Kiev Caves Lavra

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Podcast: Painful fighting inside Ukrainian Orthodoxy? Schism began long before the war

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Podcast: Painful fighting inside Ukrainian Orthodoxy? Schism began long before the war

Nearly 15 years ago, I traveled to Kiev to speak during a forum with Ukrainian journalists, and a few activists, focusing on religion coverage in that already tense nation. I was there as a representative of the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life.

Obviously, this meant talking about the fractured state of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine, with bitter tensions between the historic (in many ways ancient) Ukrainian Orthodox Church and new rival churches — including leaders who had previously been excommunicated from canonical Orthodoxy.

Again, let me stress that this was in 2009, during a time when the Ukrainian government was, basically, content to let global Orthodox leaders work this out — oh so slowly — as an Orthodox canon-law issue.

These conflicts were truly byzantine (small “b”) and Ukrainian journalists said it was obvious that most journalists from Europe and America knew next to nothing about the Orthodox splits and, frankly, didn’t care to learn the details.

The Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra? That’s just a historic site. End of story.

Things have changed, sort of, but for all the wrong reasons.

With Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, journalists now care about the state of Orthodoxy in this war. The question discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) is whether elite journalists have any interest in the centuries of facts behind the current Orthodox conflict. The church conflict is linked, of course, to the February 24, 2022, invasion — but also to earlier actions by leaders in the United States, the European Union, the current Ukrainian government and, last but not least, a strategic 2019 move by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul.

Note: All of these events took place before the Russian invasion. The Orthodox schism in Ukraine predates the war — by decades.

Where to begin? Let’s start with some of what I learned, and described, 15 years ago, in a column with this title: “Religion ghosts in Ukraine.”


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Battles over 'Holy Rus' -- Centuries of history behind the bitter Orthodox schism in Ukraine

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Battles over 'Holy Rus' -- Centuries of history behind the bitter Orthodox schism in Ukraine

After the Soviet Union's collapse, Orthodox Christians throughout the Slavic world celebrated the slow, steady, construction of churches after decades of persecution.

In 2004, the poet Nina Borodai wrote a long prayer -- "Song of the Most Holy Theotokos (Greek for God-bearer)" -- seeking the prayers of St. Mary for the lands of "Holy Rus," a term with roots dating to the 988 conversion Prince Vladimir of Kiev.

"Mother of God, Mother of God / … All Holy Rus prays to you / And valleys and mountains and forests. … / Consecrate all the churches to you," wrote Borodai (computer translation from Russian). "Domes, domes in the sky are blue / I can't count the bells / The ringing floats, floats over Russia / Mother Rus is awakening."

Borodai's prayer of joy and repentance was an unlikely spark for an explosion of religious conflict inside Ukraine. Leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church -- with centuries of canonical ties to Russian Orthodoxy -- face Security Service of Ukraine accusations of collusion with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Some churches have been seized or padlocked as pressures rise for conversions to the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine, officially born in 2019 with recognition by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Istanbul and Western governments.

In November, an OCU priest posted a video showing laypeople singing Borodai's poem after a service inside the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the font of Slavic monasticism since its birth in 1051 in caves above the Dnieper River. Monastery critics made headlines by claiming the video proved the monks -- part of the historic UOC -- are disloyal to Ukraine. Lavra visitors, according to the New York Times, were "cheering for Russia."

Days later, security forces raided the monastery and, in the weeks since, officials have accused bishops and priests of aiding Russia. They released photos of Russian passports, theological texts in Russian and pamphlets criticizing the newly created Ukrainian church.

The UOC synod responded by pleading for fair, open trials of anyone accused, while noting: "From the first day of the invasion of Russian troops, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has condemned this war and has consistently advocated the preservation of the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Our believers, with God's help and the prayers of their fellow believers, courageously defend their Motherland in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. … Memory eternal to all victims of this terrible war!"

This echoed waves of UOC statements condemning the invasion.


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Machine guns in the Monastery of the Kiev Caves: Can reporters find sources for facts?

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Machine guns in the Monastery of the Kiev Caves: Can reporters find sources for facts?

Let me begin with some personal remarks, since it would be valid for readers to raise these issues.

Yes, I am an Orthodox believer who has — twice — worshipped with the monks of the Monastery of the Kiev Caves. I have walked its matrix of underground sanctuaries, tombs and monastic cells. It’s hard for me to imagine something more horrifying than soldiers with machine guns inside the Lavra, passing the bodies of numerous saints. I confess that, for a decade, I have prayed that we would not see a military takeover of this sacred site by forces on either side of the divides inside Ukraine.

