Category Archives: Ritualism

The Return to Civilisation?

I want ordinary Western citizens to hear me: You are told to blame Russia for your problems. That is a lie. Your hardships are the result of your own elites’ greed and their selfish interests. We are not responsible.

President V.V. Putin, 3 February 2026

Introduction: The New Attraction to an Old Church

Like other Orthodox priests, two or three years ago, after the end of covid, I began to be contacted by young people. They were nearly all males under the age of thirty and some were only teenagers. They all wished to join the Orthodox Church, which they did not know, but had heard theories about in internet podcasts. I have always told them to start coming to church (none of them had ever been before), all our teaching and theology are in our services. However, most of them never want to set foot in a real Orthodox church. It is all an internet theory. Only a few decide to come to church and wanted to stay. Those I receive into the Church.

The Return

Over the last twelve months I have received four such inquirers, though only one under the age of eighteen, with the permission of his parents, who were present at his reception. This is hardly a ‘mass baptism’. The word ‘mass’ should only be used for groups of 100 + and in any case I do not practise rebaptism, as it is against the Orthodox Creed. But it is equivalent to a ‘group reception’. Why is this happening now? Why do they want to join the Church and, hopefully, eventually actually become Orthodox? It is the first time in fifty years that numbers of local people have wanted to join the Orthodox Church. Where does this all come from?

Interest in the Orthodox Church and Faith is becoming more common in North America and Great Britain, where spiritual and so social decomposition are far advanced. A real mass reception/baptism of 200 took place in the Greek Church in England last year. This is all about a return to civilisational roots, which we have been inviting for fifty-two years, even since our first writings in 1974. However, this return to civilisational roots is worldwide, not only here. Why? It is the result of the collapse of both Globalist ideologies, of Western Communism in 1991 and of Western Capitalism in 2022, though the processes go back long before that.

The Return to Roots: China and One Century of Humiliation and India and Two Centuries of Humiliation

To say that China is Communist is today absurd. ‘Communist’ may be the name of the ruling Party, the CCP, and the national flag makes reference to that old-fashioned ideology, but it is not at all the reality. The Chinese State is today a Traditional Confucianist State, going back millennia, which runs a form of enlightened State Capitalism, overseen by ‘Emperor’ Xi, who provides efficient and very advanced national infrastructure. China is returning to National Tradition, after its ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of the West and after a generation of Maoist Marxism, which was the revolt against the West and which ended in 1979.

To say that India (Hindustan) is the world’s largest democratic State also twists the truth. It cannot help being the world’s largest State as it is the world’s largest country and, yes, Indians do vote ‘democratically’ in their hundreds of millions for its ancient civilisational values, Hindu Nationalism. This is the return of Indians to their civilisational roots after two centuries of humiliation, exploitation and colonialism at the hands of the British and then the two generations of revolt against it and search for identity after 1947. Hindu nationalism is the return to Indian national identity, millennia of tradition – and it is also inevitable.

The Return to Roots: Russia and Three Centuries of Humiliation

To say that Russia is Capitalist or Communist is today absurd. The reality is that the Russian State has since 2022 been returning to Imperial Russia, not so much to the Russia of before 1917, but to that of before 1721, which ran on a form of contractual State Capitalism. Russia is returning to the Tradition, as Tsar Nicholas II wished, after three centuries of humiliation by the West, by two centuries of Westernisation, then by three generations of anti-Russian Western Marxism and a generation of Capitalism. Today Russia has closed the window on the West, since the West has closed its window on Russia, whose militaristic ideology is for now that of ‘the Russian World’.

The Russian Orthodox Church is attached to the Russian State. Today Russian Orthodox clergy bless tanks, missiles and guns for what they see as the Russian liberation of the Ukraine from NATO. Unlike in the Tsar’s Russia, whose last representatives we knew well, though as in Soviet Russia, where the Church was controlled by the State, today’s Russian Nationalist Church is concerned only with Russians. True, certain of its senior clergy have not been cleansed of Western-style corruption and sexual perversions. That will come. Today’s Russian Church is no longer interested in Non-Russians – unless they are in Africa, where the Russian State has plans.

