Kremlin Attacking Jehovah’s Witnesses Because Russian Orthodox Rapidly Losing Ground to Protestants, Navalny Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 10 – The Kremlin is attacking the Jehovah’s Witnesses not only because the Witnesses seek to avoid contact with the state but also and perhaps even more importantly because “the Russian Orthodox Church is actively losing parishioners who have in massive numbers going over to Protestant denominations,” Aleksey Navalny says.

            This is particularly the case in Siberia and the Urals, the Russian opposition figure says; and things have reached the point that “the number of Protestants and Orthodox in Russia are currently approximately equal” (rusmonitor.com/protestantov-v-rf-budet-bolshe-chem-prikhozhan-u-rpc-navalnyjj-o-prichinakh-presledovanijj-svidetelejj-iegovy.html).

                If current trends continue, Navalny said on his Navalny Live Internet channel and the Russian Orthodox church continues to focus on business rather than faith, then it will soon be the case that the number of practicing Protestants will exceed the number of Orthodox who attend church on a regular basis.

            That suggestion is not as far-fetched as it might sound. Only about two percent of all Orthodox attend church services regularly, a total of less than two million. Protestant groups, given the hostility the state and Moscow Patriarch show to them, are not that numerous, but their members, estimates range up to two million, are quite committed to their churches.

                Ironically, he continues, at the very moment when the Russian powers that be were handing down a six-year prison sentence to Jehovah’s Witness leader Dennis Cristensen, “the witches of Russia were assembling to support Vladimir Putin and curse his enemies.” (On that event, see themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-witches-cast-spells-in-putins-support-video-64420.)

                The people in the Kremlin, Navalny says, are now immersed in occultism and even “regularly consult with shamans and astrologers.” The current powers that be, he concludes, “are all mad, who have lost any link with reality. They’ve gone completely bonkers.”