Ukraine wants a national church that is not beholden to Moscow - Sensationalist Headlines

I agree with, and even if, as other users have said, religion has historically been heavily beholden to politics and vice-versa, I think that religion should be timeless and unrelated to politics; religion should be a personal belief and connection with whatever god you believe in, and not a legal framework which you have to follow to be considered "saved".

And how long to you think that will last, exactly? A couple of millennia are nothing when considering the history of mankind. Religious beliefs have come and go, I don't see why those would be any different. Besides, that says nothing of whether they should change. People believe whatever they want, and not be adverse to change simply because their current belief is ancient. Age doesn't give any intrinsic value to them, it's not like you're trying to reach for sole dumb high score.

Compared to the mythologies that came before them lasted, I'm pretty certain they will last. There are 1.2 billion Catholics alone in the world, a whole 7th of the globe's population. I am not saying that it should be respected or adhered to for the mere fact that it is old. If faiths are to make any sense, then they must be timeless because should there be a God out there, I doubt he would "change with the times". There ought to be universal standards that are held in no matter what age, because anything less is just cultural relativism.

its pretty much equivalent when you have the enourmous amount of quid pro quo going on in today's politics. ya its not officially in power but the power of evangelicals here is not strictly unofficial as well, we have states that enshrine a lot of christian doctrine into law and lawmakers there are campaigning in churches, we have states like Utah which is completely run by mormons, and then we have all the massive amount of religiously affiliated thinktanks writing legislation for people

I'm not sure what the portion of the world population has to do with longevity. Cultural shifts can quite quickly change adherence to a religion in the world. Consider how many people stopped practicing their religion or became agnostic in the developed world compared to a century ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the developing world, which is set to make up the majority of tomorrow's population, were to follow the same trend in the future. So essentially the bus stop dilemma? Or sunk cost fallacy? I can't really identify with your explanation since I certainly don't believe that there is a god out there that set out moral standards or even cares at all about humans. But to suggest that the religions that dare change are less "true" than those that never do is completely irrational. In fact, being ready to change and adapt makes the former much more closer to the truth, as per the scientific method. Unless, of course, you believe that we were closer to these elusive universal standards in the first century than in our current era.

lol, are we playing Europa Universalis? This is full of medieval concepts.

no, But if you can wished portrayed Independent [Eastern] Orthodoxy as heretic rioters all you want.

To be fair, he didn't start it, he just reacted.