Monthly Archives: June 2016

Irreligion in England and Wales

Last month the Roman Catholic St Mary’s University in Twickenham published the following statistics:

1. 48.5% of the English and Welsh adult population identifies itself as of ‘no religion’, 19.8% as Anglican, 15.7% as Christian but Non-Anglican and Non-Roman Catholic, 8.3% as Roman Catholic and 7.7% as members of Non-Christian religions.

2. The religious make-up of England and Wales has changed dramatically in the past three decades. Anglicans have suffered the biggest declines: from 44.5% in 1983 to 19.8% today.

3. For every one Roman Catholic convert there are 10 cradle Roman Catholics who no longer regard themselves as Roman Catholic. For every one Anglican convert there are 12 cradle Anglicans who no longer regard themselves as Anglican.

4. Of those who currently identify as Roman Catholic, only 27.5% say they attend church services at least once a week. 39.2% say they never or practically never attend.

Source: http://www.stmarys.ac.uk/benedict-xvi/docs/2016-may-contemporary-catholicism-report.pdf

1916-2016: 100 Years of Saints and Traitors

Introduction

100 years ago there began the last stages in the greatest injustice in world history – the betrayal of Imperial Christian Russia. Then on the point of victory in the First World War and so of liberating New Rome, called Constantinople, and also the Holy Land, it was also about to liberate the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, so undoing the injustices in Central Europe and the Balkans and in the tyrannical Second Reich of Bismarck, so reconstituting a free Poland, and perhaps also righting the injustices of Western colonization worldwide. Had it not been betrayed, there would never have been any Bolshevik genocide (millions of dead), no Third Reich and no Hitler, no World War Two, no Teutonic holocaust of the Slavs (30 million dead) or of the Jews (over 5 million dead), no American fire bombs and atom bombs on Japanese civilians (1 million dead?), no Communist China (30 million dead?), no abortion holocaust (100 million dead?), no……

In May 1945 one Russian soldier – he later became a priest – was standing in the ruined Reichstag in Berlin. Surrounded by incredible destruction, but also great relief, victory had come at a huge price on the Russian Easter Day, which that year had coincided with the day of the feast of St George the Victorious Soldier-Martyr. There, in the Reichstag, the soldier saw Tsar Nicholas II surveying the scene, examining every detail, thinking that in 1917 he would already have stood there, surrounded however not by destruction but by an intact capital of culture. The ghost of Tsar Nicholas has haunted Europe ever since it betrayed him in 1917. He has been here all the time, to this very day, looking with eyes of pity at the merciless destruction and self-destruction of the Western world, as it sinks into its self-made abyss. Betrayed at the last moment in 1917, according to a plot prepared in detail in 1916, he looks on the lost souls and cultural heritage of the Western world and his heart weeps.

Inside Russia

The first sign that the plot had been implemented was the assassination of the peasant-healer Rasputin in December 1916, betrayed by decadent Russian aristocrats, who hated the Christian peasantry, and murdered by British spies, who hated Russian Orthodox. Financed by its enemies (Germany and Austro-Hungary) and by its ‘allies’ (Britain, France and the US, who had already financed Japan’s transformation into militarism and its murderous attack on Russia in 1904), sabotage and treason laid the Tsar’s Russia low. In 1917 this developed into anarchy (the so-called ‘Revolution’), which was created by ‘liberal’ opportunist traitors in February and exploited by ‘Bolshevik’ opportunist traitors in October. Anarchy (falsely called ‘Revolution’) was fabricated in the salons of the jealous and the ignoble, grand dukes and princes, generals and politicians, freemasons and lawyers, industrialists and bourgeois – ‘have money, want power’ – traitors to the people and their Tsar.

All of them were utterly unfaithful to the three (three because Trinitarian) tenets and principles that had upheld the Christian Empire of the Tsar. These were: the Faith (uncompromised Orthodox Christianity); the Tsar (the Anointed Christian Sovereign); and Rus (the multinational Christian Empire). As atheists and apostates, they committed sabotage and treason with regard to all these values, which represent Faith in the Father, the Incarnation of the Son and the Presence of the Holy Spirit. Those who remained faithful to these three tenets inside Russia were the New Martyrs and Confessors and those who venerated them. The salt of the earth, they were the ones who were to begin the great restoration that has been under way since the official fall of Bolshevism twenty-five years ago, but in fact long before, from the moment of their exploits. Thus the traitors were countered by the saints and, although the traitors still do not understand how or why, the saints always win.

