![\"Patriarch](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Patriarch_Kirill_01.jpg\")
by Fr. Mark Hodges –
\nPatriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church met with famous American Evangelical leader Franklin Graham last week, with whom he shared his admiration for American evangelicals\u2019 defense of Christian morals. Kirill called those who suffer for their stand supporting natural marriage modern-day Confessors.<\/p>\n
The head of the world\u2019s largest Orthodox church noted tragic changes in Western spiritual life, including turning away from \u201cChristian tradition\u201d and creating societies in which moral values are no longer dominant. Kirill also noted with regret recent legislation and court decisions allowing homosexual \u201cmarriage,\u201d \u201cequaling it to natural marriage that the Lord has given us in commandment.\u201d …<\/p>\n
He said that Westerners who resist such immoral laws and court decisions are \u201csubjected to repressions.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, Christians who uphold the intransient importance of Christian moral values had to become Confessors of the Faith, living under various kind[s] of pressure, including the mass media,\u201d the patriarch of Moscow said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gives us a sign of hope: there are people among Western Christians akin to us in ethical principles, sharing them with the Russian Orthodox Church.\u201d<\/p>\n
The patriarch\u2019s comments come at a time when many American Christian business owners and public servants have been fined, jailed, or otherwise persecuted for defending natural marriage.<\/p>\n
Some examples<\/u>:<\/p>\n
\u2013 Betty and Richard Odgaard, a Mennonite couple whose gallery\/chapel was economically forced to close when the Iowa Civil Rights Commission demanded they personally host a same-sex ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u2013 70-year-old florist Barronelle Stutzman, who is at risk of losing her flower shop and life savings after she declined to work a same-sex ceremony because of her Christian beliefs. She had been servicing the gay couple who sued her for several years and would have provided them the flowers, but she refused to personally facilitate their ceremony by creating custom-designed decorations, delivering to the forum, staying at the ceremony to touch up arrangements, or personally assisting the wedding party.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Aaron and Melissa Klein, Christian bakers who refused to design a wedding cake for lesbians, ordered to pay $135,000 for \u201cemotional\u201d damages to the lesbians by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. They were forced to close their store and operate from home.<\/p>\n
The Russian Orthodox Church has cut off dialogue with religious bodies that perform homosexual \u201cmarriages\u201d or ordain homosexuals as \u201cclergy,\u201d including the United Protestant Church of France and the Church of Scotland. The Russian Orthodox Church\u2019s statement said religious groups that offer to \u201cmarry\u201d homosexuals \u201ctrample upon the principles of traditional Christian morality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patriarch Kirill noted that the Russian Orthodox Church broke dialogue with the U.S. Episcopal church in 2003, when it ordained an openly and unrepentantly gay cleric. However, the Orthodox support the conservative Anglican Church in North America, \u201cwhich remains faithful to Christian ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Very Rev. Fr. Dimitry Smirnov, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church Commission for Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, went so far as to say, \u201cThese are not Christian communities anymore. \u2026 The former Christian peoples are preparing themselves for the solemn reception of the Anti-Christ.\u201d He said the future of LGBT groups is \u201cthe fire of Gehenna,\u201d referring to Hell.<\/p>\n
The chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate\u2019s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion, explained, \u201cThe legalization of same-sex cohabitations \u2026 pose[s] a clear threat to the future of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
HT: LifeSiteNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Fr. Mark Hodges – Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church met with famous American Evangelical leader Franklin Graham last week, with whom he shared his admiration for American evangelicals\u2019 defense of Christian morals. Kirill called those who suffer for their stand supporting natural marriage modern-day Confessors. The head of the world\u2019s largest … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113,43,15,5,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-persecution","category-family","category-moral-issues","category-orthodox-christianity","category-orthodox-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}