The religion factor is yet again getting insufficient attention when it comes to dark human affairs—in this case regarding the Russian assault on Ukraine.

Early in the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure, set in Alaska, main character Dr. Joel Fleischman asks, “Why can’t the Russians find a way to govern themselves and let us off of this perpetual, gnawing anxiety?” That was back when the global future—with predictions of the end of conflict history as democracy and free markets suppressed nationalist and religious strife—appeared bright. A big problem past and present has been the Russian Orthodox Church. While calling for peace, its leader, Patriarch Kirill, shrilly endorses Putin’s cruel land grab while furiously denouncing modernity as an alliance with “the devil and father of lies.” That is in part because the Church is using the invasion to try to achieve its own power grab.

It’s no surprise the Russian Church is being so grotesque. It is its history. For centuries, Russia was a theocratic kleptocracy ruled by strict czars in close alliance with a hardline priesthood happy to support the gloomy and often virulent dictatorship in exchange for money, power, and influence—including chronic anti-Semitism as per Fiddler on the Roof. Whatever shot that harsh system had at reform was aborted by the Lutheran-dominated German government when, designing to knock Russia out of the Great War, it dispatched atheist Lenin to Moscow. That incompetent sociopath actually thought it was a good idea to apply Marxist theory via brutality to what became the Soviet Empire. Aside from managing to rebuff the invasion by the deeply demented Christopagan Nazis—Hitler and his cronies were not atheists—the dreary Soviet project collapsed under its own economic and societal weary weight. Religion had little to do with the internal collapse of the USSR—the secular lure of hip and exciting Western culture via the Beatles had a lot more to do with that.

According to the Pew Research Center, God belief soared from about 33 percent of Russians when the USSR disappeared to over 50 percent in this century, as church membership rose even faster to over 66 percent. But one must wonder about that. The same polls also found that belief in an afterlife remained stuck at about a 33 percent while church attendance remains in the single digits. That suggests Russian religion is more about nationalist pride than thinking Jesus is the saver of souls.

What is fact is how the neo-Czar Putin, a former KGB agent who may be an atheist, has forged a new alliance with the Russian Church—which has been entirely fine with the return to a state terroristic autocracy and plutocracy that promotes the traditional Christian values offered by a church patriarchy that hates the secular Western mores that threaten its power status. Whatever post–Cold War chance Russia may have had at becoming a vibrant modern nation, it has reverted to being a dismal land of corruption burdened by gnawing fear and political murder both home and abroad, so unable to catch up with the developed world that it exports virtually no manufactured consumer goods. Its wimpy economy is similar in size to those of Italy and California. That Putin has been so popular reflects the Alaskan doctor’s lament at how the Russian people seem perpetually unable to get their act together. All Putin can offer Ukrainians is to make them as miserable as are the Russians he rules. No wonder he is having to use vicious military means to try to drag Western-looking Ukraine kicking and screaming back into a bleak, unified Christo-Slavic fold.

Many think American conservatives are hypocritical when they praise opponent of Soviet oppression Ronald Reagan yet laud friend of Russian tyranny Donald Trump. But there is a (twisted) logic to it. The Soviets were the God and capital-hating Bolsheviks. Putin’s kleptocracy pushes grim anachronistic Christian and White nationalist mores.

Religious affairs are very complicated and fraught in Eastern Europe. They include serious tiffs between assorted Ukrainian and Russian churches, with the first recently splitting from a latter enraged at the brazenly disloyal action. But basic theology is not radically divisive in and between the two largely Orthodox countries. The problem is Russian State Christianity. Had the Moscow church stood firm for the obvious decencies of peace and democracy, then today’s Russia may well not be an expansionist autocracy, and the Ukrainian branch would not have split off. As it is, an unreformed corrupt Russian Orthodox Church has played a major role in continuing drab misery and deadly strife in the new century.

So far, global criticism has focused on Putin and his political and financial friends. Petitioning the Kremlin directly has been useless—although that may change if the invasion continues to lag (people keep forgetting that corrupt Russian armies tend to perform poorly, especially at the beginning of conflicts) and sanctions bite deep. If the Church had demanded a stop to the war, that would have had real potential to degrade popular support for the conflict while gutting the legitimacy of the Putin regime. That is not happening because the Moscow Church hopes to use a victorious war to reabsorb the Ukrainian offshoot. Some religions are expressing sharp discontent with Kirill—good for them. The secular world—and its national leaders such as Biden—needs to lean hard on the Church to reform, starting by renouncing the war and its architect and detaching itself from the government. If the Church does not do so, it must be condemned, shamed, and isolated for its obsolete and self-serving immorality. There is nothing to lose, and time is wasting as the earthly disaster rages on.

Looking at the big picture, theism cannot offer a solution to humanity’s problems. If any creator deities exist, they—as I have explained elsewhere, including in this magazine—are seriously immoral, and more likely they and the religions they rest upon are made up. That includes the scriptures that promote autocracy. Democracy is the off-the-cuff invention of pagan Greeks for practical political purposes, later picked up by the American colonists for similar reasons. Religion is too defective to be of reliable use in making a better world. Autocratic movements in Western nations commonly involve a right-wing bigoted Christian element, as they do in the former Soviet Bloc; hardline Islam is a primary source of terror and medieval oppression; Hinduism is driving Indian-bigoted nationalism; Buddhists have not been particularly peaceful in Sri Lanka or Myanmar. If there is hope for the future, it is going to have to come from democratic, rational, and moral secular humanism.