UKRAINIAN ORTHODOXY: VIEWING A MODERN CRISIS THROUGH A HISTORICAL LENS
September 2023
In the first few months of the conflict in Ukraine the headlines were typically dominated by the movements of troops and the scenes of devastation and battlefields. In the midst of this ongoing violent crisis there was another kind of spiritual warfare brewing, one which has been ongoing for many generations. The wider viewing public was awakened to this spiritual dimension of the conflict when monks under the Moscow Patriarchate were expelled from the thousand year old holy site known as “Kyiv Pechersk Lavra” (Dettmer & Melkozerova, 2023). They were being removed in order to give one of the holiest sites in Ukraine to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Kiev Patriarchate. In Ukraine there now exist two churches both claiming to be the orthodox church in Ukraine to which all the faithful should submit.
To understand this conflict it is necessary to understand a bit about the Orthodox Church in general as it relates to Russia and Ukraine. The Christian world from late Antiquity to the fall of the Byzantine Empire straddled the Mediterranean as it expanded ever outwards in hopes of bringing new peoples into the ‘One True Church’. Before the time of the East West Schism in 1054 it could be said that the Church did not exist as a single political entity but rather one that existed as a set of competing power centers. The two churches of Rome and Constantinople became the two main axes to which most other churches in Europe and the Levant gravitated towards.
Before the official schism, however, these churches were beginning to differ from one another inexorably. Orthodoxy’s long battle against the rising religious and political power of Islam brought unique challenges to the Eastern Roman Empire that were not felt in the West. Whereas the church in the west began to center around one Bishop known as the Pope (Strand, 2016, p. 88). While these two Churches were united in name, their beliefs and practices were drifting ever further apart. Where in Rome the power was becoming more centralized into one figure, in the East power was collecting around the system of Patriarchs. Patriarchs were responsible for particular jurisdictions. Though there was special difference given to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, each bishop had jurisdiction over their own domain with little direct interference from Constantinople (Scroope, 2022).
Orthodoxy was brought to the Kievan Rus in 867, and subsequently the new church there inherited much of its ecclesiastical culture and customs from the Byzantine empire. As time went on, however, the Kievan Rus and later the Duchy of Moscow began to eclipse its progeniture. Moscow became a refuge for many Orthodox refugees, especially after Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In 1589, Moscow was elevated to Patriarchate status and was given jurisdiction over all of Russia, which at the time included parts of modern day Ukraine.
Some of the beginnings of a political difference emerging between Moscow and Kiev began in the late 1500’s. The Metropolitan of Kiev, under the influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, began to establish communion with Rome. This was something that well suited the Polish nobility who were Catholic; this, however, did not reflect the feelings of the laity and the decision was controversial (Denysenko, 2018b). This disconnect between Laity and Clergy as well as the outside influence of political territorial control would be and is a recurring theme in the history of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
With the Russian annexation territory that would one day become Ukraine, the independence of a Patriarchate in Kiev was denied and Kiev came under the auspices of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686 (Mudrov, 2019, p. 66). Issues regarding the independence of a Ukrainian church wouldn’t become a relevant political force until the Russian revolution in 1917. However, the early Ukrainian efforts to become independent from the Moscow patriarchate were hampered by unrelated but consequential political revolts in the Balkans that had occurred a few decades prior.
In the late 1800s when Bulgaria was struggling with the Ottoman Empire for independence of its own church, the government petitioned Constantinople to extend its potential Patriarchal jurisdiction to include ethnic Bulgarians that resided within other areas outside of its direct jurisdiction. This also led to situations where non-Bulgarians were being excluded from the Bulgarian Orthodox church even if they lived within Bulgaria (Denysenko, 2018a, p. 24). This attempt to bring ethnic Bulgarians into the national church based solely upon ethnicity and was labeled as a heretical belief known as Ethnophyletism and the Bulgarian Church was not in communion with Constantinople until 1945 (Hovorun, 2017). This seemingly unrelated issue of the national Bulgarian church and the subsequent conciliar condemnation made the wider church wary of provoking similar issues in other parts of the Orthodox world.
