Dating back to the 10th century, when Prince Vladimir adopted Christianity as the official religion for the Russian predecessor state, Kievan Rus, church and state have been closely intertwined. in Russia, After 70-plus years of Soviet atheism, the Russian Orthodox Church has experienced a remarkable revival, particularly in the past decade-- in influence, in wealth, in visibility, in number of adherents. It’s a trend that has been embraced (or possibly encouraged) by the Kremlin, which, as Stalin did, sees the Russian church as serving a nationalist, unifying purpose for a fragmented country, as well as providing moral or spiritual backing for political decisions. Allowing Catholics, or other non-Orthodox Christian denominations, to proselytize undermines that authority, providing a counter-narrative to the Russian church’s claim to spiritual preeminence. Having a popular, charismatic religious figure, such as Pope Francis or even more, the late John Paul II, visit Russia, would be a direct challenge to the Russian church. “John Paul II, he was a baroque, theatrical personality. This pope (Francis) is extraordinarily popular and I’m sure, in the back of Putin’s head, he’s thinking ‘Do I want to have a Western pope coming into Russian and being compared unfavorably to the less than charismatic head of the Russian orthodox church,” says Lawrence Cunningham, recently retired professor of theology at Notre Dame University in Indiana.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