The Return to the Real West

But what does civilisational return in the West mean? As we have been writing and saying for fifty-two years, the West can only return to its roots, and that means to real Christianity, which was here a long time ago. That cannot mean going to a woke woman Archbishop of Canterbury, who succeeds an archbishop who did not know if he believed in God and shielded a pedophile, nor can it mean going to a Pope, whose antecedents invented infallibility only 150 years ago. It means returning to the ancient Orthodox roots of the West, to the first millennium, beyond the manipulations of the barbarian elite which has run the West for a thousand years.

After the 2016 resisted assassination threat against me from MI5, the ‘happy vassals’ of the Establishment tried to get me by destroying me through a CIA hack. The old Establishment did not want to give up. The potential assassins know that the collapse of the Western world Titanic does not mean that Europe and North America have been humiliated and defeated. They know that it means that the anti-Christian Western elite has been humiliated and defeated. And they belong to that. The defeat of the elite is a matter for rejoicing for us, the people. It means that we might yet return from the nightmare of the old elite and see for a new elite.

The Return from Sodom and Gomorrah

With the release of a heavily redacted part of the Epstein files, it is now clear to all that that old Western political, royal, business and media elite is morally bankrupt, riddled with satanic pedophiles, Zionist perverts to the core and even worse. ‘Robert Maxwell’, real name Ludwig Hoch, murdered or suicided, was a MI6 and Mossad agent, like his compatriots, the devil Epstein, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ Mandelson (Mendelssohn) and the French Jack Lang. The dirt that Epstein collected on Western elite perverts, engaged in orgies and satanic rituals, they used for blackmail. We need a new elite. A native Royal House is awaited in England after a millennium.

There should be no surprise at the perversions of the Western elite. They have long been rumoured. The British Saxe-Coburg Gotha Royal Family alone has recently provided the pervert Prince Albert Victor, the debauched Edward VII, the Hitler-saluting Edward VIII, the pervert Prince George, Duke of Kent, the notorious Mountbatten, the tragic Margaret, Diana and Harry and now the awful Andrew. The UK alone has in the last sixty years gone from the abortion holocaust of nearly 11 million lives to supporting the two-year long Gaza holocaust of some 250,000 lives. So they offer up to satan age-old child sacrifices too horrible to describe.

Conclusion: The Future Restoration of Russia

Meanwhile, the Iranian Theocracy, supported by Russian and Chinese warships, has scared off the Great Satan and the battleships of the blustering  bully/coward are again in full retreat, proving all Mossad’s and Trump’s Zionist threats empty. And China grows daily in strength. And Russian nationalism grows. Thus, the Russian Church has betrayed and abandoned Non-Russians, who had to leave it after generations of faithfulness to Christ. But all the prophecies agree that a Russian Tsar is coming to cleanse it from such impurity and other Western-style perversions to restore the multinational, Imperial Way. No Empire can be built on narrow Nationalism.

 

 

When the Church is Taken Over by the State and Faith Becomes Religion

Introduction: The Roman Catholic-Protestant Model of Church Administration

What exactly happens when the Church becomes part of the State? This has happened many times in Western history and shaped that history. There is not only the case of the Church-State, known as Roman Catholicism, whose head started wars, commanded armies and ordered mass campaigns of inquisition, repression and torture. There have also been the cases in Protestant North-Western Europe and wherever that model has been imitated. This is the State-Church, where Churches hand themselves over to State control.

Thus, the Protestants founded National (and nationalist, ‘flag-driven’) Churches, the Church of England, the Church of Norway, the Church of Denmark, the Church of Sweden, the Church of Finland etc. In the first and well-known case, the new Church was founded by a Welsh genocidal tyrant and wife-murderer, who stole huge numbers of monastic houses and their lands and handed out their immense riches to his cronies. As for the national riches he seized for himself, he wasted them on pointless wars against France, which he lost.

