Russian Invasion Reveals Fissures Among Orthodox Christians
The Rev. Roman Tarnavsky chants prayers for the dead at St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Boston, Massachussetts. Photo by Meagan Clark.
This report has been updated Mar. 8 to reflect that nearly 300 Russian Orthodox priests have now signed an open letter appealing for peace.
BOSTON — Parishioners of St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston gathered for worship this week to commemorate and pray for the faithful who have died, including those who have perished in the recent fighting in Ukraine.
“Hear the voice of us sinners and protect all the people, oh Father, including the Ukrainian people in this difficult time,” the Rev. Roman Tarnavsky chanted in prayer.
In a Byzantine gold robe, he then approached the altar — covered with a Ukrainian white fabric embroidered with bright red and orange threads — between U.S. and Ukrainian flags. He chanted the day’s liturgical selection from John 5:24-30:
“The hour is coming when the dead will hear his voice and come forth — those who have done good shall come forth unto resurrection of life but those who have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment.”
Orthodox churches around the world are all preparing for Easter, a celebration of Christ defeating death, by reflecting on Judgment Day. Despite this relative unity in worship, the Orthodox schism between Moscow and Constantinople that broke open in 2019 is cracking further. What is good and what is evil in the war in Ukraine is far from agreed upon.
On Sunday, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, called Russia’s opponents in Ukraine “evil forces who have always fought against the unity of Russia and the Russian Church.” He prayed for the unity of the “single space” of Russia and Ukraine in remarks widely seen as a theological justification for the invasion.
“May the Lord preserve the Russian land,” Kirill said, according to an English translation. “When I say ‘Russian,’ I use the ancient expression from ‘A Tale of Bygone Years’ — ‘Wherefrom has the Russian land come,’ the land which now includes Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and other tribes and peoples.”
READ: Russia Attacks Ukraine: Why Some Experts Insist Putin Is Motivated By Religion
Meanwhile, many Ukrainians around the world who see their Ukrainian language and culture as distinct from other Slavic people prayed for their armed forces to defeat Russia. With roughly 35 million Orthodox Christians according to Pew Research, Ukraine has the third-largest Orthodox population in the world after Russia and Ethiopia and became an independent nation when the USSR collapsed in 1991. According to the United Nations, more than 13,000 people have died fighting Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Tarnavsky stood facing the golden gates of the iconostasis with an icon of Archangel Michael, depicted holding a sword and shield and often historically invoked for protection from invasion by enemies and for the defeat of adversaries in war. A mural of St. Vladimir the Great baptizing the Rus people in Kyiv’s Dnieper River — the iconic 10th century inauguration of Christianity among the Rus people that Russia also draws its Orthodox heritage from — looked down upon parishioners from the church’s southern wall. Sun rays shone through the stained glass window of Princess Olga of Kyiv, also considered a founder of Russian Christianity.
Depictions of Jesus’ resurrection and St. Vladimir the Great baptizing the Rus in Kyiv, the 10th century Christianization of the Rus people, including both present-day Ukraine and Russia. Photo by Meagan Clark.
Tarnavsky then chanted the prayer suggested by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA:
Our brothers and sisters, Lord, are once again threatened by aggressors who see them only as obstacles blocking the path to the complete domination of the precious land and resources of the country of Ukraine. Strengthen the people as they face this great danger, turning to you in the immeasurably deep faith, trust and love they have placed in you all their lives. Send your heavenly legions, Oh Lord, commanded by the patron of Kyiv, Archangel Michael, to crush the desires of the aggressor whose desire is to eradicate our people.
Bumps on the road to pan-Orthodox unity
Statements from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Church of Antioch and the Church of Jerusalem have asked for prayers for peace without naming Russia as an aggressor.
On the other hand, statements from the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and, of course, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have more directly criticized Russia or President Vladimir Putin.
READ: Support For Ukraine Rises Worldwide As A Shadow Of War Falls Over Eastern Europe
The divide is widely — but not totally — along Slavic versus Greek-oriented church lines.