Outside Russia

After the anarchy, there began the resistance and then the defeat and so emigration of those known as ‘White Russians’. Once in the emigration (though even before), it could plainly be seen that here too there were saints and traitors. To the left hand side there fell away those who betrayed the Faith and the Tsar. To the right hand side there fell away those who betrayed the Faith and Rus. On the left hand side were the renovationists, who so hated the Russian Church that they left Her, compromising Her Faith, and so hated the Tsar that they actually justified their treason, which had led them into the self-punishment of exile. On the right hand side were the nationalists, who so hated the Russian Church that they made Her into a narrow nationalist flag, forgetting Her multinational mission, and so hated Rus that they allied themselves with its crazed Teutonic enemy, not understanding that the victory of 1945 was the people’s victory, the victory of repentant Rus.

There were also those who understood that the task of the emigration was to keep faith with all three tenets. We knew that as long as all three principles were respected, all would be well and it would be simple to reunite with Russia once it was free again and restoration had begun, with the New Martyrs and Confessors officially venerated there. We understood that the Faith could not be compromised by heresies, dreamy and disincarnate renovationism and personality cults, regardless of the fact that we lived outside Russia. We understood that the memory of the Tsar, the universal Christian Emperor, had to be kept for restoration, in order for a new Christian Emperor to come and oppose the worldwide evil that has been unleashed ever since Tsar Nicholas was deposed. We understood that our mission is to make Rus universal, worldwide, regardless of race and language, and that our mission is among the people and must not be compromised by political Establishments.

Conclusion

In our own times we are seeing a daily miracle: over the last 25 years we have seen in the Russian Lands what we and those before us had been praying for over the previous 75 years, the slow restoration of the Tsar’s Christian Russia. Yes, it has been a slow and tortuous process, with many hesitations, deviations and falls, but the general direction has been right. This process of restoration is of course far from over, indeed, in many respects it has only just begun, but the icons of the New Martyrs, including those of the Royal Martyrs, are everywhere. As the new Cold War NATO occupies the Ukraine and Estonia, attempting to destabilize governments from Macedonia to Moldova and Armenia to Kazakhstan, and prepares to attack all along the Russian borders, its aircraft and submarines, tanks and troops everywhere threatening resurgent Russia, the last bastion of Christianity in the world, we see the desperation of the world’s elite in its bid to impose its New World Order.

Having destabilized all Latin America and much of Africa, striving to undermine China and India and using tides of poor Muslim immigrants to threaten European identities, having destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Syria, and attempting to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church and Faith, the satanic New World Order’s proposed Orthodox Council has led only to our clear identification of the unrepentant traitors in our midst – by waiting for them to reveal themselves, we now know who is ready for cleansing. The tiny but immensely powerful elite that stands behind the USA, the EU, NATO, the whole Western world indeed, and pulls the strings of its media, puppets and all the deceived and gullible, knows that if Russia resists it successfully, its aim of global domination and control will be foiled and the coming of the Kingdom of the Great Deceiver, Antichrist, that it knowingly and unknowingly seeks will be postponed, perhaps even for many years to come. May it be so, O Lord.

BELIEVING A LIE – THE TEMPLATE 1917 – 2017

By Victoria Bingham, a Bible-believing Christian from California,
June 6, 2016

In World War I, the first and most outrageous, unjustified, unnecessary massive conflict of the 20th century, 17 million people died, another 21 million were wounded. It was absurd, There was no reason for the scope of that war. The Archduke Ferdinand’s death was an excuse. The Zimmerman Telegram, which bamboozled the US population into agreeing to go to war, was an excuse.