Yes, I saw the New York Times report with this headline: “Ukraine Raids Holy Site Amid Suspicion of Orthodox Church Tied to Moscow.” I have read a dozen or so other mainstream media accounts of the rising tensions about the current Ukrainian administration considering some kind of Lavra takeover.

All of these reports are based on information from government officials and the leaders of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which was — depending on the sources cited —created by Western Ukrainian leaders, the U.S. State Department (under the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden), the government of Turkey and/or the first-among-equals Ecumenical Patriarch who leads the tiny Orthodox body that remains based in Istanbul.

These reports continue to ignore or downplay the statements and actions of the historic Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan Onuphry, which has — since the day of the Russian invasion — stressed its total opposition to this action of the Vladimir Putin government in Moscow. This church, the canonical church of Ukraine for many generations, has taken steps to cut its ties to Orthodox leaders in Moscow, even as its leaders have recognized they do not have the clear authority to do so. They appear to be pleading for the wider world of Orthodoxy (as in patriarches of multiple ancient churches, not just Istanbul) to intervene, somehow, in this crisis.

As a rule, mainstream journalists have expressed little interest in the actual Orthodox traditions and laws linked to this tragedy. In particular, the press has ignored the global voices of the Orthodox who oppose Putin, but support Metropolitan Onuphry and, thus, the monks of the Lavra.

Frankly, my head is spinning as I try to deal with the myriad journalism issues involved in covering this massive story. I am aware that most journalists are limited in what they can cover, due to language issues and the difficulty of on-site work in the midst of this conflict. I want to look at two issues in this Times report because — this is a positive — it includes some remarks from an actual monk from the Kievan Caves. Such as:

Father Hieromonk Ioan, a member of the Kyiv monastery, said that the clergy there were not loyal to Moscow but did not shy away from the close historic ties with Russia. “We have certain relations with Russia and it’s painful for us what is going on now,” he said in an interview outside the monastery. …


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Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

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Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

This was a very important weekend in the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine and Russia — for those (including journalists) who believe that religious traditions and symbols matter as much as statements by government officials and headlines in Western media.

At the center of the drama, of course, was the city of Kiev, as it is known in to Russians and many Ukrainians, and Kyiv, as it is known to many Ukrainians, as well as officials in the United States and the European Union.

Here’s the quotation I keep thinking about, drawn from a historian (and Orthodox priest) I interviewed for a 2018 column that ran with this headline: “A thousand years of Orthodox history loom over today’s Moscow-Istanbul clash.” That quote: "Kiev is the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church is Kiev." From this point of view, the churches of Ukraine and Russia are brothers, connected by centuries of shared history — good and bad — and Orthodox tradition.

The crucial issue, in many ways, is one the press seems to think is secondary — the future of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the font of Orthodox spirituality in the Slavic world.

Let’s start with two short wire-service reports and, along the way, I will point readers to some crucial documents that add more depth and clues as to what is happening. First, from the Associated Press:

KYIV, Ukraine — The leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church have adopted measures declaring the church’s full independence and criticizing the Russian church’s leader for his support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Orthodoxy, the largest religious denomination in Ukraine, is divided between churches that had been loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate and those under a separate ecclesiastical body.

The council of the Moscow-connected body, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on Friday said it “condemns the war as a violation of God’s commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ ... and expresses disagreement with the position of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia regarding the war in Ukraine.”

It also adopted charter changes “indicating the full self-sufficiency and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

Note, in the lede, the assumption that simply saying that this has happened means that it has happened, as in the “leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now, the official declarations (click here for details) made by the leaders of the oldest Orthodox body in Ukraine — usually called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) — are very serious and they were accompanied by changes in WORSHIP that, for the Orthodox, are even more important than words on paper.


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Question for New York Times scribes and others: Did Vladimir Putin dream up the Kievan Rus?

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Question for New York Times scribes and others: Did Vladimir Putin dream up the Kievan Rus?

If you know anything about the New Testament, then you know that St. Paul spend a lot of time and energy in the great cities of Greece.

It would seem logical for one of the ancient patriarchates of Eastern Orthodoxy to be located in Greece, perhaps in Athens, Corinth or Thessaloniki. So who is the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church? Why are the great churches of Greece led by archbishops, instead of their own patriarch?

