The Politico recently set out to probe the complex private lives of young Russians who are living and working in Donald Trump-era Washington, D.C.

I have to admit, up front, that my take on this story has been influenced by the fact that (a) I am an Orthodox Christian, (b) I worked in D.C. for a decade-plus and (c) my current Oak Ridge, Tenn., parish includes its share of Russians and Romanians. Yes, Oak Ridge is way outside the Beltway, but it’s home for a very high security zone, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, so that has to count for something.

The massive double-decker Politico headline tells you all that you need to know about the content of this long feature:

Tinder Woes, Suspicious Landlords and Snarky Bosses: Young and Russian in D.C.
Washington’s young émigré crowd is beginning to feel like they’re living in a spy novel. And they’re the bad guys.

As always, let me stress that this whole Tinder angle is a valid and, of course, sexy angle on this story, which has certainly heated up in recent months. Hold that thought.

However, there’s nothing new about Russians living and working in major American cities, such as D.C. and New York. I would think that it’s easy to find many congregating in bars. However, you might also consider looking in a Russian-heritage church or two in Beltway land.

Here’s what GetReligion’s man in Moscow (a journalist who is a faithful reader, not a spy) had to say about this totally secular Politico story:

I am a little baffled that the discussion of the Russian community in a city like DC basically boiled down to a restaurant/club with expats from various Russian-speaking countries. This venue (and the report in general) only involved people of a very specific age range, let's say 25-35.

How could they not report about the Saint John the Baptist Russian Orthodox Cathedral? Is religion not one of the main factors uniting Russian speakers from countries like Russia, Ukraine and Moldova?

How, and why, did St. John the Baptist baptize Jesus?

GERALD’S QUESTION:

When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, what would the baptismal formula have been? “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” wasn’t used until the 2nd Century.

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Even a highly skeptical scholar like John Dominic Crossan considers it historical fact that Jesus inaugurated his public ministry with baptism performed by his cousin John the Baptist, who was “preaching in the wilderness.” There’s also wide agreement that John would have used full immersion in the waters of the Jordan River (those loud amens you hear are coming from Baptists). But as for what words John recited, the Bible doesn’t say though, yes, it doesn’t seem plausible he would have spoken Christianity’s familiar invocation of the triune God that Gerald quotes.

The Acts of the Apostles depicts three baptisms during the earliest phase of the Christian movement, each performed in the name of Jesus and not the Trinity (which is the practice of modern-day “Oneness” Pentecostals). However, the Gospel of Matthew, written in the same time frame as Acts, suggests belief in the three divine persons in the Trinity in its account of Jesus’ baptism (3:13-17, paralleled in Mark 1 and Luke 3). As Dale Allison comments, “the Son is baptized, the Father speaks, and the Spirit descends.” Then the Trinity becomes explicit in Matthew 28:19 as Jesus directs his followers to make disciples, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

So invocation of the Trinity quickly emerged in the 1st Century as a permanent feature of Christian baptism.