The reality was the powers wanted a war; towards that end alliances were created; endlessly interconnected links between nations were forged, dragging non-involved nations ultimately into the vortex. There had been unprecedented and unnecessary military build-ups and displays of might, Kaiser Wilhelm ran around daily flaunting his military dress; campaigns of name calling and accusations were endemic, PSYOPS and propaganda machines were operating at full media steam to create bogeymen, and bogey nations, and bring the respective jingoistic, prideful, gullible populations on board, People believed the lies because they wanted to; and were dragged into the meat-grinder that was the First World War.

Which war was followed close behind by the 1918 flu epidemic. When the war ended too quickly (Russia for one thing made a surprise premature peace with Germany and got out), pharmaceutical profitmongers with extra vaccines on their hands sold them to the populations with the lie that the returning soldiers would be ‘carriers’ of germs, (Like the same lies that circulate today among the vaxxed pop, who want to believe that ‘the unvaxed’ are the great ‘unwashed’), creating the whole epidemic from the vaccines themselves. The resulting international scourge took another 20 million people. Again because people believed a lie.

This ominous early 20th century litany of grave events, which exploded in 1917, is coming up on exactly 100 years ago. People still believe the lies. They’re still vaccinating themselves, and others. The PSYOPS makers are still manufacturing lies, the biggest right now is that Russia is a threat to the world, that Iran is a threat to the world.

Have you ever asked yourself who the real threat is?

Do they speak Russian in Mexico…or Spanish?
Farsi in Libya…or Italian?
Russian in India,..or English?
Russian in Guatemala,..or Spanish?
Farsi or Chinese in the Honduras…or Spanish?
Russian in Brazil…or Portuguese?
Russian in Morocco…or French?
Do they speak Farsi in Vietnam and the Philippines…or French, Spanish and English?

Who are the real colonialists down through the last 600 years? It’s not Russia and Iran. The colonialist nations were, and still are, England, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the United States. Their parliaments never met a war they didn’t like, because after the carnage comes the carving up of the spoils.

Yes, ironically these are those who make up the body of NATO, an empire who knows no bounds. If NATO decides they don’t like how a country is being run, or they don’t like who’s running it, they bomb. Bombs away, without compunction for the fact that in each case so far, since the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s right on down to Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria et al, that far more people wind up being killed by NATO bombs, than those killed by alleged despots. That, and the nations so ravaged by NATO bombs are left in ruins, having power vacuums into which chaos pours like bad bacteria into an open sore.

But they’re at it again and people are falling all over the place, for the same lies.

The Latvians have made it illegal to speak Russian in Latvia. Speaking Russian is punishable by arrest. The Russians have been made the scourge of the media in most every western nation. Russia, a Christian nation for 1,000 years, taken over by the Western financed and installed *Communists in 1917, is again being set up for a fresh attack. Putin is a threat for no other reason than he won’t kowtow to the World Bankers, and he keeps getting in NATO’s way in their bid to dismantle Syria.

(*Lenin traveled through Germany on his way to Russia in 1917, with a trainload of gold. Yet he never worked a day in his life. Where did he get the gold from? Find that out and you’ll find out how Russia was taken over much in the same way that the United States is being taken over now).

The same source of funding went to the deposing and brutal murder of the Tsar Nicholas, a man who was so fundamentally NOT military-minded, so much so that he struggled to win a war with the tiny nation of Japan in 1905, when they attacked his eastern flank without first declaring war.

The same sort of funding from the same sources went to another man who would rule a destitute nation, in a depressed economic state, and yet who somehow went on to build the biggest war machine in history; the Third Reich. The man: Hitler.

We are bombarded daily on the news with lies; lies about diseases, lies about Zika; lies about Ebola and Aids; lies about vaccines; lies about Iran, lies about Russian aggression, (who is circling whom anyway?) lies about school shootings and journalist shootings, and church shootings, and gun violence and race wars and lies about what really happened in Benghazi, lies about 911, lies about how the Towers fell, lies about terrorism.

Lies about politics certainly top the list. You can’t even use mainstream online research outlets. Go to Wikipedia to learn about Crimea’s 2014 Referendum to leave Ukraine. (Ukraine.. who would have just loved to bomb the Crimeans into submission, as in fact they did other Eastern Ukrainian cities – by way of warning) and you will find the title as a foregone conclusion. You are actually to BELIEVE that Russia annexed the Crimea!