Unlike Roman Catholicism, which follows papal supremacy, Eastern Orthodox churches are self-governing, or autocephalous. Each Orthodox church is separate but recognizes others as canonical. Every bishop is considered first among equals, sharing equal authority — including to a degree even patriarchs, who are high-ranking bishops — and the Ecumenical Patriarchate has the authority to issue a “tomos,” a decree of autocephaly for a church, according to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. This is hotly debated among Orthodox Christians.
The enthronement of the first primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Epifaniy (Epiphanius). Creative Commons photo/office of the president of Ukraine.
When the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted a tomos to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in January 2019, it was recognizing Ukraine as a legitimate nation. The Moscow Patriarchate then broke communion with Constantinople, meaning priests and parishioners from each side should not participate in communion with each other. It was the biggest shakeup in the global church of 260 million since the split with the Catholic Church in 1054, or since the Moscow Patriarchate declared itself independent in 1589. Thousands of Ukrainian Orthodox churches have left communion with Moscow to become a self-governing body inside Ukraine called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, while remaining churches continued to operate with a degree of autonomy but under the Moscow Patriarchate as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
“Since the war started, the number of communities switching from the Moscow Patriarchate to the OCU has dramatically increased,” Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun — chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and former first deputy chairman of the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church — told ReligionUnplugged.com.
“Increasing number of people in Ukraine associate the war with the Moscow Patriarchate. The OCU, in contrast, is associated not only with nation-building but also with the national resistance. This makes sympathy to this church growing not only among the Ukrainian faithful but also among the members of other churches.” Hovorun is also a professor of ecclesiology, international relations and ecumenism at the University College Stockholm.
READ: Q&A: Orthodox Ecumenism Expert Cyril Hovorun Talks Ukraine, Russia And Schism
Kyiv’s Metropolitan Onuphry of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which reports to Moscow, declared the Russian invasion a “disaster,” appealing to the faithful to pray for Ukrainian soldiers and show love for their homeland. He also asked Putin directly to end the “fratricidal war” that he said has no justification from God or people.
“He made an announcement in this difficult time to send a message for Putin, but from my mind he (made) a mistake,” said Tarnavsky, the priest of St. Andrew’s, after the service. “He has to send this message for Patriarch Kirill because Russian Patriarch Kirill gave a blessing for Putin to use force in Ukraine.”
Less than 24 hours before Russia launched a full-scale invasion in Ukraine that has killed 2,000 civilians in just one week according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Services, Kirill and several bishops prayed for the Russian military on Feb. 23. That date is called Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia to commemorate the founding of the Red Army of Soviet Russia. Kirill said at the event that the soldiers should not have any doubts about the correctness of the path they’re on.
Impacts on the American Orthodox community
The Orthodox schism can also be seen in American churches, which have — due to waves of immigration — formed independent entities based on shared language and cultures that mostly share canonical authority with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. Many leaders of Eastern Orthodox churches in the U.S. issued statements condemning Russia’s military actions.
“The scare and intimidation tactics with the presence of the armed vehicles and over a hundred thousand of soldiers around the borders of Ukraine combined with systematic cyber-attacks at all levels of life in Ukraine can only be interpreted as terroristic threats that target innocent lives of Ukrainian citizens,” leaders of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA said in the harshest statement among Orthodox churches in the U.S. “They seem to be instigated by an extremely low sense of self-esteem among the leadership of what has become the aggressor nation of modern times — which creates a very dangerous set of circumstances.”
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According to the latest census data collected in 2020, the largest Orthodox churches in the U.S. are Greek Orthodox, with about 376,000 adherents. That’s followed by about 74,000 members of the Orthodox Church of America, which was founded by Russian monks in Alaska in the late 1700s but became self-governing after the Bolshevik Revolution. The Antiochian Orthodox, with roots in present-day Syria and Turkey, has just over 71,000 members in the U.S., while Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) parishes have a bit less than 24,000 members. Among these Orthodox churches, ROCOR’s statement was the furthest from condemning the Russian invasion. ROCOR is also the only church among America’s largest that is under the canonical authority of Moscow.
In a Feb. 24 pastoral letter “on the events on the Holy Ukrainian Land,” ROCOR First Hierarch Metropolitan Hilarion, a Ukrainian-Canadian, asked parishioners to, “in connection with the events in the Ukrainian land … refrain from excessive watching television, following the newspapers and the internet, to close our hearts to the passions ignited by mass media, while doubling our fervent prayers for peace throughout the world … so that we will first and foremost remain humane and Orthodox Christians in these difficult times.”
