Ukrainian crisis may split Russian Orthodox Church (Religion News Service)

[pinto]

Ukrainian crisis may split Russian Orthodox Church

Sophia Kishkovsky | Mar 14, 2014

MOSCOW (RNS) As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border and a controversial secession vote in Crimea approaches Sunday (March 16), Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church called for prayers “that brothers of one faith and one blood never bring destruction to one another.”

Russia has prided itself on its revival of Orthodox Christianity after decades of Soviet persecution, but a war with the Ukraine could splinter the Russian Orthodox Church.

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The “Russian world,” or “Russky mir” has been an overriding theme for Kirill since he became patriarch in 2009, and it meshes with Putin’s worldview, said Antoine Arjakovsky, director of research at the College des Bernardins in Paris and founder of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies in Lviv.

“For them, democracy is a danger,” he said in a Skype interview. “They invented a new mythology, the new ideology of ‘Russky mir,’ of the Russian idea, which would invent a kind of new theology of politics.”

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/03/14/ukrainian-crisis-may-split-russian-orthodox-church/

Kind of echoes Fareed Zakaria's secular observation (on CNN) - Putin has won Crimea but lost Ukraine. ~ pinto