(I happened to see a Newsweek article about the same ‘Annexation’ recently, when the 2 year anniversary crowds in Crimea were out celebrating with fireworks in the sky and tears of joy on their cheeks. Somehow Newsweek thought showing the celebrations fitted with an article suggesting that the Crimeans were cowed into rejoining Russia).

We’re governed by departments whose names are lies: “Defense Department”, “Homeland Security”, “The Environmental Protection Agency”, (Funny they never make a peep about Monsanto) and by programs whose names are lies: “Affordable Care Act”, “Patriot Act”, “The National Defense Authorization Act”, and mantras whose true goals are the acceptance of the illusions like, ‘Support the Troops”.. unilaterally, unambiguously, no matter what or why. Ask no questions like: ‘Why are we in Syria’?

All of which is leading to the biggest lie of them all. When he is revealed, the man of sin, he will deceive the world and God will give ‘them’ up to believe the lie. Why? Because they “loved not the truth.”

Loving truth means earnestly seeking it out. It means, according to the Scriptures, digging for her as for hid treasure.

Wisdom, so says the writer of Proverbs, is crying in the streets. The imagery is that wisdom is calling, calling, calling, but no one wants to listen. Wisdom suggests many things that are patently obvious to some, but somehow others cannot see. A ‘spiritual blindness’ is at work. Examples are myriad, but how about the most fundamental: God. People see an arrow head in a cave and say, “The work of a man”. The same people can see the incredibly marvelous creation yet fail to say, ‘The work of God’.

Truth must be dug for. It takes work. It cannot be gleaned by tuning into the networks at night. It is not crying in the streets as the unwelcome wisdom is, truth is for those who love it and pursue it. Lies are easy to be found. Not truth. Basically, to find truth it MUST MATTER to you more than anything else on earth.

Truth can be elusive, when information is too often corrupt. I’ll give you one example. How many of us who have lived through at least 30 winters on this planet, haven’t had the experience of changing their minds about something. Something they were utterly persuaded of, but new information came along, and you realized that you had been deceived. You had believed, if only for a time, a lie.

I think one of the most frightening images in this world is the mass mob scenes. You know, like the famous crowds hailing Hitler by the tens of thousands or the riots that occupy rallies and places where a microphone is put to someone selected from the masses, and they are unable to articulate why they are following along. It was the same in the Lord’s day. He was lauded and welcomed on the road to Jerusalem by palm-waving throngs, who later called, in similar unison, for his crucifixion on the road to Calvary.

I cannot help but wonder what the Lord would have said to NATO when they asked, ‘Shall we call down fire from heaven to help the people of that country?”

The cards are being stacked just as they were before 1917. The template is visible all over the world as nations align themselves, military build-ups are being carried out at unheard of levels, with unheard of weaponry and every new day, a new generation of aircraft and missiles is on display for our expressions of shock and awe. But when the unleashing comes this time, and the unfathomable array of international alliances show themselves and their military loyal to whatever calling NATO beckons them to…

I cannot help but wonder what will light the match. The parallels are dozens and dozens. I dare not mouth what I suspect.

Don’t believe the lie. Test the spirits; Weigh everything in the balance. Practise at all times walking by the spirit and not by sight, and practice it with EVERYTHING you hold as true. Wisdom is crying in the streets.

Let us be those who are never fooled at any place or any time. It’s available. The Holy Spirit is never fooled.

Victoria Bingham
June 6, 2016

Russian Orthodox Church also to Abandon Crete Meeting?

The news that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church will not be taking part in what was supposed to be a ‘Pan-Orthodox’ meeting in Crete this month, because it disagrees with the draft documents proposed (like most Orthodox everywhere), and that the Patriarchate of Antioch will probably not take part, was followed by an announcement of the Synod of the Russian Church on 3 June.

This was a call for an extraordinary ‘pre-Conciliar’ conference to take place before the 10 June in order to iron out the mass of methodological problems and problems of syncretism in the documents – if not the Russian Church will not take part. (Metr Agafangel of Odessa has already refused personally to take part in the Russian delegation because he disagrees so profoundly with the documents proposed).

