[Salon] THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH SERVES PUTIN AS IT ONCE SERVED STALIN

THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH SERVES PUTIN AS IT ONCE SERVED STALIN
                                                           BY
                                    Allan C. Brownfeld
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The more things change with the Russian Orthodox Church and its relations with those in power, the more they remain the same. Just as the Church embraced Stalin and did his bidding, and submitted to his control, so today’s Church leaders have embraced Vladimir Putin and his brutal assault upon Ukraine. It is interesting to note that Stalin himself seems to remain a Church favorite. In 2014, for example, the Russian Orthodox Church published a calendar devoted to Stalin. Mikhail Babkin, a noted Russian historian specializing in the Church, says that, “The link between the Moscow Patriarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church and Stalin remains close to sacred.”

Hours before Putin launched his attack on Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, spoke to military leaders.   He congratulated Putin for his “high and responsible service to the people of Russia,” declared that the Russia Orthodox Church has “always striven to make a significant contribution to the patriotic education of compatriots,” and lauded military service as an “active manifestation of evangelical love for neighbors.”

Kirill’s rhetoric escalated as the invasion continued. He referred to Ukrainians as “evil forces” and delivered a sermon on March 6 in which he suggested the invasion was part of a larger “metaphysical struggle” against “immoral Western values.”

Originally, the Communists who launched the 1917 Russian Revolution, sought to eliminate religion. They closed churches and murdered priests. The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 induced Stalin to enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian patriotism. Churches were reopened and religious life experienced a revival. They became a virtual arm of the state. Stalin soon saw the Church as a tool to help aid in the reoccupation of Eastern Europe. Putin seems to see it in precisely the same way.

I became aware of the manner in which the Russian Orthodox Church was used for political purposes when I was a young staff member of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in the mid-1960s, when it was conducting a series of hearings about religious persecution in Communist countries. One of our leading witnesses was the Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, and it became my responsibility to usher him around Washington and assist him in preparation of his testimony. His impact upon me and upon all who met him was profound.

Wurmbrand was a Romanian Lutheran pastor whose determination to spread the word of God led to his being imprisoned for fourteen years and tortured by Communist authorities. He came to prominence when he was ransomed from the Romanian government by a group of Norwegian Christians for $10,000. Shortly thereafter, he came to Washington to testify. His life made him a witness to the horrors of the twentieth century—-and to those who continued to look away.

Born in 1901 to a Jewish family, he converted to Christianity in 1936. In 1938, his part of Romania became part of the Soviet Union, only to be invaded by German troops in 1940. From then until 1943 most of its large Jewish population was deported, starved or massacred. Though under great threat themselves, Wurmbrand and his wife Sabine, brought several children out of the ghetto and concealed them. Later, after Soviet armies occupied Romania, he was imprisoned by the Communists. While ill with typhus he was sentenced at a secret trial to twenty years imprisonment. He was beaten, bound and subjected to brainwashing.

Upon his arrival in the West, Wurmbrand was asked why he had been arrested by the Communists. His reply, even in the unfamiliar English tongue, was piercing: “This is a question that is put to you in the West…With us the question is why somebody is not arrested. A colleague of mine was sentenced to seven years imprisonment because on Christmas Eve he preached that Jesus, being a babe, Herod wished to kill him, but his Holy Mother fled with him to Egypt. This was the charge: that he hoped Nasser would be on the side of imperialists and therefore he mentioned Egypt.”

When the Communists triumphed in Romania in 1945, for the crime of preaching the Gospel, he spent fourteen years in prison, much of the time in solitary confinement. But he was not alone: “I met in prison all those who had praised Communism , all those who had collaborated with Communism, and they were treated just like me. They had been fools.”

During our Senate hearings, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and other churches in Communist countries denied that there was religious persecution in Communist countries. Many American clergymen said the same thing. Wurmbrand had a conversation with Eugene Carson Blake, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), in which churches in Communist countries were members. He told Dr. Blake of the conditions Christians must endure in Communist countries. Blake replied: “I do not have to hear about conditions in Communist countries from refugees like you. I am in direct touch with the hierarchy.”

This, Wurmbrand pointed out, is much like telling Jewish refugees from Nazism that there is no need to talk with them about conditions in Germany, because more accurate reports could be obtained by direct communication with the Nazis themselves.”

In the January 1966 issue of the International Review of Missions, published by the WCC, Wurmbrand found the following description of religious life in Romania: “The churches in Romania, both Orthodox and Protestant, are carrying out their work in an atmosphere of full religious Liberty and very good ecumenical cooperation…A large number of projects are being undertaken at the present time. Where necessary the Romanian Government provides financial aid, although the restored buildings remain the property of the churches and are used exclusively for religious functions.”

Wurmbrand wrote the author, asking when the Bible had been published in Romania, where a Sunday school could be found or a seminary. He received no answer and commented that, “If the man who wrote this has not taken thousands of dollars from the Romanian secret police, he deserves to be hanged for stupidity.”

From October 27 to November 4, 1966, Christianity Today magazine, the National Association of Evangelicals, and Evangelist Billy Graham, sponsored a World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin. Wurmbrand was invited to participate in this meeting, but the invitation was later withdrawn. The reason: he might direct some critical comments at Communism, which would “endanger fellowship with Eastern churches.”

In a letter to Billy Graham, Wurmbrand noted that official Communist church representatives always speak about “political subjects” such as the war in Vietnam but that they refuse to permit anti-Communists to say anything ‘political’ at church meetings. This, of course, is done with the full approbation of Western church leaders. And, he wrote, “What of Billy Grahams behind the Iron Curtain?…You surely must have on your prayer list your colleagues, the Billy Grahams of the East who sit in prison or may already have died in prison for the only crime of having been evangelists. You surely know the names of Kuzyck, Prokofiev, Grunvald, Invanenko, Granny Shefchuk…and others in Romania. How can a World Congress of Evangelism not speak about these martyrs of evangelism and give the due honor to their names? If we desire to evangelize the world, we have to plan at this Congress in Berlin how best to oppose Communism and how to continue there secretly the evangelization of the peoples oppressed by the Bolshevists.”

When Wurmbrand returned to the U.S., he discovered that he was under attack from still another quarter. The president of the American Lutheran Church, the Rev. Frederick A. Schiotz, had distributed a letter to his fellow pastors containing a number of blatant untruths. According to Wurmbrand, the major one was that he was permitted to leave Romania because of intercession by the WCC in behalf of Christian prisoners: “How could that be? The WCC itself is of the opinion that there is complete religious freedom in Romania.”

Later, Wurmbrand established Jesus to the Communist World (later, Voice of the Martyrs), a Bible-smuggling mission, and traveled around the world lecturing and preaching and published the book “Tortured for Christ,” his account of his suffering in Romanian Communist jails. It became an international best-seller and became the first of many books praising the Eastern European “heroes” of the faith. After the execution of Romania’s Communist President Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, Wurmbrand returned to preach in Romania, where he was welcomed as a hero. He died in 2001 at the age of 91. I wonder what he would think of today’s Russian Orthodox Church endorsing Russia’s slaughter of innocent civilians in Ukraine. He would be saddened, but would not be surprised. Whether it is Stalin or Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church, with a few brave dissenters, can apparently be relied upon to serve an oppressive state.
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