CAMELOT FANTASIES

Now on a completely unrelated matter, I found this bit about the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin quite interesting as I started digging his religious background and upbringing.

"Vladimir Putin was born and raised in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., now known as St. Petersburg, Russia.

Putin had, in classic Soviet fashion, a secular upbringing. His father was a “model Communist” and a “militant atheist,” though his mother was a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian1 and she had young Putin secretly baptized into that church.2

It was merely symbolic, however, as Putin went through the bulk of his adult life–rising through the ranks of the KGB and the Soviet Communist Party–conforming to Soviet secular convention.

It wasn’t until the double-whammy of 1) his wife’s car accident in 1993 and 2) a life-threatening house fire in 1996 that Putin began questioning his atheism. During a vulnerable moment before Putin departed for a diplomatic trip to Israel, his mother gave him a baptismal cross. He said of the occasion:

    I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.3

Now, Putin has become a bit of a zealot. He seems to want to reestablish a pre-Soviet combination of church and state, saying:

    First and foremost we should be governed by common sense. But common sense should be based on moral principles first. And it is not possible today to have morality separated from religious values.4

Furthermore, Putin has proposed compulsory religion and ethics classes for Russian students.5"