A view inside Holy Epiphany Russian Orthodox Church in Boston, Massachussetts. Photo by Meagan Clark.
When a ReligionUnplugged.com reporter visited Holy Epiphany Russian Orthodox Church, a ROCOR parish in Boston that largely serves a Russian, Ukrainian and Belarussian immigrant community, the priest declined to comment. Church members also declined to comment without the priest’s blessing. Unlike many Orthodox churches in the U.S. that adapt Protestant buildings and have rows of pews, the worshippers at Holy Epiphany resemble worshippers abroad: They stand throughout the entire service, which can last 2.5 hours, on intricately woven red carpets. Many women wear colorful headscarves and long skirts.
In New York’s Holy Fathers Russian Orthodox Church on Sunday, the parishioners prayed “that charity might reign in the hearts of all people of the Ukrainian land.”
One church member who would talk only without being named said, “We should be doing everything we can to help one another, not be making war. All this stuff is extremely political. … My belief in God is first and foremost about helping other people.”
Nadieszda Kizenko, a professor of history and the director of religious studies at Albany University, is a lifelong member of ROCOR and the daughter of a priest. Kizenko was so disappointed with the ROCOR statement about Ukraine that she signed a petition asking leaders to reconsider sending a stronger message to parishioners and Moscow.
“These are very broad and elliptical statements that are impossible to disagree with,” she told ReligionUnplugged.com. “I have heard that people are saying they may go to OCA (Orthodox Church of America) or Antiochian churches if this keeps going on.”
ROCOR was established by bishops who fled in exile after the Russian Civil War when in 1920 the Soviet government declared open hostility on the Russian Orthodox Church by executing nearly 7,000 priests. St. Tikhon, the patriarch of Moscow at that time, granted a decree that the bishops and Russian Orthodox Christians outside of Russia may govern themselves independently until the church in Russia could again be free. The church’s mission was always to preserve the Russian tradition only until the Russian Orthodox Church could be free again in Russia.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, ROCOR leaders compiled a list of conditions that they wanted the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia to meet, including canonizing new martyrs murdered by the USSR. ROCOR reattached itself to the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007.
In the U.S., ROCOR churches have many parishioners from Ukraine and Belarus who fled the Soviet Union during World War II. As a result, they do not have strong national identities, Kizenko explained. Those with stronger nationalist identities besides Russian sought out other Orthodox churches. Today a new generation of immigrants form the base of the parishioners, along with American converts who tend to be former Protestants.
“Many people in ROCOR have no personal feelings about Kirill,” Kizenko said, because Kirill has not personally visited churches in North America. “Whereas Onuphry (the Ukrainian Orthodox Church leader under Moscow), everyone has seen him and loves him.”
To Kizenko, this makes Metropolitan Hilarion’s statement even more frustrating because Onuphry has already criticized Putin.
“Now would be a good time for the ROCOR to dust off its critical aspect of its identity and its role as a goad and nasty gnat on the wall that doesn’t let you sleep at night,” she said. “It may be too much to expect priests and bishops in Russia to take a critical position … but we have nothing to lose. We can speak out.”
So far, more than 275 Russian Orthodox priests have signed a statement indirectly criticizing Patriarch Kirill and appealing for peace from both sides— a rare show of opposition against both the government and the top leaders in the Russian Orthodox Church who have not signed the letter. Their letter reminds Kirill and all in the church that Judgment Day is coming.
“We remind you that the Blood of Christ, shed by the Savior for the life of the world, will be received in the sacrament of Communion by those people who give murderous orders, not into life, but into eternal torment,” the letter reads in a translation. “We respect the God-given freedom of man, and we believe that the people of Ukraine should make their choice on their own, not at gunpoint, without pressure from the West or the East… No non-violent call for peace and an end to war should be forcibly suppressed and considered as a violation of the law, for such is the divine commandment: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’"
American and Ukrainian flags stand at each end of the icon screen of St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Boston, Massachussetts. Photo by Meagan Clark.
