Moscow Patriarchate and Other Banned Dangerous Sects

Modern civilised countries guarantee their citizens freedom of religion. Unfortunately, this right is often exploited not only by noble preachers of spiritual values but also by various criminals, financial swindlers, cynical manipulators, terrorists, UFO-obsessed fanatics, and even genuine war criminals. What is left for civilised countries to do, if not to ban such destructive, dangerous, and radical religious sects and psychocults?

The most recent example is Ukraine’s ban on the activities of Moscow Patriarchate churches within its territory. Some in the world were alarmed, exclaiming that Orthodox Christians are being prevented from peacefully praying to Jesus Christ! However, in reality, the Moscow Patriarchate has long ceased to be about faith in God and is instead about faith in the messianic victory of the Soviet-Russians over the Nazis without a penny of American lend-lease, without the participation of allies in the war, and without the opening of a second front. Moreover, with the onset of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Moscow Patriarchate has transformed into a sect dedicated to the religious brainwashing of Rashists to justify the genocide of Ukrainians, and into an extensive network of enemy propaganda within Ukraine itself. Eventually, Ukraine was forced to establish a commendable tradition of banning Moscow Patriarchate churches in all civilised countries, rightly placing the chauvinistic cult of the Rashists alongside other well-known dangerous sects and pseudo-religious organisations.

Moscow Patriarchate

“By their fruits you will know them” – let us look through the lens of this wise thought from the Gospel of Matthew at the awkward Temple of the Russian Armed Forces, which the Moscow Patriarchate built on the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Externally, the temple resembles a kind of steel tank of Russian-Byzantine production, and this is not mere coincidence, as the building's stairs and floors are made from real melted-down German tanks. The interior of the temple is also richly decorated with mosaics featuring red stars, Soviet flags, and portraits of communist leaders. A mosaic of Putin was even ready, but at the last moment before its installation, this masterpiece of Rashist art was deemed too "creepy" even in Russia. In short, if a church builds temples from tanks and glorifies war criminals wanted by the International Criminal Court for abducting Ukrainian children, this is not about religion or freedom of worship; it is about Russian chauvinism, war propaganda, and heretical sectarianism.

Aum Shinrikyo

In 1987, Japanese Shoko Asahara began his activities by teaching yoga lessons in his one-room apartment in Tokyo. However, he soon started mixing elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, Nostradamus’s prophecies, and, most importantly, ideas of Christian millenarianism into his teachings, which eventually led to his self-proclaimed status as Christ, followed by thousands of disillusioned Japanese in the midst of the economic crisis of the 1990s. Upon learning that the police planned to raid the centres of his Aum Shinrikyo sect, he orchestrated the notorious 1995 terrorist attack, ordering his followers to release sarin gas on three lines of the Tokyo subway. The "Japanese Christ" thus sought to avoid justice by provoking an apocalypse and a Third World War. As a result, 13 people died, 50 were seriously injured, and over 1,000 were temporarily blinded. Many members of the sect were eventually caught and executed, but the main question remained: where did they actually obtain the instructions for producing the chemical warfare nerve agent? This could not be proven in Japan, but some sect members testified that Aum Shinrikyo had acquired all the necessary documentation from Oleg Lobov, then Russia’s Minister of Economy.

Santa Muerte

What happens if you mix Catholicism with a bit of Aztec beliefs and throw in a pinch of the religious views of the Maya Indians? You get a volatile concoction known as "Santa Muerte" – the infamous cult of worshipping Holy Death, prevalent primarily in Mexico and some impoverished and crime-ridden Latino communities in the United States. Adherents of this cult believe that in death, all people are equal – rich and poor, good and evil, respectable and criminal, etc. They gather in special (often secret) chapels, where they offer food and alcoholic drinks as sacrifices to their goddess, who is personified by a statue of a female skeleton dressed in colourful clothing. They believe that she will grant all their wishes in return. It is also rumoured that sect members sometimes offer human sacrifices and engage in black magic. Although this has yet to be proven, the Mexican government persecutes those who worship Santa Muerte as Satanists.

The White Brotherhood

In the early 1990s in Kyiv, Yuriy Kryvonohov, a former Soviet specialist in mass consciousness manipulation, along with his wife and former Komsomol activist, Maryna Tsvihun, decided it would be wonderful if people voluntarily signed over their apartments to them. To this end, they founded the eschatological sect "YUSMALOS," also known as the "White Brotherhood." Somehow, they quickly managed to convince many people that Kryvonohov was the vicar of God on Earth and that his wife was the living deity Maria Devi Christos. Together with their followers, they awaited the end of the world, which they believed would happen soon. To prepare for resistance against the Antichrist, they aggressively extorted money from sect members. In the ruins of the USSR, people generally had no money, but from 1992 onwards, Ukraine began privatising housing, and gullible apocalyptics rushed to sign over their newly acquired apartments to their gurus. Eventually, Kryvonohov and Tsvihun became completely disconnected from reality. In 1993, they and their flock seized the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, where they planned to meet the end of the world through self-immolation and resurrection after three days. Fortunately, the police managed to thwart these plans, and Kryvonohov, Tsvihun, and other White Brotherhood leaders ended up waiting for the apocalypse in prison.

