Mopologist William Schryver Continues His Descent Into Madness

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

That's a spot-on assessment of Will, Doc.

Thanks, being a Gish galloping contrarian stopped being interesting a long time ago, and being against conventional wisdom doesn't make one clever nor correct. It just makes one look like a self-interested asshole.

- Doc

[drumdude]

Great write up of the current state of religious persecution by Russians in occupied Ukraine. Including persecution of Mormon missionaries.

Russian occupation authorities are likely conducting a campaign of systematic religious persecution in occupied Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 Russian soldiers or occupations authorities have reportedly committed at least 76 acts of religious persecution in Ukraine.[1] Russian authorities have closed, nationalized, or forcefully converted at least 26 places of worship to the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, killed or seized at least 29 clergy or religious leaders, and looted, desecrated, or deliberately destroyed at least 13 places of worship in occupied Ukraine.[2] These cases of religious repression are not likely isolated incidents but rather part of a deliberate campaign to systematically eradicate “undesirable” religious organizations in Ukraine and promote the Moscow Patriarchate.

This study contains only a small subset of all reported Russian religious persecution events against religious groups in Ukraine. ISW did not include events where indirect fire may have unintentionally killed religious leaders or destroyed places of worship.[3] (This report specifically does not include all 494 religious buildings that the Russian military reportedly wholly destroyed, damaged, or looted, according to the independent Kyiv-based Institute for Religious Freedom as of February 2023 because ISW cannot assess intentionality in all those cases, for example.)[4] The events included in this study are drawn from reports of Russian forces – usually infantry, security personnel, or occupation officials – deliberately coercing religious groups. This report also excludes many instances of Russian religious repressions in areas Russian forces have occupied from spring 2014 to February 24, 2022, to focus on more recent persecutions in newly-occupied areas.

Russian authorities systematically repress religious liberty in Russia as a matter of state policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin ratified the “Yarovaya Law” in 2016 requiring all religious organizations and churches in Russia to be registered with the Russian government. The law bans “missionary activities,” broadly defined as preaching, praying, disseminating religious materials, and even answering questions about religion outside of officially state-approved sites under the pretense of precautions against “extremism” and “terrorism.”[5] The Russian government refuses to register undesirable religious organizations it seeks to suppress.[6] Since 2016 Russian authorities have used the Yarovaya Law‘s sweeping provisions to prosecute American Baptist and Pentecostal missionaries operating in Russia, outlaw most Mormon missionary work, and burn foreign-distributed Bibles not properly registered with the state.[7] Russian authorities have persecuted several other Russian religious minorities, including members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Falun Gong members, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah‘s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Old Believers (Pomorian Old Orthodox), Lutherans, the Ukrainian Reformed Orthodox Church, and the branch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).[8] Russian authorities jailed at least 48 Russian Jehovah‘s Witnesses in 2022, arrested and deported two American Mormon missionaries in 2019, and fined a Sochi-based Buddhist leader for organizing "collective meditation" for "about a dozen" people in 2019.[9] Russian authorities have also targeted Russian Muslims for ”illegal missionary activities” despite the fact that Islam is legally recognized as one of Russia’s ”traditional religions” (along with Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism and Buddhism)

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgr ... ril-9-2023

Will doesn’t understand that Russia is no friend of the Mormon church.