Christian Craziness in Russia
Nov 15th, 2007 by Micah Tillman | 5 Comments |
After decades of state-enforced atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals have come under the influence of home-grown and foreign sects.
So writes Tatyana Ustinova for Reuters, in a story entitled “Russia sect holes up in cave to await end of world.”
“They are simple Christians,” a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television station. “They say: ‘The church is doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all saving ourselves’.”
Reminds me of what (Democrat and Dianne Feinstein/Nancy Pelosi fan) Camille Paglia wrote a couple days ago:
The recent horrific wildfires in California set off a gratuitous series of maunderings (from Jamie Lee Curtis to Thomas Friedman) about human culpability in global warming, the new liberal theology. Man is evil! Natural disasters are escalating! The world is coming to an end!
And in a piece from the CS Monitor, “Russia’s Orthodox church regains lost ground“:
It’s a struggle taking place across Russia. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, about 6,000 sites nationalized by the communists have been returned to the church, but hundreds more remain under dispute. Critics say the church’s appetite exceeds its ability to restore old buildings, or fill them with worshipers, and its aims are increasingly politicized.
Which reminds me of another CS Monitor piece I wrote about a while back (see here: Integration of Church and State, Eastern Style).
The end of the world, eh?
Well, I feel fine.
Paglia is not exactly a traditional Democrat, by the way.
Scott–
Well, I don’t know about the end of the world, per se. Just the end of the world as we know it.
:-)
Andrew–
More power to her. She seems like an interesting person.
I bought her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson many years ago and I have never regretted it. I’ve never once read the book cover-to-cover, but I enjoy just selecting and reading a passage at random whenever the mood strikes me. Paglia doesn’t seem to have any censor between her brain and her mouth so she’s really quite interesting.
Resting in the palm of the All-mighty, All-sovereign God whose ways are just and right, the end of the world as we know it doesn’t seem to bother me all that much.