Chapter 147. Faith and Empire Today: Religion in the Geopolitics of Russia, China, Iran and the United States

After the Cold War, religion returned to great-power politics. Russia rebuilt a partnership between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate. China’s Communist Party moved from tolerating religion to “sinicising” it. Iran’s clerical state and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi monarchy fought a forty-year contest for the Muslim world, and in the United States an evangelical constituency became a lasting factor in Middle East policy. This chapter surveys these four cases, with the Ukraine war as a central example of a conflict that several sources read as partly ecclesiastical. It then sets beside them the two most radical “outside” views in the library: Mitchell Heisman’s argument that the secular-technological Singularity is the culmination of monotheism, and Mehran Keshe’s programme to replace religions and states with a “Universal Council”. Each is reported as its author presents it.

Russia: Eurasianism, Orthodoxy and the “civilization state”

Charles Clover traces Eurasianism from the White Russian émigrés of the 1920s through the Soviet-era dissident Lev Gumilev, who popularised the word among “ideologues of reaction – both dissident nationalists and Soviet hardliners”, to Aleksandr Dugin and finally the Kremlin. On 4 October 2011, a week after announcing his return to the presidency, Putin published a full-page Izvestiya article proposing a “Eurasian Union” of former Soviet states. Clover calls this an “extravagant double entendre”. In September 2013, at the Valdai forum, Putin again called Russia a “civilization state”, a phrase Clover describes as a “dog-whistle term” [Clover, Black Wind, White Snow, #62819, Part III]. Clover does not treat Dugin as a simple puppet-master. In his view, Dugin had “a near monopoly on the production of the symbols, theories and pamphlets of a new hardline nationalism”, but “in the hyperreality that is Russian politics, where a parallel universe is amplified to deafening volume via state TV and talking heads like Dugin, all ideology is indeed mere language” [Clover, #62819]. Harold James makes a similar point by analogy: “Dugin bears more than a casual resemblance to his mentor Karl Haushofer. In the same way as more commentators outside Germany held Haushofer to be the strategic mastermind of Hitlerism, it is much more common in the West than in Russia to attribute to Dugin Vladimir Putin’s espousal of the obviously geopolitical Eurasian project” [James, The War of Words, #68119, “Geopolitics”].

Owen Matthews shows how this ideology was tied to the Church. He quotes Dugin directly: “Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism with a passionate desire for true changes … We conservatives want a strong, solid state, want order and healthy family, positive values, the reinforcing of the importance of religion and the Church”. He describes the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev as “a passionate believer in divine-right monarchism and in creationism”. In late January 2014, Matthews writes, Malofeev “had been travelling with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, taking a collection of ancient Christian relics on tour through Russia”. This was the period in which Kirill would warn of “forces of evil” that are “hostile to the unity of the Russian people and Church” [Matthews, Overreach, #66606, ch. 4]. The reference shelf adds the doctrine of “Nuclear Orthodoxy”. In 2007 Putin called the Orthodox Church and the nuclear arsenal “the components that strengthen Russian statehood”, and in 2009 Kirill said at Sarov that Russia’s nuclear programme was the will of God [Wikipedia: Nuclear Orthodoxy]. The church rivalry with Constantinople is also documented. After the Ecumenical Patriarchate moved to recognise an independent Ukrainian church, the Moscow Synod broke communion on 15 October 2018, and Patriarch Bartholomew signed the tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on 5 January 2019 [Wikipedia: Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine].

Ukraine as a church war

The ecclesiastical fault line in Ukraine is old. Pacepa and Rychlak note that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church “had been in communion with the Holy See since the Union of Brest in 1595-96” and was in tension with Russian Orthodoxy. In 1946 it “was forcibly ‘rejoined’ to the Russian Orthodox Church and forced to revoke its union with Rome” [Pacepa & Rychlak, Disinformation, #76607].