The Adoption of the Model by the Russian State

This Protestant model was imitated by Tsar Peter I in Russia. Between 1682 and 1725 he forced the Russian Church into the same Lutheran mould, abolishing the Patriarchate in 1700, appointing Lutheran-educated Ukrainian bishops, and an ‘Oberprokuror’ to rule over the episcopate, effectively creating a Ministry of Religion. Some of the ‘Oberprokurors’ were not Orthodox Christians, indeed, at least one was an atheist and worked to destroy the Church. This control, resisted by Tsar Nicholas who wanted to abolish it, was copied by the atheist Bolsheviks.

The Bolsheviks controlled the Church in a similar reformist (in fact ‘deformist’), way, appointing a Secret Police Commissar to control the bishops, working to destroy the Church, murdering hundreds of thousands of clergy and people and literally dynamiting churches or confiscating them for secular uses. It was in this way that over some 300 years since Peter I, a special ‘religiosity’ appeared among nominal Russian Orthodox, which has lasted to this day. What are the three characteristics of this particular form of religiosity?

  1. Nationalisation

A State takeover of a Church means confusing Caesar’s and God’s, despite Christ’s words in the Gospel which command us to separate them and not to confuse them. Since the Church does not by nature belong to the State, therefore when such a takeover occurs, it means that the Church unnaturally begins to resemble the State. This means the adoption of State attributes – a persecuting, nationalistic, militaristic and bureaucratic mentality. In this way, the Church begins to resemble the State, rather like Roman Catholicism.

Nationalism means an emphasis on a narrow, exclusive, racial identity and language. In the Russian context, this means Russification and the loss of loyalty of other nationalities to the once multinational Russian Church. Militarism means an emphasis on a literal uniformity, obedience and rigidity, which cancels freedom of thought, and also integration with the armed forces. Bureaucratisation means an emphasis on protocols, paperwork and administration against the sacramental and spiritual view of the world.

  1. Clericalisation

A State takeover of a Church means that the clergy become agents of the State, that is, State employees, who develop the careerist mentality of civil servants and their ranks of promotion, awards and pensions. This in turn means that the people are alienated from the clergy, who become a separate caste ‘behind the iconostasis’ and the people begin to consider that the clergy are ‘the Church’. This creates a passive, disengaged and irresponsible mentality among the people – ‘it is not for us to do this, let ‘the Church’, i.e. the clergy, do it for us’.

This passive attitude of non-participation means that professional choirs sing in churches and services increasingly become abstract concerts and spectacles. Even prayer is delegated to the clergy, as people stop praying for themselves and ask the clergy to pray for them, an attitude that can be called ‘pious consumerism’. This view of the clergy as State bureaucrats, civil servants, means that the people begin to look at the clergy as unable to resolve their real problems and so they turn to elders, ‘startsy’, who in turn are often charlatans.

  1. Ritualisation

This mentality leads inevitably to ritualisation, the understanding of worship as ‘ustav’ or rubrics, a series of outward rites, in which participation is passive, but which just have to be tolerated. Thus, communion becomes the privilege of the clergy who may control access to laypeople’s communion by weaponising confession. As a result, communion may take place perfunctorily only once a year (the obligation for all civil servants until 1917) and sacraments are replaced by semi-private services, which have nothing to do with the liturgical cycles.

These made-up services, contractions of historic ones, include molebens, panikhidas and akathists. The latter of these are popular because they are comprehensible, since they have been composed recently in a language closer to Russian than the less accessible Church Slavonic, which is seen as the private language of the clergy (‘the Church’). The primacy of private rites means weak parish life, little sense of community, churches are patterned by outward formalities. In turn, non-churchgoers then revert to superstition as their belief.

