The Sin of Orthodoxy

Reflections on the Second Anniversary of the War on Ukraine

If you are reading this you are most likely familiar with the Russian invasion and genocide of Ukraine, begun February 24, 2022. While I will reference the facts of the war when needed the focus of this reflection is not on geopolitical issues, the likeliness of victory on either side, etc. My focus is on the actions of the Moscow Patriarchate and the response of the Orthodox world, what has received support, criticism, and denunciation, and what this has manifested the state of Eastern Orthodoxy to be today.

It is however apropos to give a brief summary of the Russian atrocities in Ukraine and the ideology that informs and supports them. Since the war began, over 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, as well as tens of thousands more military personnel. Russian forces have carried out mass executions of civilians, such as the massacre in Bucha in which at least 441 civilian bodies have been recovered, most killed by execution and many tortured, including children. Torture and rape have been used as weapons by Russia to instil fear in the Ukrainian population. Since 2022 the Russian military has abducted roughly 20,000 Ukrainian children, with the help of the Moscow Patriarchate, continuing a policy begun in 2014 accounting for untold more abductions. Lastly, Russian missile strikes have destroyed more than 115 religious’ sites in Ukraine, including sites belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Met. Onuphry. The ideology motivating this heinous genocide is called Russkiy Mir or the “Russian World,” according to which Russia is justified in conquering all territories it claims (using tortured historical propagandistic narratives) as its own, and in the case of Ukraine denying and actively working to stamp out their historical, cultural, and linguistic identity.

In this genocidal war the Russian state and the Russian Church have been close partners. Patriarch Kirill is recognized as having re-popularized the Russkiy Mir ideology, lending it an explicitly religious significance. He has justified the Russian invasion as a metaphysical war for the holiness and light of Russia against the West’s degeneracy and rejection of traditional values, has declared Russian soldiers are absolved of sin by dying in the war, has portrayed the war as one waged against schismatics who “are fulfilling the devil’s evil bidding of eroding Orthodoxy,” and has said the war is fought to be on God’s side against the evil of pride parades. Of the 400 bishops in Russia not a one has spoken out against the war, but their church court has anathematized objection to the war as “heretical pacifism,” and under Pat. Kirill clergymen who protest the war are censured, fined, and stripped of their priesthood, forcing some to flee the Russian Church because of tormented consciences. There are indeed Russian clergymen, such as the 300 who signed a petition against the war, who continue to represent Christ. However, it cannot be doubted that the institution of the Russian Church and many of its clergy, indeed the totality of its native episcopate, are participants in the war and enflame it with apocalyptic rhetoric.

A key component of the religious propaganda fueling Orthodox support of the war is the controversy over the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, granted autocephaly by Pat. Bartholomew of Constantinople and headed by Met. Epiphanius. Desire for an autocephalous church in Ukraine has a long history, and one especially informed by the Ukrainian people’s desire to have a church without ties to the Moscow Patriarchate, which consistently has and does use its structures to undermine Ukrainian identity, and Russian state, which is a hostile power and whose history of oppression (such as the Holodomor) is unacceptable to Ukrainians. This church then (abbreviated as the OCU in contrast to the UOC under Met. Onuphry) is labeled as “uncanonical” or “schismatic” by the Moscow Patriarchate because it was granted its autocephaly by Constantinople and claims to be the legitimate Orthodox Church in Ukraine over against the jurisdiction under Moscow. Putting aside arguments of ecclesiastical legality, the idea that this church is uncanonical (connoting for many its gracelessness) is integral to the Moscow Patriarchate’s religious justification of the war as well as sustaining sympathy from other Orthodox churches. Pat. Kirill explicitly used this as justification for the war when he said, “No trace will be left of schismatics because they are doing the devil’s evil bidding, eroding Orthodoxy in Kiev’s lands.” In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, President Putin also invoked this narrative to reject the distinct identity of Ukrainians, saying, “why are the Ukrainian authorities dismantling the Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Because it brings together not only the territory, it brings together our souls.”   

This tactic has been extremely effective in curbing any clear or united response of worldwide Orthodoxy to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Patriarchates of Antioch, Serbia, and Jerusalem call for peace but do not outright condemn the war, because the Russian state and Moscow Patriarchate are their important political and ecclesiastical supports, Jerusalem in particular being the MP’s choice to contend Constantinople’s primacy.[1] The Ecumenical Patriarchate (Constantinople), Alexandria, and their dependants, are much more vocal in their condemnation of the war, and these two Patriarchs have condemned and called for ecclesiastical action against the Moscow Patriarchate for its role in the conflict. However, the worldwide Orthodox hierarchy’s response to the war would best be described as lukewarm sympathy for Ukraine while showing strong favoritism for the UOC-MP. There is no shortage of support, expressed in letters and in action before the UN, regarding the violation of the UOC-MP’s religious freedom, while there is ambiguity and lack of action in addressing the violation of the religious freedoms of anti-war clergy in Russia, or in addressing the fact that the war integrally includes religious discrimination and violence against the “uncanonical” OCU. Indeed, the propagation of the narrative of the “schismatic” or “uncanonical” nature of the OCU is, ecclesiastical legal issues aside, propagation of wartime propaganda against the oppressed, and should be deeply disturbing.

