Tag Archives: Resurgence

1,000 New Churches a Year: Rebirth of the Russian Orthodox Church Continues

It has been announced by Patriarch Kyrill at the Council of Bishops in Moscow that the Russian Orthodox Church now numbers 34,764 churches, with another 5,000 having been built or restored since 2009. There are now 361 bishops (of whom seven are retired because of ill health), very nearly 40,000 priests and deacons, 455 monasteries and 471 convents.

Although these figures are clearly encouraging, it is obvious that we still have a very long way to go. In our tiny corner of Orthodox Rus in the East of England, we managed to add one church in Colchester in 2008 and, God willing, we will be adding one church in Norwich in 2016. If God wills and our hopes for another town in this region are realized, with time we will able to add another one in the not too distant future.

Holy Rus Lives and Calls: Now is the Hour

On 29 May 2014 the Eurasian Economic Union will be formed by the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan and Belarus, with Armenia and many another country waiting in the wings. The implementation of this new Union has been greatly hastened by the tragic events in the Ukraine. The divide and rule instability provoked by the USA, helped by the EU, in the Middle East and Northern Africa over the last few years has now spread there too. Standing on the threshold of global events against the background of the separatist junta in Kiev which is still slaughtering its own people, it is clear that the importance of this new Union is now no longer only economic. It is being dwarfed by its political importance as a centre of security, independence and freedom from potential global dictatorship.

Naturally, this Union is opposed by the fifth column of the Western media, which is still strong in post-Soviet Russia, as above all outside Russia. However, such media do not represent the Russian Orthodox ethos which lies behind this Eurasian Union; they represent only their sponsors. They are angry and fearful, for this new alliance opposes US plans for global hegemony, which is why they censor and block the free Russian media. And that fifth column, liberals, ecumenists and modernists, is looking increasingly old-fashioned. Resurgent Russia, built on Christian civilizational principles and values, is now competing with the atheist West and the decadence it has tried to sow in once Orthodox lands, gathering together different lands of the world beneath the protecting veil of Holy Rus and its consistent belief-system and world view.

The US administration spent a lot of money ($5 billion) and 23 long years to try and split the Ukraine from the Eurasian civilizational world of Holy Rus. Instead, Russia is gathering it together and integrating it, starting with the Crimea. Little wonder that seeing the US losing the Ukraine altogether, two days ago John Kerry agreed with the Establishment-maligned British politician, Nigel Farage, and condemned the EU for creating the chaos in the Ukraine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIvoq2oZZuU). What he did not mention, of course, was that it was the US that put the EU up to that chaos-creation, which it had itself financed and orchestrated, choosing even the leaders of the junta that seized power from democracy.

Details have their importance, but salvation is now in being together. Sticks can be broken one by one quite easily, but a bundle of sticks cannot. Post-Soviet Russia is turning into resurgent Orthodox Russia and so has begun fulfilling its historic and messianic role, which we have waited so long to see. It is showing an imperial understanding of the global situation – in the best sense of the word ‘imperial’; now the future has hope. We look forward to the moment when Russian leaders, who conquered atheism, address once cultured, educated and intelligent Western peoples, over the heads of their political and media elites who so despise them and feed them bread and circuses. Then they will denounce the lies of those elites about Russia and denounce also the elite’s own misdeeds, calling the Western peoples back to their spiritual roots and holiness. Holy Rus lives and calls. Now is the hour.