Keshe makes this fault line the key to the 2022 war. In KSW 422 (3 March 2022) he claims the conflict was a Vatican attempt to take over the finances of the Russian Orthodox Church: “the Russian Church ask Putin to protect them from Vatican takeover … He had a reason to protect the motherland’s Church, that’s all it is”. He predicts “more mayhem between the 2 Churches, unless we bring the light, that God’s word is within the Soul of the Man” [Keshe, KSW 422, #378134]. In KSW 428 he says the British Privy Council and government are an “instigator of many wars”. Recalling how “the physical abuse of the man” came forward when the Church of England began selling churches, he adds: “I pray for the soul of … the leaders of Vatican, that they come to their senses. And the same with the Church in Moscow” [Keshe, KSW 428, #378140].

China: sinicisation and control

The library holds few monographs on religion in the People’s Republic, so this section relies on the reference shelf. The Communist Party requires its members to be atheists. Under Deng Xiaoping it moved from Mao’s campaign of elimination to a regulatory policy, and since 2015 Xi Jinping has made “sinicisation” official doctrine. Religions, especially those deemed foreign such as Christianity and Islam, must “align their teachings and customs with Chinese traditions and ‘pledge loyalty’ to the state”. New regulations came into force on 1 February 2020 [Wikipedia: Religious policy of Xi Jinping]. The campaign against Falun Gong began on 20 July 1999 and was led by an extra-constitutional “6-10 Office”. Reports compiled by US government bodies describe detentions in the hundreds of thousands, and investigators allege forced organ harvesting [Wikipedia: Persecution of Falun Gong]. The 2018 Vatican-China agreement on bishops, attacked in Diabolical as having “codified Communist Party interference” [Diabolical, #71209], belongs to this context.

Keshe presents China as his partner rather than a persecutor. In KSW 508 (19 October 2023) he says: “I have committed the Keshe Foundation to peace through the Chinese structure … we deliver the technology for President Xi to deliver the principle politically, equality, share”, and he praises the Belt and Road conference [Keshe, KSW 508, #378220]. In KSW 654 he claims Foundation material has been moved to China “for the new Space Center” [Keshe, KSW 654, #378366].

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel

Kim Ghattas describes a “black wave” that began in 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution, the seizure of the Mecca mosque and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In her account it set off a forty-year competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran for leadership of the Muslim world, visible “from Iran to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, and in my own country of Lebanon”. She documents the Saudi financing behind it: funding for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth rose from $250,000 a year in 1962 to $13 million by 1980 [Ghattas, Black Wave, #72495, Part I].

Keshe, who was born in Iran, frames the current Israel-Iran confrontation in his own terms. In KSW 533 (10 April 2024) he says: “America has become afraid of Iran’s ability to target with great precision their long range missiles that can reach Israel. As I said recently to a diplomat, America’s fear is how to accommodate more than 2 million Jews in the US” [Keshe, KSW 533, #378245]. In KSW 632 (5 March 2026) he gives casualty figures that he calls “the statistics internally from them” and says the media conceal: “Over 180,000 Iranian have been killed in the past week. Over 35,000 Jews have died in Tel Aviv and in Israel. Humanity has lost nearly quarter of a million population in less than 5 days. Media control.” In the same workshop he reads the Book of Esther and Purim as a celebration of “the murder of 300,000 Iranians” [Keshe, KSW 632, #378344]. These figures are his own; no other source used in this chapter gives them.

The United States: the evangelical-Zionist constituency

Mearsheimer and Walt count Christian Zionists, “a subset of the broader politically oriented Christian Right” that includes Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee as well as politicians such as Tom DeLay, as part of the Israel lobby. They argue that the 1967 war, which dispensationalists saw as a “miracle of God”, made the movement a political force [Mearsheimer & Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, #75004, “Christian Zionists”]. Synarchy records that Christians United for Israel “claims a membership of seven million, larger than any Jewish organization” and holds that “Christians have a biblical obligation to defend Israel” [Synarchy, #67074, “Zionists”]. Under Trump, the former trade adviser Peter Navarro describes a strategy “we had strategically devised to diplomatically encircle Communist China” [Navarro, Taking Back Trump’s America, #79546].