That’s a complicated question (click here for Orthodox Wiki timeline) and, as always, the Orthodox will argue about many historical twists and turns. But the big idea is that over the centuries Constantinople grew to become the great city of the wider Greek world and, thus, the leader of Greek Orthodoxy remains in Istanbul. That’s where the Ecumenical Patriarch’s few remaining churches have faced crushing persecution by the Turks. Consider the plight of Turkey’s only seminary, in Halki, which has been shuttered for half a century. Halki is a tragic and sad place. I’ve been there.

Thus, the archbishops in Greece are powerless and without influence? Tell that to the Greeks.

What does this have to do with a simplistic, laugh-to-keep-from-crying paragraph of unattributed information — written in classic “omniscient anonymous" voice — in another New York Times story about the religious tensions in Ukraine? Here is that paragraph:

The Russian church … has made no secret of its desire to unite the branches under a single patriarch in Moscow, which would allow it to control the holiest sites of Orthodoxy in the Slavic world and millions of believers in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for its part, has been slowly asserting itself under its own patriarch, reviving a separate and independent branch of Eastern Orthodoxy, after the independence of Ukraine in 1991.

Where to begin?

If you know anything about Orthodox Christianity in the Slavic world, you know that the story begins in Kiev in 988 with the “Baptism of Rus“ in the waters of the Dnieper River, after Prince Vladimir embraced Orthodox Christianity as the faith of his lands. The famous Lavra of the Kievan Caves was founded in 1051, marking the birth of monasticism in what would become the Russian world.

Kiev was the key city in Slavic Orthodoxy. However, Moscow grew in importance and, eventually, became the base for the Russian Orthodox Church, much as Constantinople became the great city of the wider Greek world.


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Thinking about Ukraine: Mearsheimer talks secular power, but religion ghosts loom nearby

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Thinking about Ukraine: Mearsheimer talks secular power, but religion ghosts loom nearby

Reporters collect quotes. Often we hear people say things that are so haunting that the quotations stick in our minds and refuse to leave.

Let me share one of the quotes that has haunted me for more than a decade. It’s from an interview that I did with Victor Yelensky, a sociologist of religion from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, during a June 2009 forum in Kiev about religion and politics in Ukraine. I was one of the speakers, along with another colleague — the late Arne Fjeldstad — of the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life.

Here is that quotation, which I used to close this “On Religion” column: “Religion ghosts in Ukraine.” Yelensky said:

"For many Orthodox people in western Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to live in any way under the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate. At the same time, for many Orthodox in eastern Ukraine, it is simply unacceptable to not to be associated and in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. In the middle are places like Kiev. ...

"This is a division that is inside Ukrainian society. Is it based on religion? No. Is religion right there in the heart of it? Yes."

Again, that was 2009. There has been all kinds of speculation about the degree to which Orthodox tensions in Ukraine did or did not influence Vladimir Putin’s arrogant, egotistical, truly sinful decision to unleash hell on the citizens of Western and Eastern Ukraine.

If you want more background on that subject, may I recommend my earlier post (“Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices”) and the massive Plug-In feature by Bobby Ross, Jr. (“Why some experts insist Vladimir Putin is motivated by history and religion”). No one needs to agree with all of the voices featured in Bobby’s round-up, because they are all part of cacophony we are hearing, right now. I offered my own take in this week’s “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate: “Will Russia listen to Orthodox prayers for cease-fire?” Here is how that column ends:

… Inside Russia, numerous Orthodox priests and abbots -- 200-plus early this week, speaking "each on our own behalf" -- began signing an online petition calling for the "cessation of the fratricidal war in Ukraine" and negotiations. "We respect God-given human freedom, and we believe that the people of Ukraine should make their choice independently, not at gunpoint, without pressure from the West or the East," said the text.


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Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices

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Eastern Orthodox thinking on Ukraine? Reporters can't settle for the predictable voices

For the past week or so, I have been getting quite a few emails and messages from people wanting to understand what “the Orthodox” think about the invasion of Ukraine.

That’s a massive question. In my experience, the Orthodox are praying for a ceasefire and negotiations, seeking a Ukraine that is militarily independent of the United States-European Union and, certainly, Vladimir Putin’s Moscow regime.

At this point, no one should be surprised that Orthodox leaders aligned with USA-EU and Turkey are releasing fierce statements against Putin’s arrogant and evil invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, no one should be surprised that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has tried to call for peace, while avoiding any language that openly clashes with the autocrat next door. You end up with language such as:

As the Patriarch of All Russia and the primate of a Church whose flock is located in Russia, Ukraine, and other countries, I deeply empathize with everyone affected by this tragedy.

I call on all parties to the conflict to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties. I appeal to the bishops, pastors, monastics, and laity to provide all possible assistance to all victims, including refugees and people left homeless and without means of livelihood.

