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Russian Orthodox Church and Metropolitan Vladimir of Donetsk and Mariupol #fundie #wingnut theguardian.com

A reliquary containing part of the right hand of Dmitry Donskoy, the 14th-century prince revered in Russia for his victory over the Mongolian Golden Horde in 1380, has been taken to Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine and is now being transported along the frontline

The Russian Orthodox church said in a statement: “The holy commander is going to where the fate of the fatherland is being decided today, so that he may invisibly take his place in the same battle ranks as our defenders.”

The relic was first brought on Tuesday to the Savur-Mohyla war memorial in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, where senior Orthodox clergy held a prayer service alongside representatives of the Russian military

The Russian-installed Metropolitan Vladimir of Donetsk and Mariupol said its presence would help soldiers and civilians “mobilise their strength” and secure victory over the enemy

The relic’s journey is the latest example of the Russian Orthodox church’s rabid embrace of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, which Patriarch Kirill, its leader, has repeatedly portrayed in religious terms[…]
Donskoy’s relics were first formally uncovered only last month during restoration work at the Cathedral of the Archangel inside the Kremlin, where generations of Russian princes and tsars are buried[…]
Critics have accused the church of breaking with religious protocol by opening Donskoy’s centuries-old tomb. The location of the prince’s burial had long been known, but the church had previously made no attempt to exhume his remains after he was canonised in 1988[…]
Zanemonets said the portrayal of Donskoy as a defender of the homeland fitted neatly with the Kremlin’s insistence that Russia was defending itself rather than conducting a war of aggression against its neighbour

Earlier this year, relics of Alexander Nevsky, another medieval prince and military hero revered by the Russian Orthodox church, were also sent to the front

JD Vance #fundie #psycho theguardian.com

JD Vance has said he is “doing as much of God’s work as possible” and that he is OK “if that leads to the end times”, which he says “are coming”

The US vice-president made the comments during a Monday podcast interview with Bryce Crawford, a 22-year-old evangelical host with over a million YouTube followers and videos featuring sensationalist headlines including “Preaching the gospel in Chicago’s deadliest neighborhood” and “Debating a ‘gay’ pastor”

Speaking about the Christian prophetic notion that the world as humanity knows it will end one day, Vance said: “Do I think we are in the end times? I don’t know

“While I’m fascinated by it, I think that focusing on it too much can be very bad,” he said, adding that if his work “leads to the end times, OK, and if that leads to … us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great, too”

Vance, who published a spiritual memoir earlier this summer about his conversion to Catholicism, said: “I think you got to just kinda try and have an attitude of: the end times may be coming, in fact they are coming, it’s just a question of whether they’re coming thousands of years down the road, or a few months down the road”

He said: “I think there are things about the world that make me feel, like, not shocked if the antichrist was walking among us”