Keshe’s alternative world order and his critique of religion

Keshe’s dated statements form a distinct political programme and are recorded here as predictions. In KSW 307 (19 December 2019): “The Tehran conference is set for the world leaders to sign themselves into a No War condition. It’s not a peace treaty, it’s a No War treaty” [Keshe, KSW 307, #378019]. In KSW 311 (16 January 2020) he predicted US-Iran peace talks. He said that “in January of 2021 we’ll make the arrangements and facilitate the interface internationally with the UC [Universal Council]”, that he would step down by 21 March 2021, and that the planet would have “no king, no emperor, no Archbishops, and no Popes” [Keshe, KSW 311, #378023]. In KSW 629 (2026) an invitation from the “Universal Council” calls on world leaders to “sign the World Peace Treaty”. Its summary lists “No need for governments” and “Need Keshe Coin” [Keshe, KSW 629, #378341]. In KSW 634 he proposes giving “a thousand Coin to the citizens” of poor nations as a “peace currency” [Keshe, KSW 634, #378346; KSW 654, #378366].

His view of religion as such is equally radical. KSW 629 is summarised as “Ignorance creates religion and beliefs; Religion has no reality” [Keshe, KSW 629, #378341]. In KSW 518 (28 December 2023) he says that “with the coming of Christianity we became one step more mature. Now we carry the statue around our neck”, and calls the cross, the crescent and the Star of David “the same Pagan worship in different dimensions” [Keshe, KSW 518, #378230]. In KSW 644 (28 May 2026) he describes negative soul-energy “especially with the men of robe, the biggest crooks, priests” [Keshe, KSW 644, #378356]. In KSW 205 (4 January 2018) he blames clerical celibacy for abuse: “a man who is produced to reproduce” cannot be told not to [Keshe, KSW 205, #377848].

Heisman: the Singularity as the end of monotheism

Mitchell Heisman offers a second post-religious vision, opposite to Keshe’s in method. Part I of his work is titled “God is Technology: How the Singularity of Monotheism Transcended Biology and Primed the Technological Genesis of God” [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252]. He argues that Judaism, “as a first decisive alignment with an ultimate trajectory of postbiological evolution, … took a step towards a pattern of ‘progress’ culminating in a transcendence of biology: God”. He also claims that “it was Newton, not Darwin, who led the modern, scientific revolution towards the idea that God is a machine” [Heisman, #38252, Part II]. His reading of Nazism is an inversion. The Nazis “mistakenly understood Judaism in purely biological terms”, so that “Jews stand in the way of evolutionary progress”. The Singularity, as he presents it, reverses that verdict: biology itself becomes the obstacle to the technological evolution that monotheism set in motion [Heisman, #38252, part 89]. Where Keshe would replace religions with knowledge of the Soul, Heisman sees the machine completing them.

Key points

• Clover and James both warn against treating Dugin as the hidden author of Putin’s policy; Matthews documents the Malofeev-Kirill relic tour and Dugin’s “Russian fascism” formula.
• The Moscow-Constantinople schism (2018) and Ukrainian autocephaly (2019) are documented. Keshe interprets the 2022 war as a Vatican-Orthodox financial struggle.
• The library lacks monographs on China; reference sources describe Xi’s sinicisation policy (2015-2020) and the campaign against Falun Gong since 1999, while Keshe presents Xi as his partner.
• Ghattas traces the Saudi-Iranian rivalry to 1979. Keshe’s 2026 casualty figures for an Iran-Israel war are his own, presented as internal statistics hidden by “media control” [#378344].
• Mearsheimer and Walt identify Christian Zionists as part of the Israel lobby; Synarchy puts CUFI’s claimed membership at seven million.
• Keshe’s dated predictions (a Tehran “No War” treaty, the Universal Council opening in January 2021, his resignation by March 2021) are recorded as predictions. In 2026 he was again calling for a World Peace Treaty and a Keshe Coin.
• Heisman and Keshe offer opposite post-religious horizons: Heisman sees technology completing monotheism, Keshe sees knowledge of the Soul dissolving it.