In summary, the Orthodox world is incapable of presenting a united condemnation of the Russian invasion, let alone a condemnation of the Moscow Patriarchate, and it is here that the most disturbing reality is evident. The Moscow Patriarchate has united itself so perfectly to the interests of the Russian state that now, not only among the faithful of the UOC-MP but around the world, many think that to be faithful Orthodox is to anathematize the OCU and to support the ecclesiastical and political oppression of Ukraine by the Moscow Patriarchate and Russia. The UOC-MP, even after officially distancing itself from the Moscow Patriarchate, condemning Russia’s invasion, and being subject to the bombing of its Cathedrals by Russia and general suffering of Ukraine under the invasion, is still a vehicle for Russian power and a lynchpin for its propaganda of religiously justified domination.

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In reflecting on the state of Eastern Orthodoxy today in light of the tragic reality in Ukraine, it is evident that the Orthodox Church is not institutionally united in such a way that it can present itself to the world as having a vision of and being a force for Godmanhood. I use the term Godmanhood for its especially social and cosmic implications in 20^th century thought that saw theosis as necessarily applied to, and perhaps primarily understood in reference to, the transformation of humanity into a more God-like state of being. That is, the goal of humanity realizing itself as one body, transcending all authoritarianisms, collectivisms, and individualisms, and orienting its social reality around the principle of person and communion, freedom within the structure of love. The Eastern Orthodox institutional Church today, speaking generally, is a splintered mirror reflecting in its many fragments the face of the fallen world, various nationalisms and fascisms, imperialistic nostalgias and futures, ecclesiastical politicking and clericalism, and cannot even come together to condemn a Patriarchate which has fully rejected the kingdom of God in favor of Satan’s three temptations in the desert.

The degenerated state of the institutional Church’s witness can be seen especially in its hypocrisy regarding human rights. In December 2023 a new human rights organization titled “The Church against xenophobia and religious discrimination” was founded by hierarchs from the UOC-MP, ROCOR, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and the Jerusalem Patriarchate to advocate before the UN for greater awareness and cessation of the human rights abuses directed at the UOC-MP under Zelensky’s government. No such organization has been founded by Orthodox hierarchs regarding the Moscow Patriarchate’s violation of human and religious rights in its support of the war and in its persecution of protesting clergy. Instead, Orthodox hierarchs, including the Patriarchs of Antioch, Serbia, and Jerusalem, supported Viktor Orban’s protests against the sanctioning of Pat. Kirill by the EU. Indeed, the Moscow Patriarchate with Pat. Kirill, who deny human rights and supported the decriminalization of domestic abuse in Russia, and other eastern European Orthodox churches, are often in opposition to legislation supporting human rights, such as their opposition to the Istanbul convention which is a human rights treaty aimed at propagating gender equality and preventing violence against women and domestic violence.

It seems clear that the only concern for human rights is as a tool to protect the community seen as “canonical” and so there is no real concern for human rights, only for community structures and identity markers. It is not human rights that are of concern nor discriminated against and abused women, it is the rights of the “canonical” or the structure of the “family” that are important. In short, there is a sacralization of community, or structure, or identity marker, and an inherent devaluing of the human and personal, both within the community and outside of it. In the case of Ukraine the Jerusalem Patriarchate, like others, is willing to advocate for the rights of the UOC-MP and its members in response to persecution by the Ukrainian government, but they will not condemn the Russian invasion or the Moscow Patriarchate’s actions which torment and destroy the lives of all Ukrainians alike. The rights of members of the UOC-MP primarily matter insofar as they are “canonical” Orthodox, not as human beings, not as persons.

If the above is true, and I am convinced it is, then what does the institutional Eastern Orthodox Church stand for except for various nationalisms, imperialisms, and competing ethnicities? It may be answered that insofar as they celebrate the sacraments in unity the institution stands for and manifests the kingdom of God, but this is something of a cop-out. Yes, in the sacraments, in the spiritual life, the Church still lives and communicates the body of Christ, but this is like a candle hid under a bushel, and a directive to inward piety in the face of outward evil is nothing but self-flagellating submission easily taken advantage of by power. Indeed, without any implied Donatism, the identification of hierarchal and administrative institutions with “the Church” is not valid. The Church is Christ as he is present to and in Christians, while the institution can be called the Church by analogy, and only rightly so if the institution is manifesting the reality that is the Church. If it is not, if it teaches war and aids oppression, if it denies Christ in every way, then we call the institution “Church” falsely, and we must be careful that we do not use the sacraments to justify acceptance of and submission to an institution’s authoritarianism, discrimination, and warmongering.  

