Dr Paul Allen

At a Christian conference center in the mountains of northern Slovakia, staff members recently shifted from hosting local families for weeklong retreats to providing emergency shelter for refugees fleeing Ukraine for the foreseeable future. Pavel Sinko is an elder at a Baptist church in the Slovakian city of Lucenec and a coordinator for the conference center in Rackova Dolina through his work with the Christian organization International Needs. Lately, the needs have been great. Small Nation, Sudden Shelter A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 3.6 million people have fled the war-torn country. Another 6.5 million are internally displaced inside Ukraine. Even as Ukrainians defy Russian attempts to capture their capital, Russian forces have inflicted relentless attacks. In the southeastern city of Mariupol, officials said a brutal bombardment killed at least 2,000 civilians and destroyed 80 percent of homes. Most refugees fleeing Ukraine have crossed into Poland, though many ...

At a rally in Moscow on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin paraphrased John 15:13 to justify the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which has killed hundreds of civilians, including dozens of children. During his speech at the rally held in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium to “celebrate” the eighth anniversary of Crimea’s annexation, which is not recognized by most countries, Putin lauded the Russian military for “heroically” fighting in Ukraine. “You know, I remember the words from the Bible. There is no other love rather than if someone gives soul for their friends,” Putin said, according to the BBC broadcast of his speech. The remark was followed by huge applause from the crowd.  Putin’s remark was a reference to John 15:13, which states: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” “We are seeing the heroic deeds of our guys in this operation,” Putin added, according to the CNN translation. “These words from the holy scripture of Christianity, it’s so...

“I find myself turning again and again to the imprecatory psalms,” wrote Tish Harrison Warren this week at Christianity Today.  “Each morning I’m praying Psalm 7:14–16 with Vladimir Putin in mind: ‘Behold, the wicked man conceives evil and is pregnant with mischief and gives birth to lies. He makes a pit, digging it out, and falls into the hole that he has made. His mischief returns upon his own head, and on his own skull his violence descends’ (ESV).” Like Warren,  “I don’t usually know what to do with” poetry that comes from a source I regard as divinely inspired, perfect, and authoritative, yet “[calls] down destruction, calamity, and God’s judgment on enemies.” Like her, and I’d guess most people who follow Jesus, “I am often uncomfortable with the violence and self-assured righteousness found in these psalms.” Perhaps even more so than her; I can’t say I’ve been praying imprecations on Vladimir Putin, much as I despise his actions. But I understand her argument that the c...

The Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine is a textbook example of an unjust war. None of the six basic criteria for a just war are met: possessing just cause, being the last resort, being declared by a proper authority, having the right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end and means being proportional. Just cause Vladimir Putin claims that Ukrainian overtures towards the EU and NATO threaten Russian sovereignty and, therefore, invading and annexing Ukraine is a just cause. This is a very weak claim, to put it mildly. Ukraine has the misfortune of being geographically located between Russia and the EU. On matters of the economy, rational Ukrainians prefer to be allied with the prosperous and peaceful European Union (with all its moral and political defects) than with the autocratic, corrupt, and aggressive Russian Federation. Militarily, Ukraine is located between the military spheres of influence of the Russian Federation – which collaborates wit...

What is the religious dimension of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Is this a Religious War? He quotes a biography of Putin that discusses the Russian Orthodox Church and the concept of “holy Russia.”  From Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (2015) [my paragraphing]: The Orthodox Church still comes in a package with Putin and the state, even if the modern presidential base of power is secular. In Putin’s system and formulation, it is Rus’ (Russia) that is divine (svyataya or holy). The president is certainly not divine or holy. The stress on svyataya Rus’ picks up on another older Russian Orthodox and tsarist tradition, where Rus’ refers to something larger than the idea of the Russian state and people and encompasses the entire Russian orthodox religious community. Before the Russian Revolution, citizens of the empire who were baptized as Russian Orthodox Christians were seen to be Orthodox (pravoslavnyy) and therefore Russian (russkiy), no matter wher...

Every once in a while, a leader, whether it be a judge, a king, or a Czar, tries to do the impossible and shut down the Gospel. All throughout history many have attempted this impossible feat. Perhaps one of the most famous attempts occurred in 1673. The Lord Judge Magistrate of Bedford was fed up with John Bunyan and his preaching of the Gospel.  John Bunyan was reaching thousands with the truth of scripture, and the judge obviously hated sound preaching. But when John Bunyan was told to stop, John Bunyan famously answered, “ If I am freed today, I will preach  tomorrow ! ” And so the judge sentenced him to jail and said, “At last we are done with this tinker and his cause. Never more will he plague us: for his name, locked away as surely as he, shall be forgotten, as surely as he. Done we are, and all eternity with him.” A sillier statement has never been spoken. John Bunyan went on to write  The Pilgrim’s Progress , along with other books that the Lord ha...