ON MAY 3RD an unusual ceremony took place at Westminster Abbey, one of the Church of England’s grandest temples. To mark 50 years of Britain’s sea-based nuclear arsenal, the Dean of Westminster offered thanks to all those who had served with the country’s nuclear-deterrent forces. The Duke of Cambridge and other pillars of the establishment were among a packed congregation.

However, they were roundly booed by protesters who had gathered outside. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament denounced the church service as “morally repugnant” and staged a “die-in”. About 200 priests and two bishops had also said that it was wrong to offer thanks for such lethal weapons.

Across America’s armed forces the dissemination of the Christian faith, and its association with military prowess, is also controversial, and is widely challenged on constitutional grounds (see previous article). Yet there is one historically Christian land where, albeit after a 70-year communist interlude, the national church enjoys huge, growing and largely uncontested influence over the armed forces. That country is Russia.

Having built up close relationships with all parts of the defence establishment, especially the triad of forces which stand ready to deliver land-, sea- and air-launched nukes, the Russian Orthodox church is now reinforcing its role at the apex of the country’s military machine.

In a weird historical turnaround, uniformed clerics may increasingly be reproducing the function exercised in the Soviet era by a caste of officers known as zampoliti. Their job was to maintain morale, check for any signs of dissident thinking and keep fanning the flames of Marxist zeal.

Bits of the story on the church’s military role can be pieced together from news bulletins. For example, it was announced in February that priests embedded with the airborne troops would learn to drive armoured cars. But the entire tale has now been presented in methodical detail by an Israeli scholar, Dmitry Dima Adamsky. In his new book, “Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy”, he shows how church-military relations have evolved in the three decades since atheistic communism fell.

Mr Adamsky portrays what he calls a decade of “genesis” when various ad-hoc forms of synergy emerged; a decade of “conversion” when the different parts of the armed forces, including the navy and air force, regained strength with much moral support from the church; and a decade of “operationalisation” when church-military relations became more entrenched.

These relations have taken many spectacular forms. They include the building of prayer spaces large and small in defence installations of all kinds, not least on nuclear submarines; the blessing of missiles in their silos, and of fighter-aircraft as they are about to go on combat missions; and aerial manoeuvres corresponding to a “procession with the cross”, an Orthodox ritual in which the faithful sanctify a piece of territory by marching round it with crosses and banners.

When service personnel receive pep talks on the sweep of Russian history, there is much emphasis on the deep links between religion and the army, starting with the military saints of medieval times and the icons they carried into battle.

As Mr Adamsky shows, some of the church’s earliest, and most improbable, relationships were developed with scientists, both military and civilian, who were involved in different stages of the nuclear cycle, from handling nuclear fuel to designing new weapons. In the early 1990s Russians in this sector were deeply demoralised, badly paid, and uncertain whether the country’s arsenal had any future at all.

In many ways, the church came to the rescue. Take the town of Sarov. To any devout Russian, it is the home of Saint Seraphim, an ascetic monk who was one of the most revered holy men of the tsarist era. In communist times, the place was turned into a super-secret nuclear research centre known as Arzamas-16. After the Soviet Union collapsed, it regained its old religiously resonant name but kept its nuclear prowess. It became a popular venue for conferences co-organised by the church and the nuclear personnel, at which the need to preserve Russia’s nuclear capacity, even in the hardest times, was proclaimed in a feel-good way by everybody present.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox church since 2009, has said the church can take credit for maintaining the country’s nuclear capacity in an era when finances and confidence were rock-bottom. As a matter of historical fact, Orthodox churches, including the Russian one, have generally sought accommodation with earthly powers; but the clerical-nuclear partnership was still an unusual one, perhaps reflecting the fact that both parties were struggling hard to adapt to a new era and felt they needed friends.

According to Mr Adamsky, a professor at IDC Herzliya university, the latest big development is a seemingly arcane but important addition to the structure of Russia’s defence establishment. As of last August, a new body was established. Dubbed the “Main Political Directorate of the General Staff”, it is headed by a general with the rank of deputy defence minister. To anyone with an ear for Soviet terminology, this sounded like the institution which fostered communist zeal across the Red Army.

The new unit will also have an ideological role. It has been told to “develop structures at all levels for armed forces, right down to the [individual] military unit.” And one of the main purposes of these structures will be to inculcate the Orthodox tradition. To that end, it will train military priests and raise funds for a vast church of the armed forces, to be erected by next year in a place outside Moscow called Patriot Park. It will have space for 6,000 people, and the colour-scheme will reflect the hues of missiles and armoured cars. Decorations will include battle scenes from the Bible. Elsewhere in the park there will be monuments dedicated to the patron saints of each branch of the forces.

The directorate’s first head, General Andrei Kartapolov, was reported to believe that “the modern Russian serviceman cannot be formed without cultivating a lofty [sense of] spirituality inside him...”

In short, the present order makes it very hard to belong to a minority faith, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who reject military service, and have suffered a wave of persecution this year.

As with almost every centuries-old religion tradition, Russian Orthodoxy’s spiritual tool-box includes more than one way of approaching peace and war. It venerates the peace-minded medieval brothers Boris and Gleb, martyred princes who accepted death meekly; and Saint Philip, martyred in 1569 because he challenged Ivan the Terrible’s killing sprees. Right now, the church leaders and the Kremlin are ensuring that it is the martial spirit that prevails.