THE GREEK CHURCH | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 7, 1879

THE GREEK CHURCH.

This is the State church of Russia. Its distinctive history begins with the great schism between the East and West in the 9th century. It was called the Greek church, in distinction from the Roman Catholic church of the West, because the Eastern Roman empire was then called the Greek empire. It differs very little from the Roman Catholic church, the chief difference being that its head is the czar of Russia, instead of the pope of Rome. Like the Catholic church it is in a fearfully fallen condition. The word of God is neglected and disused. The priests are profligates, drunkards, and gamblers; and the people are taxed to support them. The strongest fetters are thrown around religious inquiry, by making membership in the Greek Church compulsory upon all those who are born in it. The result naturally enough is the baldest and most intolerant form of atheism in religious matters, and Nihilism in political. This, it is said, explains the spread of this nihilistic movement so largely among the educated classes and even the nobility. “It is not the uprising of a mob howling for bread, but a revolt of the human mind against superstition and oppression.”