“And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever:” 2 Kings 21
Which God is worshipped in Israel? When one enters the temple where the Eucharistic sacrifice is made, who is it that we worship? In Israel, the construction of the temple had a plethora of symbolic functions, but most notably, it declared the dwelling of God amidst Israel, a focal point of His worship and bore the eschatological reality of God’s ultimate plan for mankind– that He may dwell among them.
“David said to Solomon, My son, as for me, it was in my mind to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God: But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight. Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about: for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever.” 1 Chronicles 22:6-10
The typological relevance of not just Solomon, but of the temple itself, is obvious. Solomon is destined to be a type of Christ after his father David, and he constructs a “House for my name.” In His redemptive sacrifice, death and resurrection on the third day, and His declaration that He will raise the temple in three days, Christ accomplishes the ultimate goal of the temple by Himself becoming the dwelling of God among His people.
As Christians, we do not then set up new temples as forms of separate worship. Our temples are iconographically modelled on the temple which is Christ, our priests enjoy the sacramental privilege of their office not by virtue of themselves taking a separate priesthood, but in their participation of the High Priesthood of Christ. The construction of our temples themselves, draw their dignity from no source apart from the dignity of Christ. As St. Germanus of Constantinople writes,
“The church is an earthly heaven in which the super-celestial God dwells and moves. If the heavenly Jerusalem is a prototype of the Church, the church is an image of the heavenly Jerusalem, in which image the likeness also is apparent, because in the church, as in the heavenly Jerusalem, God is known as constituting the principle of unity.
The altar is and is called the heavenly and spiritual altar, where the earthly and material priests who always assist and serve the Lord represent the spiritual, serving, and hierarchical powers of the immaterial and celestial Powers, for they also must be as a burning fire. For the Son of God and Judge of all ordained the laws and established the services of both the heavenly and the earthly powers.” (On the Divine Liturgy)
The Church, being Israel, is not merely susceptible to modelling its worship on this divine mystery, but is also susceptible to the abuses of that worship just as Israel of the old covenant. The temple in Jerusalem did not cease at any point to have a place for the worship of God, but all of Israel’s abuses related to idolatry had a common theme– that there should be Gods worshipped alongside the One God of Israel, and that altars should be set up to them alongside Him, and sacrifices made to them.
Do we then as Christians feel that our enjoyment of Christ’s splendour in our temples has also made us immune from these abominable acts? Does the celebration of the Eucharist upon the altar remove all relevance of the things which we place alongside it, the attention we provide to them, and the intent with which we enter God’s holy temple?
A Matter of Dedication
Having recognized the manner in which our temples reflect heavenly realities, one should also acknowledge that the opportunity for idolatry also serves as an opportunity for sanctification. As Christians we do not merely exist alongside society but form it. This is especially true of Christian polities, where the citizens who compose the classes of rulers, merchants, soldiers, workers, educators, and all other matters of society are Christians.
Thus, it is not unusual to see in Orthodox history frequent motifs of Christian warriors, kings, and political victories of various sorts. Indeed, many of our theological victories were also constituted as political victories for various Emperors, Kings, Princes who receive such titles as “Equal-to-the-Apostles,” and who reinvigorate or reestablish orthodoxy in their lands. Such figures provide us with models of such figures as Joshua, David, Solomon, Josiah, Hezekiah, and many such examples of those who established, reinforced, and revived worship of God in truth.
In another fashion, we find dedications to various segments of society. The key consideration in these things is that there is no ambiguity in the object of worship in the temple. Notable examples include St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral in Kyiv, which was commissioned in honour of the Baptism of Rus’, for ostensibly political reasons. Another prescient example would be the Naval Cathedral of Kronstadt, built in a distinctively neo-Byzantine style to provide a cathedral for the Russian navy and in honour of fallen seamen.
What is notable about such things is that whatever precedent may or may not exist for such dedications, upon entering the temple one is ultimately transported to the higher, eschatological reality of worship. Whatever commemorations or dedications may exist around the temple, it is clear that the building itself, its architecture and composition, all sing according to a common tune and declare with one voice the worship of the One God of Israel. Thus, any Christian who enters such a temple is entirely divested of their earthly inheritance– nation, race, occupation, politics, and so on.
What happens when we fail to ensure, through the temple itself, such a divestment? In the place where the sacrifice is made, where do we find altars to Asherah and Baal?
Imperial Cultus
Just as Christians are expected to extend the eschatological realities of their worship into every aspect of their life, integrating the “sacred and the profane,” on some level we are encouraged to do the same in forming our political communities. A delusion has spread over much of the Orthodox world regarding where such communities exist and where they do not. We have inadvertently formed a rather diabolical trend of locating in our world a neo-Ecumene, almost as if to designate certain areas of the world as an Orthodox variation of Dar al-Islam. The inversion of this to the Orthodox political mind is then the natural, Dar al-Harb which discursively speaking, is always narrowed down to the “West,” where nihilistic materialism reigns and is set on the wholesale destruction of the Orthodox world.
