NATO's expansion to the east is just one of the reasons by which Russia justifies its invasion of Ukraine. Another is the idea that there is interference from abroad in the religious arena of Ukraine, including alleged US efforts to instigate a schism of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The patyrarch of Moscow Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said that both the West and a new rival patriarch “have the same goal” of weakening Russia and making enemies of brotherly peoples, Russians and Ukrainians.”
Experts say that the religious aspect is not the main reason for the invasion, but it cannot be ignored either.
“You can't talk about a religious war. However, (the invasion) has a religious dimension,” said Rev. Cyril Hovorun, a Ukrainian-born Orthodox priest who teaches ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at Stockholm University.
Kirill made his comment in response to a letter from the acting director of the World Council of Churches, who urged him to “raise his voice” and mediate with the authorities to stop the war.
Kirill argued that the war was not the fault of the Russian authorities and that the root of the conflict is threats from abroad, both political and religious.
He stressed that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019 formally recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a country that the Moscow Patriarchate considers under its jurisdiction. The Ecumenical Patriarch, based in Turkey, is considered “first among equals” among Orthodox patriarchs, but, unlike a pope, he has no authority beyond his own territory.
In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the United States of being “directly involved in the current Orthodox crisis” and of having “funded Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople so that he could pursue a divisive policy, including Ukraine.”
He offered no evidence of this alleged manipulation, although US officials spoke in favor of Ukrainians' right to religious self-determination.
Most Russians and Ukrainians are Orthodox, but the controversy goes beyond numbers. Patriarch Kirill has long supported Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both promote the idea of a “Russian world”, forged over a millennium of Orthodox Christian culture shared by Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The Ukrainians say that they are a separate people, related to the Russians. In the lead-up to the war, Putin criticized modern Ukraine, saying that it was an illegitimate Soviet invention. He argued that Ukrainian Orthodox who remained loyal to Moscow were threatened.
In his first sermon since the invasion, on March 6, Kirill alluded to the concept of a Russian world. He said that in Ukraine there was a “metaphysical” struggle, between a foreign liberal establishment, which wants countries to hold “gay parades” to be admitted to a world of consumption and excessive freedoms.
Religious disputes in the region date from the arrival of the Orthodox in that part of the world a millennium ago.
In the first centuries, the Orthodox people of the Kiev area were under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. But in 1686, with the church of Constantinople weakened under Ottoman rule, the ecumenical patriarch ordered the Moscow patriarchate, now independent, to ordain the chief bishop of Kiev. The Russian Orthodox Church says that this was a permanent change of jurisdiction. The Ecumenical Patriarchate states that it was temporary.
Hovorun says that the history of the modern church makes it clear that the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is not a project of the United States.
“The idea of an independent church emerged almost 100 years ago in Ukraine,” Hovorun said.
Ukraine had an independent Orthodox church during a brief period of independence in the 1920s and again after its separation from the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s.
The two main branches came together and were recognized by the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2019. Moscow strongly opposed that measure.
“Until that step was taken, Kirill and everyone could refer to the various Ukrainian churches as schismatic,” said Catherine Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies specializing in the region. “At that time the rivalry over the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate increased.”
The dispute became politicized, Hovorun said, but it was “in response to the politicization of the Russian church at the behest of the Kremlin.”
The US State Department praised the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This, plus contacts with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who has met with dignitaries from the United States, prompts Russians to talk about US meddling in the schism.
Ukraine is currently ruled by a secular Jew, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said it will not interfere with religious affairs, according to Wanner.
Many Orthodox Ukrainians remained faithful to the Moscow patriarchate. But they are reconsidering that loyalty in view of the fact that the Russian patriarch did not condemn the invasion of Russia.
“Unfortunately, Patriarch Kirill's requests for peace sound false in view of his approval of the invasion of a sovereign nation in the name of an imperialist notion of a 'Russian world' that no longer exists.”
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