Source: UnHerd: Putin’s Spiritual Destiny
This is actually an interesting essay, and informative, for those who don’t understand the spiritual significance of Kyiv (formerly known as Kiev) to Russia – or would be, if it could be excised of its all-too-obvious disdain for the very history, both political and spiritual, that it recounts. But at least he recognizes that Putin is a “religious president,” who “wants to rebuild Christendom”: that is more than most commentators comprehend!
Written by a nominal Church of England priest (who chooses to appear in an open-collared shirt, rather than clericals, in his avatar – which for an Anglican cleric, tells me a good deal about where he’s coming from), he accurately points out that “Though the West thinks of Christianity as something enfeebled and declining, in the East it is thriving”... but says this as if it were a bad thing. There is an unfortunate subgroup of Christians who think living in a “post-Christian society” is a good thing, and are distinctly nervous, and disparaging, toward those who take their faith seriously.
Of Putin, he notes, “Many people don’t appreciate the extent to which the invasion of Ukraine is a spiritual quest for him. The Baptism of [the] Rús” – pictured, below, in the painting, “The Baptism of Kievans,” by Klavdiy Lebedev (c. 1900) – “is the founding event of the formation of the Russian religious psyche, the Russian Orthodox church traces its origins back here. That’s why Putin is not so much interested in a few Russian-leaning districts to the east of Ukraine. His goal, terrifyingly, is Kyev itself.”
Well, yes. Whether it’s “terrifying” or understandable (or both) depends on one’s view of both religion and history. The baptism of the Rús (who were, interestingly enough, mainly Swedish Vikings, and their half-Slavic descendants, but I digress...) at Kiev really was the founding of both the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia – the land of the Rús – itself, as a nation-state. So it is really not surprising that he would take attempts to bring it, along with the rest of Ukraine, into NATO as an existential threat to Russia itself! On a spiritual and cultural, as well as political and military, level.
This is the thing we just don’t get because we don’t know about or understand history; because for most people (apparently) here in the U.S., history is so totally irrelevant to our lives and identities that we fail to comprehend people for whom it is a living part of our identities! (I include myself in this latter category.) So we call him a “madman” because he actually cares about his own heritage, and that of his people – a position which seems to be totally out of fashion, in the West.
I am reminded of the old saying that “A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: ‘You are mad, for you are not like us.’” I fear we are in that time, now! We can debate whether the way he went about it was wise, or prudent, or morally justifiable; but the motive itself is not incomprehensible to some of us, even if it is to others.
At any rate: Giles Fraser, the author of this piece, continues,
He was born in Leningrad — a city that has reclaimed its original saint’s name [Saint Petersburg] — to a devout Christian mother and atheist father. His mother baptised him in secret, and he still wears his baptismal cross. Since he became President, Putin has cast himself as the true defender of Christians throughout the world, the leader of the Third Rome. His relentless bombing of ISIS, for example, was cast as the defence of the historic homeland of Christianity. [Note UK spellings.]
Well, yes. It was. And yes, he has acted as “the true defender of Christians throughout the world, the leader of the Third Rome,” in fighting the likes of ISIS. Again, Fraser says that like it’s a bad thing. Well, I don’t see him, or the Church of England, doing much to defend Christians – currently the most persecuted religious group on the planet – throughout the world! The CofE seems to be more interested in holding interfaith conferences and even services with Muslims… the very ones who (along with the Communist Chinese) are doing most of the persecuting.
He quotes Putin as saying,
“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 moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan” [e.g., replacing traditional morality with “woke” amorality / immorality, and Christianity with anti-Christianity].
Well, guess what? He’s not wrong.
The West has been chucking Christianity, Christian morality, Christian anthropology (“in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” – Genesis 1:27), and Christian faith, history, and heritage over the side of the boat as fast as it can, starting with the 1960s, and accelerating rapidly from the 1990s on. Fraser continues, “Putin regards his spiritual destiny as the rebuilding of Christendom, based in Moscow.”
Referring to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, he notes that it “is a synthesis of Russia’s national and spiritual aspirations. It’s not just Russia, it is ‘Holy Russia’... Speaking of Vladimir’s mass baptism, Putin explained: ‘His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.’ He wants to do the same again. And to do this he needs Kyev back.”
Yep. He may have overestimated the extent to which the Russian people have joined him in this quest, but that does indeed seem to be his ambition. And we thought he would just sit idly by, while we tried to bring Ukraine into NATO?
Whether it’s Middle Eastern Muslims or Russian Orthodox – or even some of us “heritage Americans” – the secularized, rootless Western elites just don’t “get it”: they do not understand how much religion means to religious people, and history, culture, and heritage mean to traditionally-minded people. Putin’s a “madman”; those of us who “bitterly cling to God and guns” are “a basket of deplorables.”
And the thing I hope the traditional and “small-o” orthodox Christian folks who are anxious to jump on the anti-Putin bandwagon (somewhat understandably: I’m not defending the invasion of Ukraine, just saying that it didn’t have to be this way, if we could have handled the situation with more intelligence and sensitivity – he would probably have accepted reassurances that we would not bring Ukraine into NATO) realize is that the woke elites hate us as much as they hate him, and for many of the same reasons.