Today’s BBC website shows a young Muscovite girl protesting against the sentence passed on the Pussy Rioters. She is holding high a poster saying, in English, ‘We are Pussy Riot. We are legion.’
This is a slight paraphrase of Mark 5:9, clearly intended to show that young Russians in general and young Christians in particular don’t mind anything the Rioters did, and even praise it.
Generally I welcome Biblical references, especially when, as in this case, they are truly applicable. Alas, though this one does apply, it doesn’t do so in the way intended by the poster bearer.
Allow me to quote the verse in full, along with the previous one to set the scene. ‘For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.’
The legion in other words is made up of demons, one of whom Jesus drives out of a man possessed. Or, to put it back into the context of the protest, the poster suggests that the Pussy Rioters are satanic.
The believer in me nods his enthusiastic approval. The music lover concurs. The pedant laments the pitiful standards of public education in Russia. And the political commentator remarks yet again how grossly inadequate the opposition to Putin is.
Learn your scripture, boys and girls.