In all this, it is necessary to remember that Christ’s identification with the poor and oppressed is not metaphorical (Mtt 25:31-46). The Logos wills everywhere and in all things to work the mystery of His embodiment. The Eucharist is not only a transelementation into Christ’s body for us in a given moment of time, it is a manifestation of the eschatological reality of what all things will be and always truly are, the creation as it really is as Incarnation. This being so, while the Eucharist as a rite of anamnesis of Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and second glorious coming is something celebrated uniquely by Christians, everywhere that God is present and manifests Himself is eucharistic and made eucharistic, and that is especially true of the oppressed. Thus, it is the oppressed Ukrainians who are God’s Eucharist, regardless of “canonicity,” while any structure that harms them is a false incarnation that will be revealed as insubstantial nothingness on the last day.

In the above I do not mean to lambast every Orthodox hierarch, some of whom have spoken out or try in different venues to address these grievous issues, nor call into doubt the general importance of canonical structures. However, the Eastern Orthodox response to the invasion of Ukraine has shown that its current structuring, remaining from a period where imperial power facilitated unity, is basically incapable of providing any united front when faced with a union of Patriarch and President in Russia that plays perfectly on global Orthodoxy’s ecclesial and geopolitical vulnerabilities. Furthermore, institutional Orthodoxy is compromised by a widespread “traditionalism” or “neo-traditionalism” that values structures of power and identity more than human beings, reactionary conservation as opposed to living tradition, and so in general does not and cannot operate upon the principles of “Godmanhood” explicated by great theologians especially in the 20^th century. Thus, it easily becomes a vehicle for reactionary religion and politics in the West, and is sympathetic to genocidal dictatorship in the East.

Being unable to predict the future I cannot say what turn the war will take and what that will mean for Moscow’s political and ecclesial ambitions. Regardless of what may happen, what must happen is a condemnation of the Moscow Patriarchate and its heresy of the Russian World ideology and theology by the Orthodox hierarchy. If the Orthodox hierarchal institution is to represent the kingdom of God at all, it must condemn this evil, because the reality is that no greater evil has occurred in our Church’s history to this point. There is no excuse. We are not only living in a world in which human rights are of the utmost importance and the combatting of every reduction of the person to the collective or atomized individual is paramount, but the Orthodox Church in the 20^th century produced some of the greatest examples and defenders of these things, theologians of the person, philosophers of freedom, prophets of justice, and of course the witness of untold martyrs.

The sin of Orthodoxy is the worship of its identity and power structures more than Christ, its rejection of love in favor of canonicity, its identification of itself with the powers of this world rather than the kingdom of God, and its willingness to sacrifice anyone of the least of these in the name of preserving tradition, or values, or the power of its communities, or to oppose the West, etc. Christ is not in any of this. Christ however is with, in and is Ukraine.

If you have not seen these already, I sincerely hope you will read and spread awareness of the below documents:

Open Letter: War in Ukraine and the Russian Church

A Declaration on the “Russian World” Teaching

EDIT: As of March 27, 2024, Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church have officially adopted the document titled the “Order of the 25th Russian Peoples Council” which explicitly declares the war on Ukraine to be a “holy war” waged by Russia as the Katehon, and which declares as spiritual doctrine the need to genocide Ukrainian and Belarusian culture (Opinion: The Russian Orthodox Church declares ‘holy war’ on Ukraine (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinion-the-russian-orthodox-church-declares-holy-war-on-ukraine/ar-BB1kWRDt?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=fcd9ab01a8754875935ea7f9a75a928d&ei=18). The Moscow Patriarchate thus officially teaches heresy. Will the rest of the Orthodox world respond?

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[1] The Jerusalem Patriarchate is not, in fact, the Mother Church of Orthodoxy. That claim relies on a conflation of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem with the original Christian community in Jerusalem under St. James. The Greek Church in Jerusalem, through a process of ecclesiastical politicking beginning with the Council of Nicaea (324 A.D.), worked to supersede the Metropolitan of Caesarea and finally receive fifth place among the Patriarchs at Chalcedon (451 A.D.). The community of St. James, headed by the “brothers of the Lord,” was a Jewish Christianity that was wiped out in 70 A.D. The Jerusalem Patriarchate was for most of its history the last of the Pentarchy in rank, and today is ranked fourth (since Rome is no longer in communion) while Moscow is ranked fifth.