We, the free bishops of the Russian Church, do not want a truce with satan. Although you try to cloud the issue by calling our hostile attitude toward the Bolsheviks merely political, we believe that the struggle against them is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."

—From a letter by Metropolitan Anthony of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia to Metropolitan Sergius.