The greatest contributing piece of delusional propaganda within this frame is the idea that such an Orthodox polity exists today in the form of the Russian Federation and any Orthodox states whose people align themselves with their goals. With such bold presumption, we should ask ourselves, who is the God that is worshipped in Russia today, and is it the God of Israel?
Liturgical Anthropology
The Soviet Union was a deeply religious society. As all societies in some sense have to be, even those which claim to be secular, netural, or irreligious. Émile Durkheim wrote that “religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart from forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” (The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life). Adrian Vermeulle aptly quotes Alexis de Tocqueville in describing the French Revolution in such terms:
“The ideal the French Revolution set before it was not merely a change in the French social system but nothing short of a regeneration of the whole human race. It created an atmosphere of missionary fervor and, indeed, assumed all the aspects of a religious revival—much to the consternation of contemporary observers. It would perhaps be truer to say that it developed into a species of religion.” (Quoted in Adrian Vermeulle, Liturgy of Liberalism)
Vermeulle writes, “The Revolution’s descendants not only possess a theology and eschatology, but a central sacrament and an accompanying liturgy. Indeed, they compulsilvey, helplessly re-enact that liturgy, with mounting anxiety, while priding themselves on their freedom from all superstition… Man is a sacramental animal who cannot deny his own nature…” (ibid.)
While Vermeulle intends this to be a commentary on liberalism, it goes without saying that this logic relates to human beings as a sociological and anthropological fact of life. All human beings liturgize their experience within a theological context, and this extends to every polity known to man. Christopher Dawson rightly points out, “as soon as we touch the history of primitive society, we already in the world of religion.”
The Soviet Union liturgized the political life in its own, post-Christian way. Holidays were declared to celebrate the revolution and the victory over Nazi Germany in WWII. Its esteem of female emancipation led to a focus on International Women’s Day, and its iconography of the hammer and sickle, the star and the red banner, with portraits of Stalin and Lenin adorning the deepest rural homes in the corners where icons used to be, to the point of even being covered by embroidered scarves and decorative flowers.
The Soviet cult was distinctively monotheistic in terms of its intolerance for any competing narratives and its adamant refusal to recognize partnerships with foreign gods of capitalism, nor old gods of counter-revolution– the decrepit deities of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and so on.
Russkaya Pobeda
What we have in the Russian Federation today is not monolithic in the same sense as the cult that existed in the Soviet Union. Rather, it resembles much more closely imperial cults of old.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the tumultuous period of the 90s saw an uptick of religious fervour across all post-Soviet states. An Orthodox revival led to masses of unbaptized and uncatechized nominal Christians receiving the rites of the Church, but this was done in tandem with an influx of American missionaries seeking fertile ground for their Gospel, so too with the latest trends of Eastern philosophies, such as Hare Krishna. In the Caucasus, regions which sought political emancipation as secular states very quickly found recourse to militant Islam.
What were we to do with the old Soviet legacy? The Imperial legacy whose symbols were reintroduced as hammers and sickles were removed from coats of arms and replaced with their pre-revolutionary symbols? With the ascendance of Vladimir Putin, a new synthesis had developed.
Orthodox Christianity has received a special status within the new framework. Russia’s constitutions of the 90s which emphasized religious freedoms were reinterpreted to privilege the status of Russia’s “traditional” faiths– Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. However, during this period we also see a rapid reinvigoration of Soviet symbols which became more prominent with the radical resentment of the Brezhnev generation with the collapse of a state they were proud of.
The state had finally settled on a solution– a Russian may believe anything, do anything, be anything he wishes to be, as long as first and foremost he recognizes the nature of his belief within the context of a cultic synthesis. All must contribute to the common altar of Russkaya Pobeda– Russian victory, and all the values that come with it. Russia has a destiny, a geopolitical right. It has every key element of Manifest Destiny, a right to security on its western flank, which was so abhorrently blasphemed by the encroachment of NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries. It has a right to establish itself as a deity in the global march towards progress, lest we ignore the immense contributions of the Russian world to science and technology, medicine and physics, all things that contribute to the common good of man which Russia offers gracefully. Most importantly, the world owes a debt of gratitude to Russian civilization for its victory in WWII. The millions of Soviet lives lost in a conflict with the most sinister enemy that the world had ever faced provide the bloody redemption of the entire world. The adversarial refusal to acknowledge this debt amounts to nothing less than a rejection of this redemption.
The Adversary
When we try to understand how Russians can look upon a liberal-democratic state run by a Jewish president and declare it a “Nazi” entity, we should understand this not as an objective assessment of Ukrainan society. Since the victory of Zelenskyy and his party in presidential and parliamentary elections, there is not a far-right party represented in the Verkhovna Rada. Meanwhile, in the state Duma, twenty three deputies belong to the far-right “Liberal Democratic Party,” and one to the ultranationalist “Rodina” party. Despite having significantly larger numbers of church attendance, with the lowest numbers being in Russian-speaking territories (which incidentally, are also the most atheistic), Ukraine is also an “anti-Orthodox” state within this framework.