However, yesterday, on 6 June, the Patriarchate of Constantinople completely rejected this proposal, thus ensuring that the Russian Church will not take part. It is clear that Constantinople’s arrogant, top-down attempt to impose on the Orthodox world and people its syncretistic and anti-Orthodox views, dictated to it by the US State Department, has failed.

On 28 May the well-known Russian Orthodox layman and prominent businessman, Konstantin Malofeev, speaking on the Tsargrad TV Channel, confirmed what we had all along suspected. This is that the venue for the Crete meeting is full of CIA and FBI agents, who have been called in ‘to ensure the security of the Orthodox bishops against terrorism’’. In fact, they are bugging the venue and in fact will control all its proceedings.

In other words, if a meeting is to take place, it must first of all take place with a list of real problems of the Church – e.g. the divisive and politically-enforced introduction among a few Orthodox of the Catholic calendar for the fixed feasts, the invasion of Russian canonical territory in Finland, Estonia and elsewhere by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and ending the jurisdictional divisions in the Diaspora caused by the Patriarchate of Constantinople after 1917.

Secondly, such a meeting must take place with Patriarchs freely chosen by the Synods of the Local Churches (and not in a back room in the US State Department) and it must take place in a free country, in the absence of spies. For nine years now we have been suggesting the now fully restored New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. Perhaps there a meeting could be held which would become a real Pan-Orthodox Council rather than a farcical and expensive junket.

Pro-Gender and Anti-Gender: The Church and the Anti-Church

The crisis of masculinity (and so of femininity also) began in Western Europe in the second half of the eleventh century. This was when the most powerful men in Western Europe introduced compulsory clerical celibacy in a shocking revolution that ran counter to the Christian Tradition up until then. This revolution itself, which was caused by and led directly to what is now known as clericalism, was an anti-woman phenomenon, an act of misogyny, for it asserted that women were unworthy to share in priests’ lives. It is no surprise to learn that many of those behind this revolutionary innovation were homosexuals (1). However, although initially expressing hatred for women, the revolution came to bring hatred for men too – by metaphorically castrating them, making them less than real men.

Apart from a small minority of priests with a genuine monastic vocation, and most village priests, who remained married anyway (as still today, especially in African, Latin American and Southern European Roman Catholicism), this revolution meant that the higher clergy, the Roman Establishment, came to be dominated by homosexuals and pedophiles. This can be seen quite clearly in writers in the Middle Ages (Anselm and Lanfranc of Canterbury and Aelred of Rievaulx in the twelfth century are good local examples (1), but even more in the Renaissance with ‘monks’ like Michelangelo and the pedophile frescoes that cover the walls of the Vatican. As one perceptive and still Orthodox Christian Italian bishop, Bishop Ulric of Imola put it in his ‘Rescript’ at the outset of this transformation in c. 1060, if marriage were forbidden, priests would fall into sins far worse than mere fornication, ‘not abhorring the embrace of other men, or even of animals (2).

Today, by reaction and outrage at injustice, many heterodox women want to have the same clericalist power as men; hence the well-established movements for woman priests and bishops among the Protestants and the desire for the same among protestantized Roman Catholic women. Among the Non-Christian and anti-Christian Western elite, this movement has, again by reaction, turned into the LGBT or Transhuman movement, which altogether denies that men are men and women are women, and is now, with the backing of the US elite, being forced onto the whole world through politically correct media pressure, neo-colonial intimidation and open bribery. President Obama, a man with European, African and Asian roots, a ‘world man’, neither black not white, gives the impression that he is also neither male nor female. We see before us a forerunner of Antichrist. What is the view of the Church of male and female?

The first great difference between the Church and the heterodox world that broke away from it on the orders of the Western elite in the eleventh century is not just that in real Christianity the parish clergy are married, since married man can become priests, but also the great emphasis on the Mother of God. Although any Roman Catholic will recognise a parallel with her (unlike a Protestant), he will most probably not use the term ‘the Mother of God’ or ‘the All-Holy’, but a term like ‘the Virgin’, the Holy Virgin’ or ‘Madonna’, ‘My Lady’. Their emphasis is on her virginity, not on her motherhood, and that is very significant. On the other hand, enter any church and you will see two main icons: Christ the Saviour and the Mother of God, on either side of the doors of heaven. This rejection by the heterodox world of the sacred nature of motherhood (see I Tim 2, 15) lies behind a great deal of its present anti-gender hysteria.