The issue of Ethnophyletism was one reason why the Church in Ukraine had a difficult time in justifying its own independence. The Ukrainian church’s focus on national recognition had been a hampering effect on its ability to gain ecclesiastical independence. This was also an issue because the movement of independence of the Ukrainian church was always coupled with an explicit call to national awakening, thus raising the specter of ethnophyletism (Denysenko, 2018a, p. 17).
In the few years of Ukrainian independence from the Russian Empire, a group of mostly suspended and deposed clergy came together to form an autocephalous church outside of the bounds of the Moscow Patriarchate. This group further wanted to embark upon a rapid “ukrainianization” of the church. This included Ukrainian being used as the language of the liturgy, a democratization of church practices, and independence from Moscow (Bociurkiw, 1979). This movement was unable to gain its official recognition from other synods and bishops and was suppressed when the Bolsheviks annexed Ukraine in 1921.
De facto independence wouldn’t come again until about 20 years later when Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and conquered the majority of modern day Ukraine. After the years of Soviet repression and general dissatisfaction with Stalin's government, the Germans found many willing collaborators in Ukraine, even amongst members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Denysenko, 2018a, p. 92). However, not all Ukrainian Churches that wanted independence from Moscow joined with the Pochaiv Council that welcomed the Germans with a telegram of congratulations to Hitler (Denysenko, 2018a, p. 92). This further created yet another split amongst the Church in Ukraine. After the eventual expulsion of the Germans, some Ukrainian churches opted to return to the Moscow patriarchate. While the independence movement of Churches in Ukraine were subdivided between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Autocephalous Church of Ukraine.
The Situation with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church after the collapse of the USSR became quite contentious. Without an official state policy affecting the management of religious institutions in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which was set on independence could openly struggle with the Moscow Patriarchate. In 2018 Petro Poroshenko officially announced the creation of a new Orthodox Church. The Autocephalous Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church merged together to create a unified independent church for Ukraine outside the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate (“Ukraine Orthodox Priests Establish Independent Church,” 2018).
This venture was given official blessing by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. This development caused the Moscow Patriarch Bartholomew to officially break off ties with Constantinple which has had wide ranging effects across the Orthodox world (Bordeianu, 2020). This situation has been argued by some to have exacerbated the already distant relationship between lay people and clergy. It led to situations where parishioners might, in fact, be in communion with one another but bishops were unable to express solidarity with churches that had been in contact with for hundreds of years (Bordeianu, 2020, p. 3).
Even after this explicit endorsement by the Ukrainian government and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the new Ukrainian Church was not growing as fast as many had hoped. This was due to many factors. The long history that the Moscow patriarch Church had in Ukraine as well as its custodianship of some of Ukraines oldest churches and holiest sites gave it more leverage over the newer government backed church. However, this began to change after the resumption of hostilities in 2022. The Moscow backed Ukrainian church that had long been accused of double loyalty was in the unfortunate position of being attached to Moscow during a time of open conflict. This is what has given, in the eyes of some, the Ukrainian government the justification to excise by force clergy associated with the Moscow patriarchate so that it can be given to a church more loyal to their own nation (Skorkin, 2023).
The theological issue of nationality and how the church is meant to function in society lies at the center of the theological crisis in Ukraine. This has led some authors to argue that the Patriarchate of Kiev only services the needs of Ukrainians and is primarily a vehicle of political independence for the Ukrainian state (Mudrov, 2019). The supporters of Ukrainian Church independence argue that Moscow's intransigence has led the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to take steps to ensure its own independence. They argue it should have been given autocephaly like churches in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and others who were given independence when the Political reality changed (Denysenko, 2018a). In the current circumstances, it is highly unlikely that a solution to this division will be found. Especially during a time of open hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, there will likely only be an escalation of division, both theological and physical.
By Matthew Bryant
Citations
Photo: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stands with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople (center) and Metropolitan of Kiev Epiphanius I (right) at a ceremony to sign the decree that proclaims the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Photo by: AFP viaGetty Images, Ozan Kose as in Masci, 2019.