Fox News contributor Ben Carson joined the growing list of American conservatives praising Vladimir Putin's Russia for its ultraconservative social policies, asserting that Russia is “gaining prestige and influence throughout the world” thanks to Putin's hardline brand of Orthodox Christianity.

In a February 12 column for TownHall.com, Carson echoed Pat Buchanan and Breitbart.com in musing that the former Soviet Union - once pilloried as the “godless, evil empire” - has long since overtaken the United States in the realm of “Christian values.” Carson lauded Russia's religious conservatism while endorsing Putin's recent remarks suggesting that the U.S. and western Europe have become “godless” (emphasis added):

We used to characterize the Soviet Union as a godless, evil empire. Like many societies based on communism or socialism, the Soviets saw fit to minimize the importance of God and, in many cases, wreaked unimaginable persecution on religious people.

Why is faith in God anathema to such states? It's because they need to remove any authority other than themselves as the arbiter of right and wrong.

Interestingly, last year Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized Euro-Atlantic countries, including the United States, of becoming godless and moving away from Christian values. Some may bristle at such an accusation, but when you consider that many Americans are hesitant even to mention God or Jesus in public, there may be some validity to his claim.We also casually have tossed out many of the principles espoused in the Bible and have concluded that there's no authority greater than man himself.

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As secular progressives try to remove all vestiges of God from our society, let us remember the godly principles of loving our fellow man, caring about our neighborhoods, developing our God-given talents to the utmost so that we become valuable to the people around us, and maintaining high principles that govern our lives. Our Judeo-Christian values led this nation to the pinnacle of the world in record time. If we embrace them, they will keep us there.

While we Americans are giving a cold shoulder to our religious heritage, the Russians are warming to religion. The Russians seem to be gaining prestige and influence throughout the world as we are losing ours. I wonder whether there is a correlation.

Though Carson didn't explicitly mention the anti-gay “propaganda” law that has ensnared LGBT Russians, journalists, and civil society groups, the country's religious conservatism was indispensable to the law's passage. As the National Catholic Reporter noted in August, the Kremlin colluded with the Orthodox Church to secure the law's passage.

Carson's warm words for a country that ranks among the most flagrant violators of LGBT citizens' human rights fit a larger pattern of anti-LGBT commentary. In March 2013, Carson came under fire for a Fox appearance in which he compared marriage equality to pedophilia and bestiality. Carson proved even more apoplectic on the subject in his 2012 book America the Beautiful, predicting that allowing same-sex couples to marry could lead to the destruction of the republic. Marriage equality, he wrote, “is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.”