Heaven's Gate

What would amateur astrophysicists do when they learn that a large comet is about to pass by Earth? Most likely, they would purchase a good telescope and check the weather forecast to choose the best observation spot in advance. However, in the mid-1970s, Americans Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles decided that preparing for the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet required the creation of... a UFO cult. They named it "Heaven's Gate." Its followers were convinced that the Hale-Bopp comet would inevitably collide with Earth, leading to the death of all humans except them. They believed that by committing group suicide in the face of the apocalypse, their souls would ascend and board a UFO (which, in their view, was hiding in the comet's tail) to begin an eternal journey through the endless cosmos with the aliens. Two decades later, in the spring of 1997, 39 people gathered at a ranch in Santa Fe, drank lemon juice to cleanse their sinful bodies, and then sedated themselves with pudding and fruit jelly laced with phenobarbital, washed down with vodka. As they drifted into sleep, the cultists placed plastic bags over their heads, ensuring they would never wake up. Meanwhile, the Hale-Bopp comet treacherously passed by Earth.

Peoples Temple

Soviet communists called religion "the opium of the people," but when American Jim Jones founded the sectarian settlement of Jonestown in socialist Guyana in the 1970s, he frequently played the Soviet Union's anthem over loudspeakers and even named a street after Lenin. Christian communism is how the religious organisation "Peoples Temple" is often described, though rumours circulated from the outset that Jones attracted followers to his faith not so much through spiritual sermons but through closed political rallies filled with threats, beatings, and insults. In 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan flew to Jonestown to investigate these claims. After his visit, armed sect members among the security guards prevented the politician from leaving peacefully and telling the American public what he had witnessed – they shot Ryan at the airport. That same evening, realising the irreversible consequences, Jones ordered the settlement residents to drink grape-flavoured cyanide, resulting in the deaths of nearly a thousand people. This became the largest mass killing of U.S. citizens due to a deliberate act, holding this tragic distinction until September 11, 2001.

Good News International Ministries

In times like these, good news is indeed scarce – so when Kenyan taxi driver Paul Nthenge Mackenzie decided to start a religious sect, he named it Good News International Ministries. The name may seem odd for an eschatological cult, but it resonated with the residents of the town of Malindi and the surrounding areas. In Mackenzie's interpretation, good news mostly consisted of joyful announcements that education was unnecessary, medical treatment was unnecessary, watching American movies was unnecessary, accepting humanitarian aid from the UN was unnecessary, and even engaging in sports was unnecessary – because all of this was the dreadful evil of the Western world. However, what was absolutely necessary to meet Jesus Christ was to starve oneself. Mackenzie, who had already attracted the attention of Kenyan law enforcement, fled into the forest, where he lured children and their uneducated relatives to starve them to death. Unfortunately, the police acted not exactly in time – about three dozen emaciated people were rescued, but 89 sect members were found in shallow graves, and another two hundred are considered missing.

AllatRa

In 2014, when Russia's aggression against Ukraine began, a pro-Russian cult named "AllatRa" was registered in Kyiv. It started receiving massive funding from unknown sources to advertise its activities. For a long time, the sect did not attract much attention, as it was built around esoteric stories by someone under the pseudonym Anastasia Novykh (there's a theory that this is just a new persona of the already known Maria Devi Christos, i.e., Maryna Tsvihun from the White Brotherhood, who had been released from prison by that time). "AllatRa" promoted a hodgepodge of various religions, beliefs, philosophies, scientific and pseudoscientific concepts, and most importantly, faith in all things good and world peace. The organisation managed to attract many relatives of Ukrainian officials, including some very high-ranking ones. But with the onset of the full-scale invasion, the sect's intensified pro-Russian activities made Ukrainians take a closer look at "AllatRa" – and soon everyone noticed that the world peace (according to Anastasia Novykh's works) was supposed to come after the spiritual unification of all Slavs, to be ensured by a charismatic leader-king named Nomo, whose life story exactly mirrored that of V.V. Putin. In the autumn of 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the National Police of Ukraine reported that, as a result of a lengthy special operation, the international criminal pro-Russian organisation "AllatRa" had been completely neutralised.