Vladimir Putin

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When is Christmas? CBS has no idea how complex that question is right now in Ukraine

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When is Christmas? CBS has no idea how complex that question is right now in Ukraine

Christmas is complicated, if you sweat the details. At the gym I frequent here in Oak Ridge, the management took down all of the Christmas decorations on December 26th.

I asked why. I was told: “Christmas is over.” I asked if they had heard of the “12 days of Christmas.” A staffer said, “Yes,” but assumed that was before the 25th. Another staffer quietly said that she would leave the decorations up until January 6th. It’s safe to assume that she attends the local Catholic parish or another liturgical church.

Hang in there with me. I am working my way toward a stunningly one-sided CBS News report that ran with this headline: “Ukraine snubs Russia, celebrates Christmas on Dec. 25 for first time.”

The key is that America has shopping-mall Christmas and then liturgical-calendar Christmas. Several years ago, I wrote an “On Religion” column noting that when Siri is asked, “When is Christmas?”, an Apple iPhone answered: "Christmas is on … December 25, 2012. I hope I have the day off." Then I asked, “When is Advent?” That led to this “conversation.”

Siri searched her memory and said: "I didn't find any events about 'Ed Fant.' "

Trying again: "When is the Advent season?"

Siri cheerfully responded: "I am not aware of any events about 'advent season.' "

After several more "BEED-EEP" chimes the Apple cloud ultimately drew a blank when asked, "When does the Christmas season end?" Alas, Siri didn't understand the term "Christmas season."

This morning, I asked Siri: “When is Orthodox Christmas.” I was told that Christmas Day is on January 7th.

Ah, but that isn’t accurate in most Orthodox Churches in America. Why? That’s complicated and the fine details are relevant to the CBS News report about Ukraine.

Many people are aware that the Orthodox follow the ancient Julian calendar, instead of the Western Gregorian calendar. However, in many lands shaped by European culture, the Orthodox (this includes my parish) follow a modified Julian calendar that manages to put Christmas on December 25th, but Pascha (Easter) remains on the date that fits the Julian calendar.

Trust me, there is much more that can be said. But here is the key: This is basically a collision between cultures shaped by European culture and those shaped by eastern Orthodox culture.


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Podcast: Eastern Orthodox converts, Russian spies, the FBI and the Bible Belt (#horrors)

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Podcast: Eastern Orthodox converts, Russian spies, the FBI and the Bible Belt (#horrors)

Yes, yes. I will confess my (possible) sin.

Several years ago some friends of mine in Bible Belt Orthodox churches said that there were times when they wished America could be ruled by the late Queen Elizabeth II, as opposed to the last couple of guys who have occupied the White House. We were discussing our frustration with America’s two-party binary political system.

I laughed and agreed.

Does this mean that I am a potential Russian spy and enemy of the state? That was one of the topics discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). We were discussing two mainstream news stories that seem to be connected in the minds of some mainstream journalists.

First, consider this Religion News Service feature: “Riding a wave of converts, one group aims to fuse Orthodoxy with Southern values.” Then read this Newsweek story: “Russia's Trying to Recruit Spies From U.S.” It may also help to check out this earlier GetReligion post: “Concerning the new converts to Eastern Orthodoxy — Are they MAGA clones or worse?”

But back to Queen Elizabeth II. We will get to the FBI in a moment or two.

The RNS feature focuses on a meeting of the small group of Orthodox converts — the Philip Ludwell III Orthodox Fellowship — down in the countercultural Bible Belt. I confess that I have never heard of this group, primarily since my East Tennessee parish is part of the Orthodox Church in America (which does have historic missionary ties to Russia), as opposed to the smaller Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (which formed in response to the birth of the Soviet Union).

The RNS feature notes: “Orthodox Christianity in the United States is a kaleidoscope of languages and cultures as diverse as Russia, Greece, Ethiopia, Syria, Bulgaria and, increasingly, the American South.”

That’s accurate. It’s hard to describe how complex Eastern Orthodoxy is in this country and that includes the growing number of Americans (like me) who have converted to the faith during the past four decades (a trend that began long before Orange Man Bad).

Now, concerning the inspiration for this small Orthodox network:

Philip Ludwell III, the fellowship’s namesake, became one of America’s earliest converts to Orthodoxy in 1738 and then translated Russian Orthodox texts into English. His family held government positions in the Carolinas and Virginia and shared ancestry with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, born nearly a century later.

