I asked Lori to rewind a portion of the evening news, which we had been faithfully watching each evening, keeping abreast of the latest developments in Ukraine.
“Did he say that?” I incredulously asked. “Let’s hear that again.”
Sure enough, I had heard it correctly.
At a rally in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the Bible to justify the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Putin was speaking to the crowd gathered at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. The state-owned media reported 95,000 in attendance and over 100,000 outside the stadium, while an independent news source cited reports of some people being forced to attend the rally.
Putin had paraphrased John 15:13, which says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
“We are seeing the heroic deeds of our guys in this operation,” Putin added, according to the CNN translation. “These words from the holy scripture of Christianity, it’s something that is very dear to those who profess this religion.”
Never mind that the “military operation” has killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children, displacing millions of others.
The Scripture he referenced is placed during Jesus’ sermon about the vine and the branches. Christ Jesus used the illustration of a good gardener pruning plants, so they produce good fruit. Jesus pictures himself as the divine vinedresser who prunes the branches of non-fruit-bearing followers. According to the English Standard Study Bible, “‘Fruit’ is an image for good results coming from the life of a believer, probably in terms of bringing benefit to the lives of others and advancing the work of God in the world.”
Putin had no interest in the meaning of the verse within its’ biblical context and certainly not in bringing the spiritual fruit of love to the world. He was only using the Scripture to forward his agenda of aggrandizement. Given his actions, that is clear. What is interesting is how he connected the Scripture to the Russian people who identify themselves as Christians. He said the Scripture is “something that is very dear to those who profess this religion.”
What Putin is not interested in is authentic biblical Christianity; what he wants is a type of Christianity that undergirds his particular version of a Russian civil religion, a civic religion that, like all civil religions, meshes political values with religious ideals, rites, and rituals.
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” Putin said in a speech three days before the invasion of Ukraine. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”
We should be now if we weren’t already concerned about Mr. Putin’s long-view for advancing his power. He is quite willing to clothe the murder of civilians, including children, in a spiritual garb that attempts to “Christianize” his actions, justifying evil for an imagined greater good.
Putin has accused the West of attempting to “cancel” Russia. In doing so, he envisions himself upholding generic values like patriotism and strong families, framing the discussion in the context of cultural trends in Western Europe and the U.S., like transgenderism, that he perceives as dangerous to his vision of the Russian empire’s cultural dominance.
Putin’s strategy is by no means novel. Using Christian truth to advance political aspirations can be traced at least to Constantine (4th century, CE) and reached its zenith in Adolf Hitler, who attempted to camouflage his poisonous germ of hatred and ethnic annihilation inside the flower of a deception called he called, “Christianity,” for it was the Fuhrer who proclaimed to his constituents, less than a hundred years ago, “We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … (few) years. “
Placed within the larger context of history, Putin stands in a long tradition of misleaders who have baptized a religion of political dominance in the blood of innocents. With the weapons now at his disposal, he is the most dangerous of dictators.
With that unpleasant thought, all I could ask my wife to do was change the TV channel while I turned to the Scriptures myself.