A Nominal Church and Real Church Life

Reading the above, some may be in despair. However, we have made it clear that all these trends are the norm for nominal Russian Orthodox. Practising Russian Orthodox resist these outward trends and are critical of them. We follow the lives of the saints, who emphasise prayer and the ascetic, inward struggle. The above three trends are not those of St Seraphim of Sarov and St John of Kronstadt, even less are they those of the New Martyrs and Confessors, of the Imperial Martyrs, St Tikhon and St Matrona. They are ours.

Firstly, Orthodox oppose Nationalism through cultivating the sense of the catholicity of the Church, meaning cultivating good relations with the other Local Churches, which work in other countries, where the Russian State has no control. Secondly, Orthodox oppose Clericalism through developing the solidarity between clergy and people, which is what Orthodoxy is, and this means the clergy no longer living as State functionaries. And finally Orthodox oppose Ritualism through inner life, the life of the spirit, as in real monasteries.

Conclusion: The Last Tsar and the Coming Restoration

The last Tsar opposed all three deformations of Church life, Nationalism, Clericalism and Ritualism. Thus, his intention, not fully implemented, was to open a Russian Orthodox church in every capital of Western Europe. This opposed Nationalism. As for Clericalism, he was always shocked by the spiritual emptiness of ‘educated’ bishops and priests and their careerist rivalries, for example that of Protopresbyter George Shavelsky. To them he opposed St Seraphim of Sarov, whom he had had canonised, and the Martyr Gregory.

Tsar Nicholas II also ardently opposed Ritualism and wanted to restore the architecture, iconography and Church music from before Peter I, as can be seen in his design of the Tsarskoe Selo Cathedral. Already in 1905 he had proposed the restoration of the Patriarchate. Careerist bishops, all wanting to be Patriarch, opposed him and the Tsar understood that they were not ready for restoration. Indeed, after his overthrow in 1917, this became very clear. Soon another Tsar will come and carry out the unfinished restoration.

Searching for the Spiritual

Seek first the kingdom of heaven and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt, 6, 33)

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (Matt 22, 21)

In the World

The genocide that is going on at this very moment by the graveyards of children in Palestinian Gaza can rightly be called a holocaust, a whole burnt offering on the altar of hatred. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, they say, but the occupying Israelis are taking ten eyes for every eye and ten teeth for every tooth the Palestinians have taken. However, what we outside observers see happening there is actually much less tragic than in the Ukraine, where some 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been dying for NATO’s war every single day for over 500 days, making well over 500,000 dead so far. Euroatlantic NATO, called North America and Western Europe, and Middle Eastern NATO, called Israel, are at work. Such are the aggressive ways of the world, following the rejection of diplomacy. Atheists fighting atheists, but also brothers fighting brothers. It is deeply tragic and no Christian agrees to war. We defend, but we do not offend, others. Such is the Law of Love.

In the Russian Orthodox Church

The saddest thing is that all this time certain bishops of the once multinational and once non-sectarian Russian Orthodox Church have also been warring for nationalism, but not for Christ. Thus, most Orthodox churches in the Ukraine no longer want to commemorate the Russian Patriarch. This is understandable, as he appears to be in favour of war and not of peace. And yet, as a result of the refusal to commemorate him, there are those who condemn the heroic and State-persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev as ‘schismatic’. Should we not rather support those persecuted by the corrupt and anti-democratic Kiev government? For the pharisees who love the word ‘schismatic’, the fact that Orthodox churches in Latvia, whose Faith is no way altered, are now not allowed to commemorate the name of the Russian Patriarch means that those churches too are ‘schismatic’! But surely the only important thing is that churches commemorate Christ? Patriarchs come and go. They are hardly the main point. Faith comes before Nation and the Orthodox Faith is everywhere the same, Russia, the Ukraine, Latvia. Sadly, there are some Russians who love to use the word ‘schismatic’, when what they really mean is ‘Non-Russian’.