Obviously, we are talking about folks who are fundamentalist Confederate clones or worse:


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Centuries of theology loom over this newsworthy question: Is Ukraine a 'Just War'?

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Centuries of theology loom over this newsworthy question: Is Ukraine a 'Just War'?

QUESTION:

Is Ukraine a “Just War”?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The good news for Russia’s Vladimir Putin: A significant national leader announces that his invasion of Ukraine is a “just fight” that will end with “a great victory in the sacred struggle.”

The bad news: The speaker is  North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, so what’s “just” is defined by probably the most despised despot on the planet and what’s “sacred” by an atheist who works to exterminate all  religion.

Each international conflict raises the matter of what constitutes a “just war,” the theory by which Christians over centuries have sought to define what reaasons make the destruction of war morally acceptable. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman asserts that Ukraine presents “as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you will find in international relations since World War II.”

Except for Putin allies who head the huge Russian Orthodox Church, Christian leaders agree that Russia’s war is unjust and Ukraine’s response is justifiable. If for no other reason, in the 1994 pact when Ukraine surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear weapons Russia pledged “to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”

As we’ll see, there are complications and hesitations on the Catholic left since the invasion in February, 2022. The Catholic discussion on war-making is particularly notable due to the church’s global reach and the history of saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas formulating the “just war” doctrine.

Most early Christians were de facto pacifists who opposed military participation, both extending Jesus’ “blessed are the peacemakers” teaching from interpersonal relations into national and international affairs, and shunning pagan oaths and rites that Rome imposed upon soldiers. But Christians began gaining responsibility for setting defense policy after the Roman Empire granted their faith legal toleration during the 4th Century.


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Thinking about religion in Russia: Orthodox Christianity has declined, but also grown?

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Thinking about religion in Russia: Orthodox Christianity has declined, but also grown?

“Religion” is a complicated word, as I have noted many times at GetReligion.

Put the word “Byzantine” in front of “religion” or “Christianity” and things get really complicated, as in this secondary definition of that adjective: “ … excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

Frame Byzantine Christianity with the history of Russian culture and the complications are compounded. Toss in centuries of history — complex, bloody, mysterious and sacred — shared by the Slavic giants Russia and Ukraine and, well, you get the picture.

This weekend “think piece” comes from the Orthodox Christianity news website. This is an information source that, from the American point of view, is extremely conservative. This doesn’t mean that mainstream journalists should ignore it.

Why is that? Because it consistently offers direct links to online sources — documents, speeches, quotable analysis — that the vast majority of reporters and editors would not know about otherwise. This includes, for example, lots of material representing the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. That’s the historic church of Ukraine that is current caught up — along with millions of its Ukrainian members — in a violent collision between the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s current government, which is backed by the United States, the European Union and the tiny, but symbolic, Orthodox church in Istanbul led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

It’s easy, these days, for journalists to get government approved material from Moscow and Kyiv. The ancient Orthodox church being crushed by the two armies? Not so much. Thus, it helps to follow the Orthodox Christianity feed on X (the digital platform previously known as Twitter).

Consider the complex realities represented in this recent post: “Percentage of Orthodox is Down in Russia, but Percentage of Practicing Orthodox is up — Survey.” Read this carefully:

According to a new survey from the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the overall percentage of Orthodox Christians has decreased in Russia in recent years, while the percentage of those who actively practice the faith is up.


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Plug-In: Updates on faith angles in America's post-Roe cultural landscape

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Plug-In: Updates on faith angles in America's post-Roe cultural landscape

Since the most recent Plug-In edition, the gunman in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre that killed 11 Jewish congregants was found guilty, as The Associated Press’ Peter Smith reports.

Pittsburgh’s Jewish community came together after last Friday’s conviction, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Megan Guza. Next up is the death penalty phase of Robert Bowers’ trial, which could take six weeks.

In other news, close to 1.5 million foreigners have arrived in Saudi Arabia for Islam’s annual Hajj pilgrimage, the first without the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with Saturday’s one-year anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

What To Know: The Big Story

Post-Roe America: On June 24, 2022, federal protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years came to an end.

Such was the result of the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

A year after Roe’s fall, 25 million women live in states with abortion bans or tighter restrictions, AP’s Geoff Mulvihill, Kimberlee Kruesi and Claire Savage report.

