Well, about 78% of Ukrainians identify as "Christian", so I have a simple question about you "Christians" on here that believe in the "rapture". What happened to the so called "rapture" for your fellow Christians in Ukraine? Or is this rapture only for westerners? Americans? According to many of yall interpretations of end times prophecy, those who believe in a pre-trib rapture especially, your behinds should have BEEN up out of here a while ago. So what happened?
Interestingly, the Russian Orthodox Church claims exclusive jurisdiction over any Christian living within the former republics of the USSR. It is clear that the Russian Orthodox Church is largely a socio-political, rather than spiritual, institution.
How Putin Uses Russian Orthodoxy to Grow His Empire
When Vladimir Putin rose to the presidency of Russia in 2000, he inherited the remains of a once-fearsome communist-atheist imperial state.
In the intervening 19 years, he has transformed Russia back into an imperial power with global ambitions. One of his key tools in that transformation has been the Russian Orthodox Church.
Putin often invokes the Russian Orthodox Church in his public speeches, giving the church a much more prominent place in Russian political life than under his predecessors. But these invocations hardly seem sincere in the religious sense. Rather, he has used the church to justify Russian expansion and to try to discredit the West’s influence in Eastern Europe.
Putin is seeking to tighten his grip on Ukraine and Belarus, as well as expand Russian influence further into Eastern and Central Europe. He will undoubtedly continue to promote Orthodoxy in the process. This is simply an attempt to seduce former Soviet republics back under the sway of Russia.
The Kremlin’s use of Orthodox Christianity makes perfect sense, given religious trends in the region. Orthodox Christianity has enjoyed a marked revival in Eastern Europe in the last two decades. In nine of Russia’s regional neighboring states—Moldova, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Romania,
Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Belarus—more than 70 percent of people identify as Orthodox, according to current Pew Research results.
This revival of Orthodoxy coincides with pro-Russian sentiment. Pew Research notes that in the nine former Soviet nations that are majority-Orthodox—except for Ukraine—more than half of those surveyed agree that “a strong Russia is necessary to balance the influence of the West.”
As Putin seeks more influence over these nations, emphasizing traditional religion serves two of his goals. It establishes a common ground between Russia and Eastern Europe, and, more importantly, amplifies the differences that Eastern Europe may have with the West—especially as the Western world drifts further away from traditional values and religion.
Putin’s use of traditional Christianity is calculated for political effect. American and European observers would do well to see through the charade.