After the service at St. Andrew’s, parishioners gathered to discuss the latest updates on the war from their friends and family still in Ukraine and from the media: twins born in a subway bomb shelter, Russian soldiers who refused to fight Ukrainians and turned themselves in, a Ukrainian soldier who died blowing up a bridge to stop Russian tanks.
Tanya Portynkina compared Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to King David of the Israelites in the Bible. As a young shepherd, David defeated an enemy people by slaying a giant.
“People said he’s our David, really,” she said of Zelenskyy. “So everybody pray for him and for our troops and for our people.”
READ: Ukrainian Christians ‘Stay, Pray And Try To Bring Hope’
Portynkina is from southern Ukraine near the Crimean border. “I feel like my hands fall down and I have no power at all,” she said. “But I know that we should think about our future because nobody wants to be in the Soviet Union anymore, especially after 30 years of independent Ukraine.”
Her husband, Oleg, worries about his 81-year-old father, who lives a couple blocks from an active combat zone. The Russians have now taken the city, the son said. When asked if he would ever attend a Russian Orthodox church in the U.S., Oleg said he would sooner attend an evangelical church.
“I cannot say I forgive Russian people,” he said. “To me, Russia doesn’t exist. I believe in God, of course — I don’t keep it in my heart — but I will try to be away from them. If someone comes to your home and ruins it, I can’t say, ‘OK, I’m going to be your friend and come again.’ Maybe in the next life.”
The Kiev Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of Caves) in 2019. Photo by Meagan Clark.
What’s at stake globally
The Russian Orthodox Church has enjoyed a close relationship with Putin for years and is widely seen by its critics as a tool of the government that appears increasingly imperial in its aims. Putin’s government heralds Orthodoxy as much as Russian culture and heritage as a pillar of identity. In 2018, when Ukrainian Orthodox churches began shifting their allegiances to the independent OCU, Putin threatened bloodshed.
READ: Prominent Christian Leaders And Groups Face Reckoning Over Praise For Putin
After the schism, the Russian Orthodox Church cut ties with the Alexandria Patriarchate, which recognized the OCU, and successfully encouraged more than 100 Orthodox clerics from eight countries in Africa to recognize canonical status with the Russian church instead. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Alexandria called Russia’s actions an “invasion” of Africa, seen as an attempt to expand its geographical reach and compete with Constantinople, which has claims to some of Christianity’s earliest churches and holy sites. The Alexandrite church was founded by Apostle Mark in the first century.
If Ukraine loses the war to Russia, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that the OCU will continue to exist independent of Moscow. Since the schism occurred, the Moscow Patriarchate has retained control over the most holy sites of Slavic Orthodoxy, including some of the most revered saints’ relics in catacombs underneath the Kiev Pechersk Lavra — Monastery of the Caves in English. Kiev is the Russian spelling of Kyiv.
The Russian invasion has caused even the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow to push back on the patriarchate for spiritual freedom. On March 2, several clergymen from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv published a letter to Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Onuphry, urging them to discuss the church’s withdrawal from the Moscow Patriarchate over its dismissal of the war in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian news site Lviv Now and the Catholic news outlet La Croix International.
“We thought you were the Father, and you were worse than the stepfather,” wrote Peter Semaschuk, rector of the Fedir Consecrated Church, according to a translation. He asked Onuphry to begin putting together a local council of the church to discuss the “inappropriateness” of ties to Moscow and change the canonical status of the church.
The Lviv clergy also stated that their churches and monasteries would stop mentioning Patriarch Kirill during services, when parishioners normally pray for their church leaders. Clergy in another city in western Ukraine, Ivano-Frankivsk, agreed.
“In this decision, we see the support of the faithful of our churches, many of whom are now at the forefront,” the clergy statement from Ivano-Frankivsk reads.
Jovan Tripkovic and Alicia Lenea contributed reporting.
Meagan Clark is the managing editor of ReligionUnplugged.com. She has reported for Newsweek, International Business Times, Dallas Morning News, Religion News Service and several other outlets including in India. She is a 2022 candidate for the Masters in Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School and a board member of Associated Church Press. Follow her on Twitter @MeaganKay.