Sunday, March 27, 2022
Sunday Reflection: The facturing of the Orthodox Church
Among the casualties of the war in Ukraine has been the Eastern Orthodox Church. Of the 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, about 100 million are in Russia. Their leader, Patriarch Kirill, is a close ally of Vladimir Putin and an advocate of the war. He sees the conflict as necessary to push back against a decadent West that has (among other things) accepted homosexuality.
Outside of Russia, of course, the Russian war is much less popular, including among Orthodox Christians. And it is especially messy in Ukraine itself, which is split between the Russian Orthodox and a Ukrainian Orthodox sect.
I'm baffled, of course, how this war could be justified by Christians of any stripe. But sadly our people have been justifying this kind of thing for a very long time.
