Fact check: Gorbachev was a Christian
It looks as though he probably was, but he found it hard to talk about publicly.
Mikhail Gorbachev, who died yesterday, was secretly baptised as an infant by his mother in an Orthodox church, and his mother used to take an icon off the wall and bless him with it. Both his grandparents were Christians.
In later life, Gorbachev’s friends said he had become a Christian, and he was caught unexpectedly by a reporter once, kneeling in prayer in front of the tomb of St Francis.
But his faith, or lack of it, was something Gorbachev found difficult to talk about publicly, apparently, and Bill Clark and Dr. Paul Kengor tried to convince him to speak about it in an interview, not long before his death. The interview never eventuated.
Gorbachev was instrumental in ending the Cold War, along with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. In the 80s, we all thought that the world was going to end with a nuclear conflagration, but Gorbachev and Reagan brought that age of nuclear brinkmanship to an end; at least, for a while.
Now, Biden, Putin, NATO, and indeed China, are doing their best to raise the level of tension again.
A good article about Gorbachev by Dr. Paul Kengor:
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/90978-mikhail-gorbachev-meets-his-maker-2022-08-31
Change Log
Changed the subtitle from “nobody knows for certain” to “he found it hard to talk about publicly.” Of course, some of his close friends probably know. And God knows. Hopefully Gorbachev is seeing Jesus face to face now; I sincerely hope so, because he gave the world at least sixteen years of no longer dreading that the nuclear option was inevitable. We must trust God, though - like Gorbachev we will all die - and there is hope for eternal life in Jesus Christ; real, fully alive, resurrected life.