This post first appeared on Russia Insider
Dmitry Smirnov is one of the best known priests in Russia and has a very large following. He is ubiquitous on television, radio, and YouTube, where his videos frequently get 100s of 1000s of views on his channel. (Russian only).
He is a brilliant public speaker and excellent at debate, known for his sharp wit and quick comebacks. He is especially loved for his sermons, and is by far the most popular preacher in Russia.
He is a leading Russian anti-abortion activist, very outspoken in his criticism of LGBT, and an advocate of home-schooling. He heads the Russian Church's Committee for Family, Motherhood, and Children, and demands that Russians start having large families of four or more children, or else they will be overrun by Moslems.
You can see all the articles we have published about him here.
This is a clip of him on a top Russian talk show, Sunday Evening with Vladimir Soloviev.
Here is another example of a popular clip of his - where he discusses the fact that so many priests martyred themselves during the 1917 revolution: 300,000 Russian Priests Were Given a Choice - They All Chose Death.
Transcript:
- Recently, there has been an initiative to change the preamble of the Constitution to give credit to the historical role of Orthodox Christianity. How do you feel about that?
Dmitry Smirnov, one of Russia’s most popular priests:
- I'm glad because it's true. It's 26° outside, that's a fact. It is also a fact that our state was created by the RUSSIAN people whose whole life was centered around the church. They were Christians. 86% of the country was Christian. THEY created the state that gave us: Pushkin, Kazakov, Tolstoy, Suvorov, etc. — this incredibly powerful culture. If some European nation had a mere tenth of what Russia has, it would rank among the great nations of European culture.
Russia has everything: starting with military science and ending with amazing architecture. Everything! Art, music — any sphere you can think of! And all this was created by the RUSSIAN people.
It doesn't mean that Anton Rubinstein (a Russian Jewish Composer) didn't put his coin into this piggy bank. Vladimir Dal (an ethnic German) didn't have a drop of Russian blood but he was a great writer, a master of the Russian language, etc. — Russia was, after all, an empire.
But first and foremost it was RUSSIANS, baptized and believing in Christ, whose highest ideal was HOLINESS. There are only two countries in the world who have this ideal: the other one is Israel. Russia’s highest ideal was holiness.
- We'd have to stop after these words because it's a brilliant finale.
This post first appeared on Russia Insider
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