Putin’s political theology vs. Obama’s LGBT-messianism

Definitely, we are living in strange times. Pro-lifers and defenders of marriage and family meet at a conference in Moscow, hosted by two men with close links not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, but also to Russian President (and former KGB-boss) Vladimir Putin just at a time when the latter is waging a war of aggression against neighbouring Ukraine (not to mention the very similar wars he has waged against Georgia and Moldova and, domestically, against the Chechens…). At the same time Barack Obama, supposedly the leader of the most powerful democratic country in the world, is not only the one of the world’s most active advocates of violence against unborn children, but also uses all the powers of his office to wage a full-fledged war, domestically and world-wide, against marriage and the family – which are the very fundaments of any democratic society. And we, perplexed, do not know which camp to choose.

The case of Russia is perhaps even more paradoxical than the US. To understand it, it is necessary to understand the particularities of the Russian body politic, and the continuities as well as the discontinuities that characterize it. Despite the changes in the prevailing political ideologies since the beginning of the 20^th century, the way in which this country is governed has essentially remained the same.

Russia became a Christian nation in 896, when Grand Duke Vladimir of Kiev was baptized in the Dnipro. This makes Russia not the first, but also not the last member of the European family of nations to have embraced Christianity – and it also explains why many Russians continue to view Kiev as the cradle of their nation. The rise of Moscow only began long afterwards.

The particularity of the Christianization of Russia was that it was initiated by missionaries who had been sent from Byzantium – at a time when the links between Byzantium and Rome had already become very loose. The split between East and West became formal only when the Pope and the Greek Patriarch excommunicated each other in 1054 – but even before that, the Russian church depended on Byzantium, not on Rome. In all its history, the Russian Church never was a daughter of Rome.

The relationship to Byzantium, however, was not very close either. While Russia just began its career as a Christian nation, Byzantium was already in full decline. The Middle East had already been lost in 642, then came the internal strife known as the “Ikonoclasm”, and finally (beginning with the battle of Mantzikert in 1067) the Ottomans, who ate up the once glorious Byzantine Empire bit by bit, until they finally conquered its capital, Constantinople, in 1453.

In Russia, the fall of Constantinople gave rise to a new State Doctrine: “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian Tsardom!” It was for this reason that Grand Duke Ivan III of Muscovy, following his marriage with Sofia Palaiologa (a distant niece of the last Byzantine emperor) started using some of the insignia of the defunct Byzantine Empire, and his son and successor Vasily III. became the first Russian monarch to style himself as “tsar” (derived from Caesar, Kaiser, i.e. “emperor”).

In other words, Russia considered herself as the third and final Rome, the first among the Christian nations.[1] And in full consistency with the Byzantine tradition, there was to be a close relationship between the Throne and the Church.

In that relationship, the Tsars always had the upper hand. Peter the Great even went as far as to abolish the Patriarchate of Moscow, proclaiming himself the Head of the Russian Church, and installing a layman (the so-called “Oberprokurator”) as the governor of al ecclesiastical affairs.

This arrangement was maintained until the end of the Russian monarchy. Only in 1917 was a new Patriarch of Moscow, Tichon, enthroned – only to become the most prominent victim of the terrible persecution that set in immediately with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks later that year.

But behind the rupture there was a hidden continuity. Religion was replaced by the Leninist ideology (which itself could with good reasons be described as a bizarre form of “religion”), – yet the way in which the country was ruled essentially remained the same: an absolute monarch (Lenin, then Stalin) ruled with absolute power, based on a “State Church” ( aka the Bolshevik Party)to legitimize his rule, and an omnipotent/omniscient secret police (the Tsar’s “Okhrana” had been replaced by the NKVD, but actually many experienced police agents simply changed sides and continued as before…). This was how things had always been, and they continued being (albeit with a visible increase in brutality).

It seems to me that after the Soviet Union’s break-down in 1991 a similar shift has taken place. Marxism was dumped, and a new State Doctrine was needed. This new-old State Doctrine is the greatness and glory of the Russian nation – and the Russian Orthodox Church is its perfect incorporation. Old churches were restored, and new ones were erected. Whoever visits Moscow today will be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of churches in all possible forms, sizes and colours. It was not so when I first visited the city in 1986.

