Thanks are owed to Moscow Patriarch Kirill (aka Vladimir Gundyaev, aka ‘Agent Mikhailov’) who has taken the Orthodox doctrine to a new height. His church, explained His Holiness, is more Muslim than Christian.
This startling doctrinal admission would have baffled any Russian theologian of the past, from Sergius of Radonezh onwards. But life doesn’t stand still, especially when Kirill’s sponsoring organisation, KGB/FSB, turbocharges it with its insights into divinity.
It must have been hard for His Holiness to admit the truth, and I for one admire his honesty. This, though I see the indisputable proximity he acknowledged as different from what he perceives.
But then His Holiness is blessed with unique inspiration coming from his KGB colleague Vlad Putin. Hence the scales fell from the patriarch’s eyes, and he saw not only that Russian Orthodoxy is close to Islam, but also that it’s especially close to the Shiite version thereof as practised in Iran.
When an inquisitive journalist asked His Holiness about that rapprochement, Kirill was happy to acknowledge the source of his revelation:
“Once our president Vladimir Putin answered a journalist by saying ‘We are closer to Islam’. I think so too. Both Islam and Russian Orthodoxy belong to the same eastern group. It so happens that the East has turned out less receptive to innovations… [ROC and Iran share the same enemy:] pursuit of material goods and carnal pleasures.”
It fell to one of his minions, archpriest Andrei Kordochkin, the Orthodox abbot in Madrid, to explain how this tendency translates to the kingdom of this world: “An ideal Russia built on ‘traditional values’ is a Russian Orthodox Iran,” explained Fr. Andrei.
“Within that paradigm the head of state isn’t just a manager, but an ayatollah independently interpreting spiritual matters to be then communicated by the church. That’s precisely why he [Putin] said that Russian Orthodoxy is closer to Islam than to Catholicism. That’s precisely why he proclaimed the shahid principle: ‘We as martyrs will go to heaven, while they will simply croak’.”
(For the uninitiated among you, the Russians, including on this evidence priests, tend to describe all Western Christianity as Catholicism, as if Protestantism didn’t exist. Since Britain is a predominantly Protestant country, I feel relieved: we, if not I personally, are absolved from collective guilt.)
This theme is by no means new to the leader of the Moscow patriarchate. Some six years ago he explained that “both Christians and Muslims appeal to the same Creator God, receiving palpable help in return.”
This seems to imply a slight misreading of Islam, which to the best of my knowledge doesn’t appeal to the Trinitarian God, with Jesus Christ as one of the three hypostases. If that’s the case, then Islam has as little to do with Christianity as does, say, the worship of the African god Olodumare.
I suspect that His Holiness is more familiar with KGB tradecraft than with Scripture. Hence he may not know that the New Testament specifically identifies worship of any other god as the work of antichrist.
To wit: “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” (1 John, 4:2)
Koran contains similar injunctions against worshipping any god other than Allah, specifically identifying the Holy Trinity as an offensive cult. Thus it takes not inconsiderable doctrinal agility to twist together any Christian confession and Islam – or Russia and Iran as the purest guardians of both religions.
That is, if one chooses to remain within the confines of theology. Yet both Kirill and his real deity, Putin, find such restraints suffocating. They prefer to paint on a broader canvas, one where this world subsumes the heavenly kingdom.
And there they are absolutely right: Putin’s Russia and today’s Iran do have much in common. The overarching similarity is their shared hatred of the West, which both insist on seeing as nothing but one continuous LGBT crusade.
Iran is one of the few countries that support Putin’s bandit raid on the Ukraine (also, incidentally, an Orthodox country), and not just with blessings and prayers. In addition to providing its own suicide drones to Putin, Iran also acts as one of the conduits for Chinese military supplies.
We can also widen our focus to see that both Russia and Islamic countries have always relied on the use of aggressive force to get ahead in this world. Neither is unique in this respect, but the violent tendency is more pronounced there than anywhere else.
That doesn’t mean that a respectful theological dialogue is impossible between Christianity and Islam. Such a dialogue was intense in the late Middle Ages, when Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholasticists pondered doctrinal subtleties together.
Even in our own times, serious religious thinkers seek a path to mutual accommodation (as a less serious one, I see that as a sheer impossibility). Thus in 1986 John Paul II led a joint prayer of Christians and Muslims in the lovely Umbrian city of Assisi. But this kind of ecumenism isn’t what Putin and his ‘Agent Mikhailov’ have in mind.
The ecumenism they are after is expressed not with prayers or theological exploits but with guns, bombs and diabolical criminals running states created in their image. His Holiness Agent Mikhailov and Ayatollah Putin have made that clear with commendable honesty.
Do the Russian faithful feel the same, that the head of state also interprets spiritual matters for the church? I believe that was the case for the tsars (more so than with Catholic monarchs in Europe, whose rule was by divine right, but who were supposed to follow the pope in matters of the faith), but did it extend to Lenin, Stalin, et al? Has it carried through to (so-called) democratically elected leaders?
I don’t think most Russians care one way or the other. Howeevr, they do tend to sacralise their rulers. That Lenin mummy still on display in Red Square proves it.
Putin is presumably trying to shore up support from the Muslim world for his war effort. I guess those Muslims trapped under rubble in Turkey and Syria are learning the extent to which Russia is really their friend.
Most eastern European nations period are very conservative by nature. Catholics, Orthodox, anyone else. Take in slowly [but not rejecting] modernity and materialistic ways.
Eastern Europe generally poorer than the rest of Europe and not able to afford “materialistic” objects anyhow.
Moscow Patriarchate has long been nothing but an ideological appendage to the godless KGB-backed state since 1917. Broadly speaking, after Christianity became a state religion in different parts of the Roman empire instead of being a persecuted group which it was during the first three centuries of our era, the pure wine of Christ’s teachings has been adulterated by official organised state-backed religious organisations. They may call themselves “Christian” though in reality they are not.