Now we have a similar situation in Moldova, where Orthodox are leaving the Russian Church to join the neutral Romanian Orthodox Church for exactly the same reason – they seek spiritual freedom, not the captivity of Russian nationalism. In any case, the Russian Orthodox Church is the only one of the sixteen Local Orthodox Churches where all should commemorate its leading bishop (patriarch) (as in Roman Catholicism). In all other Churches they commemorate only their local bishop, as is ancient tradition. Sadly, all too many Orthodox seem not to want to follow Christ. Instead, they want to follow the spirit of this world, either of ritualist nationalism, or else of pharisaic conservatism, or else of liberal secularism. As a result, they at once introduce division into the Church. This we saw most clearly in the highly politicised Russian Orthodox Church Diaspora after 1917. It quickly split into three warring parts. The first and by far the smallest part, was so nationalistically loyal that it remained with atheist Soviet Moscow and neither sought the freedom or desired the freedom to tell the truth about the persecution there. Even though its adherents lived in political freedom outside the USSR, they preferred loyalty to the Soviet Caesar in Moscow.

Others, Francophile aristocrats and bourgeois liberals, who had actually greeted their first 1917 Revolution, founded a separate grouping. This was under the Anglo-American controlled Patriarchate of Constantinople, which sadly veered and veers towards the Caesar of Western secularism. However, the majority of Russian emigres preferred conservative politics, shaped by their visceral anti-Communism. However, in recent years its newly-enriched bishops have been shaped by a visceral centralising Russian nationalism, which excludes all others unless they pretend to be more Russian than Russians, even though they speak Russian badly. They did not have to choose this latter path, as they are numerous enough to have a supposedly independent Synod outside Russia. However, purely voluntarily, they chose political subservience to Moscow and so showed that they have no reason to exist separately from it. Their whole structure should be absorbed into Moscow, as they are not local and have plainly rejected any contribution towards the Incarnation and building Local Churches. This rejection of the local is why after a generation or two their flock disappears and they have to rely on the ex-Soviet Union to restock their empty churches with people.

Tragically, none of these three movements put Christ first. The result was division, not least among the increasingly pharisaic conservative group. Today this group is enforcing schism from its own brothers and sisters and now even wants to rebaptise other Russian Orthodox, let alone Non-Russians. Their lack of love is such that none is good enough for them. Although there were those who without reward toiled for decades for unity against these Russian divisions of nationalism, phariseeism and liberalism, and despite being viciously persecuted and slandered, these three worldly failings of ritualist nationalism, pharisaic conservatism and liberal secularism were all greater than the love of Christ. As a result, all three groups are now dying out because of a false spirituality which confounds Caesar with Christ and idolatrously renders to Ceasar what is Christ’s. All such false spiritualities are fake, emphasising only the outward, nationalism, ritualism, secularism, power, gold and the world, and do not possess inward spiritual content. Those who preach the false Christ, who is called Caesar, preach spiritual impurity. Thus, they are marked by the sinister sign of Death, the spirit of this world, whose prince is satan and whose minions are the Nations of this world.

The Spiritual

The task of seeking to return Church structures, and so the world, to their proper order falls to all who seek the spiritual. The world will be saved by the spiritual, which is why Christ the Saviour will return at the end of it. For now we may seek and find the spiritual on Mt Athos, in the Carpathians, in the forests of Sarov and Optino, in the Hebrides, in secret and little-known places, in woods and mountains and on islands, but also in great cities and pious families, wherever the Word of God is kept. Sadly, we are unlikely to find the spiritual among bishops who view their passports issued by earthly States as far more important than their passports to Heaven, which have yet to be issued at all. They have yet to put Christ first and that is why they, with their politics, bureaucracy and ‘protocols’, seek spiritual Death. And as their churches empty, it is Death they are finding, for ‘they hold the form of religion, but deny the power of it. Avoid such people’ (2 Tim. 3, 5).