Modern Russian Identity and Christianity

In recent years, one could frequently encounter rather widespread discussions about the Russian Federation as a “Christian State,” and in some cases, even as the “last stronghold of Christianity in the world.” Such descriptions of Russia regularly appear in social media and public speeches by various American and European conservatives, ranging from Tucker Carlson to Viktor Orbán. Representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, including Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev), even claim that: “Today many people, including in the West, look to Russia with attention and hope as the last stronghold. To use Biblical language, Russia is becoming the one ‘who restrains the total dominance of evil, i.e., the coming of the Antichrist.” As with many other false constructs promoted by the current political regime, these rhetorical templates are utterly deceptive, while the actual actions of the authorities and the ROC hierarchy are more often anti-Christian.

Even from a legal standpoint, the Russian Federation is a secular state, explicitly established in Article 14 of the Russian Constitution adopted in 2020, which does not mention Christianity even once. This sharply contrasts modern Russian Federation with several European, Central, and South American countries where Christianity is either a state or official religion, such as Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Malta, Denmark, Iceland, England, and others. Moreover, Orthodox Christianity has official legal status in Greece, Bulgaria, Finland, and Georgia.

Turning to a more detailed study of the issue and examining the results of numerous sociological surveys on religiosity and religious identity in Russian Federation, one must note a rather high level of secularism among the population. According to various polls, between 49% and 65% of respondents identify as followers of a religion. This places Russian Federation among the most secular countries in Europe, on par with France, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, and Finland. These countries also show similar levels of people who do not participate in any religious practices or rituals.

A more detailed analysis of the research shows that, although the majority of those identifying as religious (about 85%) consider themselves Orthodox Christians, most of them are unfamiliar with Christian doctrine and Orthodox dogma (69% do not know the teaching about the Holy Spirit, 50% have never opened a Bible, 39% do not believe in the immortality of the soul, and 30% cannot name a single one of the Ten Commandments). The number of practising Christians—those who regularly attend church services, partake in sacraments, and observe fasting—has not exceeded 5–7% of the population over the past three decades since the collapse of the USSR. This is an extremely low rate, comparable to the most secular societies of Northern Europe (Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Denmark), whereas regular church attendance in the rest of Europe is significantly higher, ranging from 12% in France to 63% in Poland.

Another significant factor contradicting the characterisation of Russian Federation as a “Christian State” is the explosive growth in the number of Muslim migrants over the last 25 years, making Russian Federation the European country with the largest Muslim population. As early as 2009, Islamic sources reported that 16 million of Europe's 38 million Muslims lived in Russia. Current sociological studies show that between 11% and 15% of respondents adhere to Islam. Islamic sources claim that in 2019, Muslims made up at least 16% of Russia’s total population. Several Muslim spiritual leaders, citing competent experts, predict that in about fifteen years, “up to 30% of Russia’s population will be Muslim,” and by 2050 their share may reach 50%. Based on Islamic sources, which estimated the Muslim population in 1994 at 5.5% to 8%, it is easy to conclude that the number of practicing Muslims in Russian Federation has increased by over 300% in 30 years, while the number of practicing Orthodox Christians (5–7%) has remained virtually unchanged. In absolute numbers, practising Muslims already outnumber practising Orthodox Christians by nearly threefold. This may explain the phenomenon known as the “fall of the cross”—the trend of removing the cross from church designs, emblems, and other visuals, increasingly seen in advertisements, on banknotes, and on government and corporate websites, including the Kremlin's.

Paradoxically, it seems that the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church is not only unconcerned about the stagnation of its flock or their minimal engagement with Church life, but generally supports the growing influence of Islam in Russian Federation. Clergy and bishops of the ROC frequently praise the piety of the daily lifestyle of practising Muslims in the media and social networks, especially in contrast with the rest of Russia’s population. Moreover, the Moscow Patriarchate reacts with minimal attention to unprecedented Islamist terrorist attacks on Orthodox clergy—something unheard of in Europe or the Americas—such as the brutal murders of priests Father Daniil Sysoev and Father Nikolai Kotelnikov, or of altar server Ilyas Safiullin. Rare and timid attempts by individual priests to publicly express concerns about uncontrolled Islamization are immediately met with persecution. A striking example is the May–June 2025 events surrounding Hieromonk Gabriel (Vinogradov-Lakerbaya) from the Valaam Monastery. In a Sunday sermon, Father Gabriel warned about potential religious uprisings by Muslim migrants, calling the male Muslim migrant community “an entire army.” A prominent representative of the Chechen ummah publicly responded by calling Father Gabriel “an idiot in a cassock.” That very same day, Father Gabriel was dismissed, and soon after, Patriarch Kirill publicly called his sermon a “provocation” and urged to “drive out those who, under the pretext of caring for Russians, Russian culture, or the Orthodox Church, call for a fight against Muslims.” In effect, Patriarch Kirill not only refused to defend a priest of his own Church but joined in his public humiliation with the Islamic leader—and declared that the interests of Muslims in Russian Federation take precedence over those of Russians, their culture, and their Church.

