Russian Orthodox Church Quotes
This vision, known as "The Third Rome" saw not only Moscow as the seat of Christianity for the world, but saw the Czar as the Head of the Christian unified Church. Constantinople had fallen to the Muslims and Rome to the Barbarians and the Pope had virtually no power at the time. Particularly interesting is his vision of transforming a civil Emperor to the head of the Church—one who was strong and wealthy enough to end the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches and command all. In this sense, he was following the Muslim concept of a single secular and religious, all powerful, leader—like the Caliph.
Two were executed and the others sent to the Gulags. This is often quoted to show how hostile the Soviet Union was to all religions.
The Empress provided freedom of religion in order to induce many settlers to immigrate to Russia. However, the clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church were terribly fearful that they would lose parishioners to other religions and they prevailed upon Catherine to outlaw preaching and conversion of the Russians. However, they were all for any attempt to convert the Muslims in the Russian Empier or at the borders. This limitation on conversion lasted until the Communist Revolution when the Communists even prohibited the Russian Orthodox from converting people. It was not until the fall of the Soviet Union that other religions were allowed to try and convert Russians and even then the number of sects that were allowed to do so were limited.
The church attempted to retain its role as the premier Russian religion, and maintain its traditional influence and autonomy. It was not to be.
Vasilii Ivanovich Belavin. head of the church. Because he was responsible for the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, he developed the complementary title of ‘Enlightener Of America’
The Serbs were fighting the Muslims again and just as in the Serbian War at the end of the 20th century the Russians sided with their co-religionists against the Muslims just as they had 125 years earlier. Attitudes had not changed.
The “area” was Chechnya, a province of Russia with a substantial Muslim population. Islamic forces were not as unhappy in the Russian Communist days in the Christian Orthodox church was subdued, but after the fall of Communism, the Russian Orthodox church had a revival, and that exacerbated all the independence aspirations that existed for years in Chechnya.
Over 200 years later Ataturk, the leader of Turkey, also mandated Western dress. The theory was that by adopting Western dress, other Western modernization would follow. Another benefit is that a populous sees visible change and is therefore more open to additional change and modernization. In the case of Turkey, there was a social hierarchy that was indicated by dress and requiring western dress eliminated these outward and visible signs of rank thus promoting equality. In Russia, it was an earlier time and Peter’s Russians were much more backward than the Turks of over 200 years later.
