George Weigel's column in yesterday's The Wall Street Journal, "Putin's War and Kirill's Blasphemy," cites my book Religious Communities Under Pressure as evidence of the Moscow Patriarchate's campaign against clergy and laity who refuse to bless the war on Ukraine:
"As former patriarchate official Sergei Chapnin documents in his book 'Religious Communities Under Pressure,' the Russian Orthodox Church persecutes and disowns any of its clergy and laity who oppose the war on Ukraine. Mr. Chapnin warned a decade ago that Patriarch Kirill was transforming Russian Orthodoxy into a political ideology and later predicted that he would valorize a future Russian war against Ukraine in religious language. Now he demonstrates that the Moscow patriarchate's campaign of repression... targets any religious believer who challenges Kremlin policy and practice."
I'm grateful to Mr. Weigel for reading the book closely enough to engage its argument rather than just its conclusion. Ten years ago, describing Patriarch Kirill's Orthodoxy as a political ideology sounded to some like polemics. It reads differently now.
Religious Communities Under Pressure >>>
Weigel's column (WSJ, paywalled) >>>
I am glad it has reached Wall Street. And so has your book. Now perhaps it will reach people in the West who could call him to account....