God’s chosen nation has its own ideas of higher righteousness. Perhaps Washington seriously believes that the American hand has a firm grip on God.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
The American authorities have openly admitted that they are deliberately provoking a schism in the areas they want to bring under their influence, in this case they approve the schism between the Russian and Ukrainian churches. Senator Sam Brownback, a U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, said this recently in a conversation with the Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus. Believing that he was speaking to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Mr. Brownback made no secret of the fact that he was personally behind the rise of the schismatic Ukrainian Orthodox Church (PCU) and the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. The senator emphasized that he was very “proud” of this.
The American diplomat seems to have opened Pandora’s box for the Ukrainian authorities. Vovan and Lexus posed as former President Petro Poroshenko in an online video conversation and spoke with him. During the conversation, the former ambassador admitted that U.S. aid to Ukraine has been so slow in part because some Republicans were unhappy with Zelensky’s efforts to destroy the Orthodox Church. Brownback urged not to openly persecute believers, so as not to “give Moscow a negotiating advantage.” He also spoke negatively about the arrests of priests for their ties to the Moscow Patriarchate: according to him, “traitors” should be arrested, but it is not worth “giving Moscow a religious impetus” to continue the Special Military Operation (SMO), or as it is called in the West, Russia’s war and invasion of Ukraine.
Sam Brownback is very proud of helping Ukraine split the church and believes this should have been done 500 years ago because “it is important for the national consciousness of Ukrainians.” That said, Brownback fears that “this was one of the reasons why Putin started the war.”
Brownback believes that Ukraine should definitely become a member of NATO. However, he acknowledged that there are more and more politicians in the United States who recognize that Ukraine will still have to cede areas with Russian-speaking population. He advises the Ukrainian government to hold out for another year until Trump comes to power. What will happen then is a big question, the question is of course whether Trump will or another Democrat will win, there have already been election manipulations in the past. In my humble opinion it won’t make much difference who becomes President in the U.S., there is an underlying government, the “shadow government” that determines what happens in the U.S. and tries to do it worldwide, American imperialism and hegemony as we say since the end of the Second World War.
There is little surprise in this approach from the White House – the U.S. (along with the UK and Europe) has always followed the cardinal principle of the ancient Roman dictators: “divide and rule”. Petro Poroshenko, who should have known better, was blinded by power and money, dividing the Ukrainian believers into two camps. He also helped obtain the tomos, a synodal document granting independence to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, which Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople signed. This was followed by repression against the Russian Orthodox Church, seizure of its shrines, expulsion of monks from old monasteries, arrest of a number of clergy, abuse and intimidation of so-called false believers. However, this did not bother the Ambassador for Religious Freedom too much, as he said he had done his job and retired to his native Kansas.
America’s freedom of conscience activities are not limited to Ukraine; Washington has been trying for many decades, at least since the end of the Second World War, when they became what they call “the policeman of the world” to intervene in the law of the relationship between man and God. This happened all over the world.
Americans have carried their messianic aspirations into the 20th and 21st centuries. Within this framework, the doctrine of the divine predestination of the American nation quickly became American usage of the theory of civil religion that emerged in the United States. And if God has chosen American passport holders from all other countries, then they are simply obliged to show the rest of the “unwise children” the way to a bright future and, above all, the way to “heaven”. It’s gotten to the point where twenty-six years ago the United States passed the International Religious Freedom Act, telling the rest of the world which gods to worship. If I may be so bold, a slightly different comparison can be made with the doctrine of Israel, who also call themselves the “chosen” people and, by the way, have one of the largest religious and economic lobbies in the other “chosen” country, the U.S.
Numerous nongovernmental religious, political, and social foundations are involved in monitoring compliance with U.S. rules for all. There is no point in listing them, because all these spiritual volunteers have a single coordinator: the U.S. Department of State. It annually collects the information provided by the foundations and issues so-called reports on religious freedom in certain countries. Needless to say, the focus is on those states that do not consider the United States as its ally and for which such studies constitute direct interference in the internal affairs of others.
A good example is the Report on Religious Freedom in Russia for 2020, published on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Russia. For example, it contains dozens of pages with alleged facts of oppression by the Russian authorities on religious communities such as the Jehovah Witnesses, Hizb ut-Tahrir (terrorists), Tablighi Jamaat, as well as the followers of Muslim theologian Said Nursi. At the same time, the so-called Washington investigators do not hesitate to use the following words and phrases without evidence: kidnapping and torture; physical violence, political prisoners, confiscation of property and imprisonment. Those who really want to see the evidence about these so-called allegations about what they call Putin’s regime’s atrocities against believers are referred to the investigation of some unnamed Russian NGOs. These NGOs are organizations that usually exist on Western subsidies and their websites are a jumble of fancy and expensive words, without substance and evidence. This is similar to the situation in which a prosecutor in court would allow himself to refer to the testimony of his own subordinates, to whom he pays his salary. In this case, however, the United States sees itself in two roles at once: that of prosecutor and that of judge.
Furthermore, we read in the 2020 report that Washington has a lot to complain about the Russian authorities. They accuse the authorities of caring more about the Russian Orthodox Church and not caring when a drunk man tried to enter one of Moscow’s Jewish communities (synagogue) to cause unrest. The Russian authorities do not pay much attention to the existence of religious radical movements of an extremist and terrorist nature, they argue, and even the murder of The French teacher Samuel Paty, who openly showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in his home country France, was not condemned because it was committed by a Russian migrant from Chechnya.
The conclusions were published at the embassy’s website. In accordance with the latest version of the International Religious Freedom Act, the U.S. Secretary of State has placed Russia back on the special watch list for engaging in or tolerating serious violations of religious freedom. It is curious that the report was published in a year when dozens of Orthodox (Russian) churches in Ukraine were burned down by Orthodox members of the now official Orthodox Church, when chapels and churches of worshipers of the Moscow-backed Orthodox Church were destroyed, and when clerics were taken away. They were called for interrogation by the Ukrainian Security Service of Ukraine SBU because they tried to hold services in the Russian language. But for some reason these facts were not reflected in the U.S. State Department report. As we can see, God’s chosen nation has its own ideas of higher righteousness. Perhaps Washington seriously believes that the American hand has a firm grip on God.