In reality, Russia can make these claims because within the religious eschatology of Russian Victory, Ukraine as a political entity is an apostate. Because Ukrainians no longer sacrifice upon the altar of Russian victory and venerate the iconography and direction taken by Russian society since 1991, Ukrainians have committed the most vile crime. If this is indeed a religion, then for Russian victory, the figure which adopts the role of Satan, the Adversary, is Nazism. This Ahriman, this Iblis, is the foe which Russia hand vanquished for the sake of the whole world. When other states across the world refuse to acknowledge Russian glory, they could be considered to be ignorant, and may be lobbied, convinced, and enlightened. Within America’s religious conservative right, these efforts are proving to be increasingly fruitful. Ukraine, which is in the Russian historical delusion, an integral part of the Muscovite polity, has no such excuse. Ukrainians who fought in the Russian Imperial army, among fellow Russians as Bolsheviks and White Army troops respectively, in the Red Army against Nazi Germany and for every other struggle of the Russian world, could not possibly have an excuse. Theirs is not the crime of the Pharisees, but of Judas himself.
Thus, the Russian imperial cult can accept a plethora of gods today. A Chechen Islamist can break bread with genuine Nazis, such as those within the Wagner-affiliated Rusich battalion, or indeed the late Wagner commander Utkin himself. A Buddhist from Buryatia can commit war crimes along his brother Rodnover pagans, and a militant Communist will have his weapons blessed by a Russian Orthodox priest. But even a pious Orthodox Christian who takes up an adversarial symbol– the Tryzub or the works of Taras Shevchenko, has in doing so spat upon the altar of Russian victory– such is the Nazi today who must be wiped out.
Who is Worshipped in Israel?
This cumulates in the ultimate symbol of this cult. When Russia built the main cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces in 2020 on Victory Day, it built an Orthodox cathedral in name. What makes such a construction a “cathedral” is the fact that on a given Sunday, an Orthodox priest performs the liturgy. However, as stated of the naval cathedral of Kronstadt, if a church is to be genuine, it is clear that no matter what dedication has been made, one is instantly transported into a new world upon entering the temple, where one is divested of all profanity in the name of the One God who is worshipped within.
This cannot be said of the monstrosity built in Patriot Park, where one is met with glorious iconography of Imperial and Soviet troops, a stern and violent Theotokos leading the Red Army to its eschatological victory, and had it not been for the controversy it introduced, this cathedral would have also contained iconography of Stalin and Vladimir Putin. NKVD officers with their signature blue trousers are displayed under the protection of St. Alexander Nevsky, with the hagiography of Russian victory combined Zhukov and Rokossovsky with St. George and St. Fyodor Ushakov.
In the temple of Jerusalem under Manasses and Amon, God was worshipped and sacrifices were made to Him. “And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.” The problem in Russia is not that God is not worshipped, but that His worship is only acceptable in light of the altars that are set up along His own. When one enters this temple, one is not divested of his historical, political, ethnic, military, persuasions but is told that these are in every way holy in the way that the God of Israel is Holy.
Orthodox Christians who identify the current Russian Federation as the katechon of history, as that which holds back the anti-Christ and his reign over the world demonstrate nothing other than a lack of moral discernment. This state of affairs is entirely indistinguishable from the critique that many Orthodox Christians rightly make of the West. These critiques stipulate that a genuine religiosity has definite limits in a political sense because liberal democracies permit “diversity” only to the extent that the practice of personal belief is not reflected in the social sphere. It should be said in the same breath that Russia honours Orthodoxy not for its theological or salvific content, but for its distinct role in Russian history and political ambitions.
“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” (Psalm 126:1) In His jealousy, the Lord will not accept a partner, or permit a god to be numbered along with Him. To speak of the Russian Federation as a polity being the katechon or in any genuine sense representing the global interests of Christ is roughly akin to a complaint that Judah under its wicked kings in earnest represented God simply by virtue of His presence among them. Indeed, God is present within Russia, in every liturgy celebrated in the many churches of the land, among the saints it has produced and continues to produce today, but an Orthodox Christian could only be morally blind to suggest that as a polity, Christianity is the functioning religion of the state or its elites. Rather, we have only seen the Emperor place our Christ in his pantheon, and beckons us to worship Him, provided we burn incense to him also. Contrary to what many may believe, neither Manasses nor the pagan Romans demanded our abandonment of Christ, but rather that we should place Him alongside the greater pantheon of gods on offer. To suggest that Russkiy Mir or Russkaya Pobeda are heresies is not hyperbolic, for these demand nothing else than that we should worship Christ in our day as Mithras was worshipped in days of old.
“Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
ἀρχή αθάνατος 