On June 14, 2025, Patriarch Kirill made another highly controversial statement from the standpoint of Christian dogma: “We have something in common with Muslims: we believe in the One God. There is some similarity in the self-restraints people impose upon themselves for God's sake. They have their fasts; we have ours. There are things that contradict our culture—for instance, polygamy, although it is officially banned in Russia. The Christian understanding of marriage is entirely different. But despite these differences, Orthodox Christians and Muslims today share a common goal—care for the Motherland, for Russia.” Most likely, this statement—and the overall trend of the ROC drawing closer to Russian Muslims while distancing itself from Christian churches of various European denominations—has nothing to do with conspiracy theories about Putin’s alleged secret conversion to Islam, or with state propaganda narratives about the supposed loss of moral values in modern European societies. More plausibly, the ROC has simply become a complete instrument of the current political regime, which uses every means to promote the postulate that Russians exist only thanks to state institutions—and denies them their own national rights, interests, or even religious beliefs outside of the state-defined (and non-Christian) framework.

Today, the regime explicitly demands the unconditional subordination of Russians to the state, even when this contradicts their national interests. While in previous years these ideas had to be deciphered by political analysts from editorials or public statements, today the demand for total loyalty is broadcast in prime time on Russia’s main state TV channel. Recently, propaganda figure Alexander Prokhanov—awarded the highest civilian honour “Hero of Labour” by President Putin and once a loyal bard of the Soviet Union—declared on state television: “The Russians are a nation of statehood… They make endless sacrifices in the name of their state… They see betrayal of the state as Judas’s sin… The Russian state is the benefactor of the Russian people, even if it is perhaps the most harsh, severe, or even cruel in the world. The Russian people endure the state’s cruelties, bear its burdens, because they understand—where there is a state, there is a Russian people; where there is no state, the people disappear…” It is difficult to imagine a more schizophrenic stream of consciousness, blasphemously comparing the state with Jesus Christ and degrading Russians to the level of mindless organisms, incapable of self-organisation and self-governance. Yet it is precisely within this context—subordinating everything, including the interpretation of Christian dogma, to state interests—that the ROC’s pro-Islamic rhetoric should be understood. For the same purpose, the Moscow Patriarchate has joined another trend of the regime: neo-Stalinism and the denial (or, where denial is impossible, justification) of the Bolshevik terror and the anti-Christian nature of Soviet power.

Despite the horrors of Soviet persecution against the Russian Orthodox Church, despite the phenomenon of Sergianism and collaboration with the Bolsheviks, despite the KGB’s infiltration and control over all Church institutions—by the late 1980s, even before the USSR collapsed, the healthy part of the Church was openly declaring the godless nature of the Bolshevik regime and calling for the glorification of hundreds of thousands of martyrs and confessors who had fallen victim to Communist dictatorship. The current ROC hierarchy is doing the exact opposite—implanting the anti-Christian thesis that “the stability of state power” overrides any other aspect of Russian life, even including persecution of the Church of Christ. While today’s regime erects monuments to Stalin—the executioner of the Church—and annuls the rehabilitation of his victims by the thousands, Patriarch Kirill publicly declared: “Stalin ultimately realized the immense spiritual and patriotic role of the Russian Orthodox Church and understood that, largely thanks to the Church’s patriotic stance, what could have happened—especially in the occupied territories—did not. It’s hard to imagine what would have occurred if the Church had called the people to oppose the then-godless government. But it did not—the goal was to preserve Orthodox faith in our country and overcome the alienation between Church and state.” 

In recent years, more than 50 priests have been defrocked or suspended for disagreeing with the Moscow Patriarchate’s stance.

On June 5, 2025, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) issued a statement containing a clear counter-thesis to the propaganda cliché of Russia as the “last stronghold of Christianity.” The ROCOR Synod warned that Russia’s return to a “false and godless ideology” would result in the country becoming “a dark blot among nations, instead of the bright beacon of Orthodox truth that its long history of Christian piety calls it to be.” ROCOR urged remembrance that the Church has “always considered it her duty to remain free from association with any state, party, or secular ideology—and to proclaim fearlessly the simple and pure Truth of Holy Orthodoxy”.

Conclusion:
Modern Russian society is highly secular. The number of practising Orthodox Christians is small and has stagnated for 30 years. The vast majority of Russians who identify as Orthodox in surveys are unfamiliar with Orthodox doctrine, and the Church has done nothing about this. Meanwhile, the number of practising Muslims is rapidly growing due to immigration and now reportedly exceeds the number of practising Christians by a factor of three. For the last decade, Russian Federation has had the largest Muslim population in Europe, and the ROC continues to ignore this issue while suppressing any protest. Overall, the Russian Orthodox Church is completely servile to the current political regime, which promotes an anti-Christian thesis of prioritising “state stability” over every other aspect of Russian life—including faith itself—and actively supports both Islamization and neo-Stalinism. While the regime glorifies the persecutors of the Church and cynically nullifies the rehabilitation of Bolshevik-era martyrs, the only part of the Church to object lies outside of Russian Federation.

The conclusion about the ROC's total subordination to the Kremlin’s political interests was drawn several years ago by none other than Pope Francis. In 2021, the ROC announced a “practical freeze of relations” with the Roman Catholic Church after Pope Francis publicly revealed details of his conversation with Patriarch Kirill, in which the Pope replied to Kirill’s justification of war by saying: “I listened to him and said: I don’t understand any of this. Brother, we are not government clerks, we must use the language of Jesus, not of politics. [...] A Patriarch cannot become Putin’s altar boy.”

Ilya Ilyin
June 22, 2025

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