For most Russians, having an ex-KGB officer as their President is not a problem. It is normality. And the war in Ukraine (and elsewhere) is simply the continuation of the very same foreign policy that was pursued both by the Tsars and the Bolsheviks. As Tsar Nikolay I. once famously put it:  “где раз подняли русский флаг, он уже спускаться не должен”  (i.e., “where once the Russian flag is hoisted, it must not be taken down again!”). Business as usual, so to say.

But the state ideology has changed once more – and whatever one may think of the close union between Church and State we see today, this change is for the better. For all practical purposes Christianity is more conducive to the common good than Marxism-Leninism. And the promotion of stable families is certainly a better idea than promoting class struggle and collectivization.

If we now turn to look at the United States, we see the nearly opposite scenario. While Americans are (at least by comparison to most Europeans) a very religious nation, they have a secular (not “secularist”) State, with no established religion. The purpose of the clause that there be no established religion is not to fight against religion, but to guarantee religious freedom.

The problem with the US today is that President Obama has a religion of his own making. That religion has abortion and same-sex “marriage” as its most precious sacraments, and Obama is its messiah.

If Obama kept his religion for himself, that would not be such a great problem. In actual fact, however, he puts his position as the head of the executive of the world’s largest and most powerful democracy entirely at the service of this novel religion, promoting sodomy and child-slaughtering domestically and abroad. This includes, in particular, the funding of abortion in developing countries through so-called “development aid”, the use of diplomatic pressure on developing countries to legalize abortion or sodomy, or the public endorsement given by US diplomats to “gay pride” events and other displays of obscenity. These provocative activities have, among many other countries, also targeted Russia  – in particular at the Sochi Winter Olympics, where the US foreign Office orchestrated a “LGBT-rights campaign”. But there, as elsewhere, they have not won over the population for Obama’s noble cause, but provoked astonishment and disgust.

And this is, I believe, where the heart of the matter lies. I don’t believe for a moment that Putin is a devout Christian, nor that he has any particularly strong convictions on homosexuality. But he is not stupid either. He has discovered that, by promoting abortion and sodomy as “human rights”, the US and other Western governments have within a very short period of time depleted all the moral capital they had accumulated during the Cold War. Instead with sympathy and admiration, the West is nowadays viewed with contempt in many regions of the world. For the US, this loss of moral capital is a political disaster of unspeakable dimension – and one doesn’t have the impression that Foggy Bottom is even aware of it. For Russia, by contrast, it is a golden opportunity: stand up for a proper understanding of marriage and the family, gain credibility on human rights (which, for quite different reasons, isn’t really due to them, and act as the leader of a world-wide coalition of countries (including most of Asia and Latin America, and nearly all of Africa) that grow increasingly wary of Obama’s bizarre set of “values”. Putin isn’t a democrat. He simply is a politician who understands that cultural issues can play a very important role in world politics, and who is clever enough to draw an easy profit from America’s moral and social self-destruction. It doesn’t cost him a dime.

There is a second reason for Putin to fight abortion promote “large families”. That reason is that Russia cannot be great if its population is dwindling. Russia not only has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, but she is (for a variety of reasons, which include widespread alcoholism, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, economic problems, emigration, etc.) losing nearly 1 million inhabitants per year. To halt this decline, decisive action is necessary. It is a matter of survival for Russia as a nation (and hence for Putin as a political leader). Thus it seems to me that Putin is not necessarily fighting abortion out of a deep moral conviction, but for more profane reasons. But these reasons are, in and by themselves, certainly legitimate. One can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and it still remains the right thing.

So whose camp do I choose, Putin’s or Obama’s? Neither. Both have, for very different reasons, a pretty bad human rights record. But both also do some good. When Obama sets out to restore peace and order in the Middle East, I do wish him the best of successes. And when Putin defends marriage and family at the UN, I also wish him all the best. There is not only black and white in this world. There are also many shades of grey.

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