In the Christian world of the Church, the gender differences are always, if anything exaggerated, men are men, women are women. ‘Male and female He created them’, Gen. 1, 27). For instance, much traditional Christian folk singing in Russia or Greece is dominated by sopranos and basses and ultra-feminine and ultra-masculine voices are much prized. In clothing and hair the differences have also always been clear-cut and not just in the Church dress-code; dressing ‘in drag’ and the unisex fashion that began in the 1960s has never been part of the Christian Tradition. Indeed, it has always been outlawed by the Church canons (3), whereas such sexual mixtures were prevalent in the pagan Greek and Roman world, where same-sex relations and pedophilia were considered normal (as they are among the Western Establishment today; the British Establishment notably is notorious for buggery and pedophilia, not least in the higher reaches of the Church of England, the BBC, the government, the army and navy).

Why this desire to even exaggerate gender differences in the Church? It is precisely to avoid grey areas, genetic accidents, for they are full of spiritual and so moral peril and human misery. Souls can very easily be lost there. Quite unlike the now paganized Western world and its hormone-filled or transgenetic food, the Church is not transgender, because that is anti-gender, the Church is pro-gender. This is why the word sex comes from the Latin word ‘cut’; in other words the difference between the sexes is clear-cut, we are one or the other. There are only two sexes, male and female, we have to choose which sex we belong to and that is made visible in the sexual organs that we receive at conception and have at birth. Although some women are less feminine than others and some men are less masculine than others, the anti-gender movement is profoundly suicidal because it will finish sexual attraction, procreation, the family and children, and so end the Western world, which is already dying out and being replaced by Islam. As for Christian society, it has always found a pastoral place for everyone, whether in marriage or in monasticism.

Notes:

1. See J. Boswell, Christianity, Sexual Tolerance and Homosexuality, 1980, p.210-227.

2. See Anne Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, 1982, p. 112.

3. See Canon LXII of the Sixth Council (Quinisext in Trullo) and the Council of Gangra Canon XIII. But these only repeat what the Holy Scriptures say. For example: Deuteronomy 22, 5 especially. See also I Tim 4, 3 and 2 Tim 3, 3.

Russian Government Concerned Over Western Christianophobia

As one US commentator has put it: ‘Two generations ago President Kennedy decided to put American men on the moon; today President Obama has decided to put American men into women’s restrooms’. In just two generations the Western world has gone from at least a cultural recognition of Christian values through indifference to active and hostile persecution. The last bastion of Christianity in the world today, under attack from the Western world for its adherence to Christianity and vigorous defence of Christian values, is Russia. With a Western-inspired civil war on its doorstep, as every day Christians are massacred in the Ukraine by the US-installed Fascist junta in Kiev, and surrounded by NATO forces threatening war, the battle for Christ is on:

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=12984

Fifty Years of the East of England Rus/ Пятидесятилетие Восточноанглийской Руси 1966-2016

The Mission of the Church Outside Russia to the Three Eastern Counties of England

500 Million People and 100 Regions

The 500 million people and 28 nations of the European Union are divided into almost 100 regions, each representing on average a population of almost exactly five million. England is divided into nine such regions, the easternmost one of which is called the East of England. This is composed of six historic counties, three in the east and three in the west (Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire); although the Russian Orthodox Church does operate in the three western counties, it does not possess any church buildings there.

1 in 200: Half of the East of England Region

This eastern half of the East of England region is called the Eastern Counties. It consists of Essex and the two counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, the kernel of historic East Anglia, though its influence and dialect has always clearly crossed over into Northern Essex and Eastern Cambridgeshire. The East Anglian flag is composed of the cross of St George (the Jerusalem flag) and the three crowns of the patron saint of East Anglia, St Edmund, the co-patron saint of England and King of East Anglia (+ 869). http://www.flyingcolours.org/product/county-flags/east-anglia-flag.html.

