Why are American conservatives praising Putin?

While condemning anti-gay violence and authoritarianism in Russia, Dreher praises Putin’s willingness to speak up for Christianity and laments that “post-Soviet Russia, for all its grievous flaws, is . . . more conscious of its Christian history and character than the United States.”

This is a truly grievous misunderstanding of the reality of religion and politics in 21st Century Russia. Russia today is outwardly far more religious than most of Western Europe, but it’s a religion of state more than church: Orthodox Christianity has taken Communism’s place as the new official ideology, with church membership an official badge of patriotism and loyalty.

Russia’s political and religious leaders speak glowingly of church-state cooperation; in practice, the Russian Orthodox Church serves as a handmaiden of the regime, which grants it special privileges. Its head, Patriarch Kirill, has obsequiously praised the “miracle” of Putin’s rule and disparaged political protests. (The patriarch almost certainly has past ties to the Soviet-era KGB). Neither Kirill nor other senior clerics have criticized the government in areas where the church disagrees with official policy, such as abortion, which remains not only legal but free at public clinics; their statements on the subject have been low-key and deferential.