being paid to Islam is only window dressing. . . .
The church has not been shy about playing the role of enforcer, leading many to see it as just another Kremlin ministry of power. It defrocked a priest who dared to question the show trial and conviction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky after the oil baron began making noises about seeking the presidency. It demoted another priest when he questioned whether the patriarch had too much power. And it excommunicated a third who participated in a government commission that exposed a large number of Soviet-era clerics as KGB informers.
At the same time, there is increasing nationalism on open display among the clergy. Even as Putin has been moving to rehabilitate nationalist figures like the mass-murderer Josef Stalin by creating new history books that rationalize Stalin’s tactics, one St. Petersburg cleric went as far as to create a holy icon depicting the homicidal dictator — a reflection of a growing movement within the church to canonize the Soviet overlord.
So what can we learn from this?
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