Great Crimes & Trials TV - Infamous Assassinations TV - Bart D Ehrman - Elliott Abrams - Art of Faith: Christianity TV - James Burke TV - Bettany Hughes TV - Kirsti Copeland - Christopher Hitchens - Bible Hunters TV - Diarmaid MacCulloch TV - Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby TV -
The autocracy of the Tsars was strongly upheld by the Russian Orthodox Church which was controlled by a government department. Great Crimes & Trials s1e16: The Massacre of the Tsar and the Royal Family, BBC 1993
The Russian Orthodox Church regards him [Tsar Nicholas II] as divinely appointed. Infamous Assassinations: Tsar Nicholas II
The early Christian Church fathers who became orthodox, who represented the point of view that became dominant within Christianity, saw Gnostics as very dangerous, and they wrote a number of books against them, presumably because they were very popular. Bart D Ehrman
From its earliest days in the nineteenth century, and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews. Elliott Abrams
Justinian energetically promoted the Orthodox Christian faith. Art of Faith: Christianity, Sky Arts 2012
By the fifteenth century the Russian Church had acquired a form of independence. ibid.
The synod of the Russian Orthodox Church – who reckoned that syphilis was heavenly punishment for doing what you weren’t supposed to, and as such shouldn’t be cured by any medicine, thank you very much. James Burke, Connections s2e2: Sentimental Journeys, BBC 1994
It was in what is now western Turkey that the Mary cult started to become a global phenomenon. A special devotion grew up around her to replace the old pagan goddesses like Diana or Artemis. In church doctrine she went from being the mere mother of Jesus to ... the Mother of God. This incredible clout was reinforced by the building of churches devoted to her and the dissemination of her image all over Byzantium, the Christian Roman empire in the east. Bettany Hughes, The Bible: A History, Channel 4 2010
The early Christian movement had a lot of different viewpoints and many of them were censored. One version got branded as orthodox. Professor Kirsti Copeland
These gangs were made up of religious bigots, often blessed by Orthodox priests and bishops, and sometimes augmented by fellow Orthodox ‘volunteers’ from Greece and Russia. They made a special attempt to destroy all evidence of Ottoman civilisation, as in the specially atrocious case of the dynamiting of several historic minerets in Banja Luka, which was done during a cease-fire and not as the result of any battle. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p21
The Russian Orthodox Church had been the main prop of the czarist autocracy, while the czar himself was regarded as the formal head of the faith and something a little more than merely human. ibid. p243
The Orthodox Jews are not blameless here. By claiming to be ‘chosen’ in a special exclusive covenant with the Almighty, they invited hatred and suspicion and evinced their own form of racism. ibid. p250
It was the Orthodoxes who would shape the future of Christianity. Bible Hunters II, BBC 2014
We in the West owe the Church of the East a huge debt. Much of what we know about Greek learning, medicine to astronomy and even the system of Arabic numerals in use today all come to us courtesy of those Christian translators. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
Here in the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople on the 16th July 1054 a disaster unfolded for Christianity. It was actually during a service that a papal delegation swept up to the altar and placed on it a document excommunicating the leader of the Church in Constantinople, the Patriarch. The Patriarch excommunicated the Pope in return. The moment has come to be known as the Great Schism, the split between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western Catholic Christianity ... But nearly a thousand years later the Schism between the Latin West and the Greek East has never been healed. ibid.
The Orthodox Church came to be at the centre of a three-way tug-of-war between the ambitions of the Tsar, the clergy and the devout faith of the Russian people. ibid.
In October of that year world-wide orthodoxy met its most terrible enemy so far – Soviet communism ... In this new world order there was no place for God. Orthodoxy had shaped Russia since the tenth century but the Bolsheviks saw all religion as the opium of the masses, a symptom of false consciousness, and worst of all an obstacle for scientific socialism. In January 1918 Lenin formally separated Church from State. And that was just the first step in a systematic policy to purge Christianity from Russian life, and force atheism on the Russian people ... Around 40,000 priests, 40,000 monks and nuns plus millions of lay-people died as a result of Soviet terror. There was a manic thoroughness to the campaign. Some local Soviet commanders lined up icons, sentenced them to death and shot them. By 1939 only a few hundred churches remained open. And only four Russian bishops were not in prison ... Orthodoxy outlived the Soviet world order. ibid.
Encouraged by the state, the Russian Orthodox church is thriving. Putin’s Russia with David Dimbleby, BBC 2018