Area and Orthodox Population

The Eastern Counties cover approximately 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometres) and have a population of 3 million. We estimate the nominal Orthodox population at only about 12,000 (one in 250), though the number of Orthodox is increasing rapidly by immigration and, as it is young, it has a high birth-rate. The vast majority of Orthodox are composed of Russian-speaking nationalities, Romanians, Moldovans, Bulgarians and Greek Cypriots, with very small numbers of English people at the present time.

Historic Local Saints

The Apostle and Patron Saint of Essex is St Cedd (+ 664) and the other main local saint is St Osyth (+ c. 700). As we have said, the Patron-Saint of Suffolk and Norfolk is St Edmund, King and Martyr (+ 869), commemorated especially in Hoxne and above all in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. However Suffolk also commemorates three other main local saints, the Apostle of East Anglia, St Felix (647), the Suffolk-born St Audrey (+ 679) and St Botolph (+ 680). Norfolk also commemorates three other main local saints, St Fursey (+ 650), St Withburgh (+ c. 743) and St Walstan (+ 1016).

The Mission of the Church Outside Russia to the Eastern Counties (1966-2008)

The first contemporary Orthodox missionary to the three counties was Fr Mark (Meyrick, later Fr David) (+ 1993), who in 1966 opened a small rented chapel in a village in rural Norfolk. After his repose and the virtual closure of the chapel, the mission was resumed four years later by Fr Andrew Phillips in Felixstowe in Suffolk in 1997. After renting premises here for eleven years and also trying to set up another mission in Bury St Edmunds, the mission dedicated to St John of Shanghai (+ 1966) moved to Fr Andrew’s native Colchester in Essex.

The Mission of the Church Outside Russia to the Eastern Counties (2008-2016)

In Colchester in 2008 it managed to buy and open the largest Russian Orthodox church in the country, in order to serve the growing Russian Orthodox population. In 2016 the mission managed to buy and open a church in Norwich, dedicated to St Alexander Nevsky. The current hope of this East of England Orthodox Church Trust is to buy premises in Suffolk for a third public mission to serve the faithful. Two small domestic chapels have also opened as a spin-off from this initial mission, one in Suffolk, one in Essex. Fifty years of Orthodox mission have thus borne fruit.

Statistics:

Essex:
Area: 1,338 square miles / 3,465 square kilometres
Population: 1,397,000

Suffolk:
Area: square miles: 1,466 square miles / 3,798 square kilometres
Population: 730,000

Norfolk:
Area: square miles: 2,074 square miles / 5,372 square kilometres
Population: 860,000

Total:
Area: 4,878 square miles / 12,635 square kilometres
Population: 2,987,000

VIEWPOINT: PUTIN AND RUSSIA – DECENT MAN, REFORMED COUNTRY

As the CIA and its subservient corporate international media (like the BBC) pay and give voice to notorious anti-Russian Zionist propagandists like Richard Pipes and Anna Applebaum, censoring and exiling free, principled, Non-Establishment voices, as the Washington elite installs ever more US citizens and local cronies as colonial rulers from Tallinn to Kiev, from Bucharest to Belgrade, from Sofia to Athens, as NATO hawks aggressively occupy the Baltic States with heavy equipment and Fourth Reich tanks are positioned only 100 miles from Saint Petersburg, as NATO tries to make both the Baltic and the Black Sea into its private lakes, as nuclear-armed NATO forces again threaten Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, carry out exercises in Moldova and still enslaved gauleiter Ukraine, set up missile systems in EU-besieged Poland and Romania and intimidate Sweden and Finland, Hungary and Slovakia, not to mention the last free English in the vassal UK, we seem to be on the point of yet another Western-inspired war in Europe.

Here is a view from one who is neither Russian, nor a member of the Church, on the Russian leader, whom ever more Christians and others in Western Europe are looking to with hope for liberation from the atheist straitjacket of Eurosodom and Gommorhica. Will freedom come?

PUTIN AND RUSSIA – DECENT MAN, REFORMED COUNTRY