Where have the Christian leaders’ consciences gone?
“Christian leaders.” Photo: OCU press service
In an interview with American Christian journalist Joel Rosenberg, Zelensky once again poured out a stream of manipulation and falsehoods about the UOC.
In particular, he “refuted” Tucker Carlson’s words that in Ukraine the authorities are imprisoning priests and closing churches.
Zelensky labels the UOC a “Russian Church” and insists that none of its representatives have been persecuted. According to him, the law banning the UOC is “not about persecution or the closure of any particular Church.”
Yet Metropolitan Arseny has languished in prison for a year and a half; blood was spilled in Cherkasy and Chernivtsi; 2,000 churches were forcibly “transferred”; UOC communities now serve liturgy in private homes – and all of this, according to Zelensky, is supposedly “not persecution.”
But the point is not Zelensky. With him everything is already clear. To expect truth or justice from him is senseless. The issue lies elsewhere – or rather, with others.
At the beginning of the interview Rosenberg mentioned that he had spoken “with Christian leaders,” and they told him that Carlson’s words about UOC persecution were false.
“Could you clarify this issue of religious freedom? Because Christians I meet with at very high levels say this is the freest country for their faith among all the former Soviet republics,” he asked Zelensky.
We already know how Zelensky answered. What we do not know is this: where have the consciences of these so-called “Christian leaders” gone? Instead of helping their persecuted brothers in the UOC, they act in ways that only intensify the persecution.
Perhaps they do indeed follow another Christ altogether?
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