People of faith split: At the anniversary, the nation’s religious leaders remain sharply divided over abortion, as AP’s David Crary points out:

In the year since the Supreme Court struck down the nationwide right to abortion, America’s religious leaders and denominations have responded in strikingly diverse ways — some celebrating the state-level bans that have ensued, others angered that a conservative Christian cause has changed the law of the land in ways they consider oppressive.


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Yes, what about that meeting between Pope Francis and an exiled Russian Orthodox leader?

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Yes, what about that meeting between Pope Francis and an exiled Russian Orthodox leader?

So, my gentle readers, please allow me to flash back to a recent news story that I intended to discuss, but travel got in the way. This was a story that may or may not have been important, but we really don’t know because it centered on a private meeting between Pope Francis and a very symbolic Russian Orthodox leader.

Why to I say that Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest is a highly”symbolic” Orthodox leader, especially at this point in the hellish conflict between Russia and Ukraine?

To explain my use of “symbolic,” we need to look at the Associated Press story that ran with this headline: “Pope in Hungary meets with Ukrainian refugees, Russian envoy.”

Ah, but was Metropolitan Hilarion a “Russian envoy,” in this case? Hold that thought, because things get more complex in the AP lede:

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Pope Francis plunged into both sides of Russia’s war with Ukraine on Saturday, greeting some of the 2.5 million Ukrainian refugees who have fled across the border to Hungary during a public prayer service and then meeting privately with an envoy of the Russian Orthodox Church that has strongly supported the war.

First, an important point of grammar in the final clause of that sentence, as in “meeting privately with an envoy of the Russian Orthodox Church that has strongly supported the war.” I added the bold italics, stressing that this is “that,” rather than “who.”

As we will see, it appears that the AP team covering this event knew little or nothing about the recent personal history of Hilarion. Then again, AP may have — for for some reason — chosen to omit interesting and potentially important information.

Hold that thought (again), as we read some material that appears later in this story:

Immediately after greeting and encouraging the refugees, Francis … met with the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative in Hungary, Metropolitan Hilarion, who developed close relations with the Vatican during his years as the Russian church’s foreign minister. The Vatican said the 20-minute meeting at the Holy See’s embassy in Budapest was “cordial.”

The Russian church’s strong support for the Kremlin’s war has rankled the Vatican and prevented a second papal meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.


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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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Gay Pride vs. Russian Orthodoxy: NHL star takes stand and journalists pounce in social media

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Gay Pride vs. Russian Orthodoxy: NHL star takes stand and journalists pounce in social media

Let’s face it, the Ivan Provorov story had everything that Big Tech-era social warriors could have wanted — Gay Pride, religion, big-time sports, Russia and waves of hot-headed social-media commentary by journalists covering the story.

What it didn’t have, unless I missed it in my reading and search-engine work, was journalists connecting a few dots and spotting a possible role for a true villain — as in Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. Hold that thought.

If you missed this drama, here is the top of the Associated Press story what probably made it into many local newspapers with a headline something like this: “Flyers’ Provorov cites religion for boycott on Pride night.”

Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov cited his Russian Orthodox religion as the reason he did not participate in pregame warmups when the team wore Pride-themed jerseys and used sticks wrapped in rainbow Pride tape.

The 26-year-old Provorov didn’t take part in the pregame skate with his teammates before their game against Anaheim … , when the Flyers celebrated their annual Pride night in celebration and support of the LGBTQ community. He played nearly 23 minutes in Philadelphia’s 5-2 victory.

“I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said after the game. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Provorov declined to answer follow-up questions about his decision.

Flyers coach John Tortorella said Provorov “was true to himself and to his religion.”

“It’s one thing I respect about Provy, he’s always true to himself,” Tortorella said.

The AP story, quoting Flyers player Scott Laughton, hinted that the story probably wasn’t over.

Laughton said there would be more conversations ahead with Provorov, who moved from Russia to the United States as a teenager. He signed a six-year, $40.5 million contract before the 2019 season and won the Barry Ashbee Trophy as the Flyers’ outstanding defenseman in his rookie season, the youngest Philadelphia player to receive the honor.

Yes, Eastern Orthodoxy (I am a convert to this ancient Christian communion) defends centuries of Christian teachings and tradition when it comes to the sacrament of marriage and all forms of sex outside of marriage. This frequently creates clashes with the ever-evolving doctrines of the Sexual Revolutions.

These clashes draw relatively little ink, in part because Orthodoxy isn’t a major player, yet, in the marketplace of American religion news. However, Putin’s hellish invasion of Ukraine has changed that to some degree.


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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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