The Russian and Ukrainian peoples have a common centuries-old history dating back to the Baptism of Rus’ by Prince St. Vladimir the Equal-to-the-Apostles. I believe that this God-given affinity will help overcome the divisions and disagreements that have arisen that have led to the current conflict.

Note this meek language — “I call on all parties to the conflict to do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties” — that still manages to condemn the current actions of Russia’s leaders.

Anyone seeking the “Orthodox mind” on this matter needs to remember that Eastern Orthodoxy, no matter what Western media think, has no pope and that its (I should candidly say “our”) conciliar approach to settling disputes moves very slowly, with good cause.


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Thinking about Orthodox history and the complex West vs. East divisions in Ukraine

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Thinking about Orthodox history and the complex West vs. East divisions in Ukraine

First things first, as I wade into “think piece” territory once again. I am, of course, a convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I converted into parishes linked to the ancient church of Antioch (currently based in Damascus) and now attend a growing parish in the Orthodox Church in America, which grew out of the work of Russian Orthodox missionaries long ago.

Why clear that up? It’s important, in light of some of the complex issues linked to the threat of war in Ukraine. I have been to Kiev twice and was blessed to worship with monks in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. I know more than a few Russian and Eastern European Orthodox believers and I don’t think I’ve met anyone who is overly fond of Vladimir Putin (to say the least). Attempting to understand what many Russians think and believe about Ukraine has nothing to do with approving of Putin or wanting to see an invasion by Russian troops.

Moving on. The other day I spent an hour or so on the telephone with GetReligion patriarch Richard Ostling, working through some of the unbelievably complex and explosive issues surrounding Ukraine and the churches therein. The results are in an Ostling “Memo” with this headline: “In reportage on Russia and Ukraine, don't neglect the importance of two rival churches.”

May I encourage GetReligion readers to check that out or even, if you read this piece before, glance through the two sections of it, in light of ongoing events?

Ukraine's ecclesiastical history, like its political history, is highly complex. The saga began with the A.D. 988 "baptism of Rus" in Kyiv (Russians prefer "Kiev") when Prince Vladimir proclaimed Orthodoxy the religion of his realm and urged the masses to join him in conversion and baptism.

Russians see Christendom's entry into Eastern Europe as the origin of their homeland and the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian President Vladimir Putin cites this history to support his claim for Ukraine as a client area within greater Russia instead of a validly independent nation. His post-Soviet Kremlin maintains close bonds with the Russian Church's Moscow Patriarchate, which in turn has centuries of ecclesiastical authority within Ukraine.

The key to all of this is understanding that highly European (with Catholic roots) Western Ukraine is a radically different place — in terms of language and faith — than Eastern Ukraine, with strong ties to Russian history and culture.

Is there one Ukraine?


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In reportage on Russia and Ukraine, don't neglect the importance of two rival churches 

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In reportage on Russia and Ukraine, don't neglect the importance of two rival churches 

On top of the 2014 seizure of Crimea and years of infiltration in eastern borderlands, Russia now poses a more severe threat to neighboring Ukraine.

Whether the nation faces a military invasion, or even a World War 2.5, or less bloody subversion and hoped-for domination, journalists these next few years will need to understand and depict the religious aspect of Ukraine's rising nationalism and resistance against Russian expansionism.

Here are some basics. Russia and Ukraine contain by far the two largest national populations in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The new World Christian Encyclopedia edition (which belongs in every media and academic library) counts 114 million Orthodox in Russia for 79% of the population, and 32 million in Ukraine for 73%.

Terminology note for writers: "Eastern Orthodox" is the precise designation for such churches, related historically to the Ecumenical Patriarchate based in Turkey, that affirm the definition of Jesus Christ's divinity by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451). The separate branch of so-called "Oriental Orthodox" is non-Chalcedonian; its largest national church is in Ethiopia.

Ukraine's ecclesiastical history, like its political history, is highly complex. The saga began with the A.D. 988 "baptism of Rus" in Kyiv (Russians prefer "Kiev") when Prince Vladimir proclaimed Orthodoxy the religion of his realm and urged the masses to join him in conversion and baptism.

Russians see Christendom's entry into Eastern Europe as the origin of their homeland and the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian President Vladimir Putin cites this history to support his claim for Ukraine as a client area within greater Russia instead of a validly independent nation. His post-Soviet Kremlin maintains close bonds with the Russian Church's Moscow Patriarchate, which in turn has centuries of ecclesiastical authority within Ukraine.


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