Tornado Alley (PROG)

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A message to all who see Christian vales under threat by naughty Democrats and others who support inclusivity of groups who have, for different reasons, been persecuted for a period longer than any of us have lived. Putin feels as you do. See excerpt from a post of December, 2022:

'Russia says military drone attempted to strike gas facility near Moscow'

Vladimir Putin: a miracle defender of Christianity or the most evil man?
[...]
We have heard a lot of ranting from Putin about the threat to Russia from Nato encirclement and justifications for the invasion to denazify Ukraine .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ukraine .. and stop their genocide of Russians. This is all propaganda and nonsense. What has been missed is the religious dimension in Putin’s thinking, although in delegitimising Ukraine, he did refer to it as an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.

This spiritual space is an important clue often overlooked. In 988 Vladimir king of the Rus was the first Christian convert. In Kyiv he summoned the whole city to the banks of the Dnieper River for a mass baptism. Holy Mother Russia was born. In 2019 the Ukrainian church broke with the Russian church and declared its independence. But Putin and the Russian church will not accept this because it is the site of the imagined mother church for all the Rus.

I was encouraged to read that some 176 Russian Orthodox priests .. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-orthodox-clerics-stop-war-ukrane/31730667.html .. a few days ago had signed an open letter condemning the war. This is a small crack in Putin’s complete capture of the church within Russia. Such signs of dissent point to a recovery of the Gospel of peace and transcends the Rus religious tribe.

As his attack falters, Putin could become more brutal – and even more irrational Mathieu Boulègue
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/ukraine-attack-falters-putin-brutal-irrational-russia-chechnya-syria

Despite the Bolshevik years, this sense of a holy destiny of Kyiv and Mother Russia has never left and Putin is its champion. Under Putin the Orthodox church has boasted that it is building and opening three churches a day, and the church celebrated the return of Crimea. Little wonder the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill a decade ago called Putin “a miracle of God .. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-putin-religion-idUKTRE81722Y20120208 ”.

And in Putin’s mind it goes further.

Just as he probed me about Christianity .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/christianity .. in the west, he reportedly said in a speech in 2013: “We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of western civilisation. They are denying the moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual.”

Kyiv must be taken, in his mind, to preserve the Christian battle. And there may be many Christians in the west who agree with some of his sentiments.

A miracle defender of Christianity or the most evil man? Well, it is Ukrainian Christians among others whom he is now slaughtering indiscriminately and he has little understanding of Jesus, who said “blessed are the peacemakers”.

No, this is a power vision threaded through with nationalistic Christian theology. And evil is the
right word when a leader uses religion to justify in God’s name invasion, violence and annihilation.

* Tim Costello is a fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney

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