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As the process of obtaining autocephaly for the Church in Ukraine enters the homestretch, clergy and laity argue about canonical territory, the "legitimization of schism," and nationalism. The incessant obsession with these issues obscures the reality of a Church as a community of people who continue to engage everyday life while they go to church. One cannot separate the struggle for autocephaly from the conditions of everyday life. Headlines about long-tenured hierarchs and high-level meetings involving more media than people barely scratch the surface of a much more complex story.
In the last one-hundred years, Orthodox faithful in Ukraine confronted rapidly changing conditions. Ukraine had no fewer than five governments from 1918-1920, when autocephaly began - the collapse of the Tsarist regime left a void that many rushed to fill, and the Church had to find her place in that void. What began as something simple - a struggle to pray in Ukrainian, not Slavonic - became something much larger when those who had no allegiance to the Tsar came into conflict wit
h bishops who had sworn oaths of fidelity. The Church sought to find her place in the midst of this struggle, and schism resulted. One cannot expect to read absolute fidelity to order in a time of pure chaos, one in which random murder because one happened to be a landowner was just as likely as a sunny day. The Church did not find her place in the turbulent and bloody 20's and 30's, and that struggle continues to this day.
We're witnessing to the Church's natural (emphasis on natural) adjustment to the conditions of the post-Soviet period. The euphoria of liberty from Soviet persecution in the 90's opened the doors to an opportunity to be a Church in a community with evolving core values. The freedom of the 90's put the death the norm of a malevolent government that only tolerated one legitimate Orthodox Church - the Moscow Patriarchate, a Church that learned how to survive the brutal reality underneath the mask of favoritism. Freedom permitted the struggle for autocephaly to resume in Ukraine, and its energy was no less fierce than the return of the UGCC in 1989 - it is not coincidental that the same year witnessed to the return of the autocephalous movement, this time legal. The resilience of the communities who remained in that movement through the leadership of several bishops challenged the Soviet-era hegemony of all Orthodox housed in one Patriarchate centered in Moscow. That Patriarchate also adjusted to its new conditions, and is finding that the conditions of legitimacy that it held alone until 1991 have disappeared.
The imminent autocephaly of the Church in Ukraine is the result of a natural, organic process of development. One should not be surprised to witness to this adjustment of the new conditions of the post-Soviet period - conditions shaped by a series of events such as Black Tuesday (1995), the Orange Revolution, the Maidan, Crimea, and the war in Donbas, and the reality of religious pluralism. What's different this time is that the chaos of recent events was not enough to pause the struggle for autocephaly, unlike the Soviet persecution of the late 20's and 30's and World War II.
When Patriarch Bartholomew formally gives the Tomos of autocephaly to the leader of the new church, the struggle will not end. The Church will continue to adjust to the new conditions of the post-Soviet period. What will happen after the euphoria passes? Will the new autocephalous Church become tyrannical and mimic the policies of her antecedent in Ukraine? Will a patriotic Ukrainian world replace the Russian World? We should remember the euphoria of the 90's, the excitement of rebuilding churches on the piles of rubble from Soviet persecution. If those edifices become places renowned for the proclamation of God's word and a refuge for sinners to find healing, reconciliation, and true communion in a broken world, then all will be well. But if those gleaming edifices become symbols of a new national or imperial ideology, they might as well be a pile of rubble.
It is cozy to write these word from the comfort of the West. I know that, and I should "own" it. But maybe this is a reminder that today, in 2018, Orthodoxy and all Christians have an opportunity to ask Ukrainians if we can join them in this stage of their journey, and witness with them not only to the Tomos, but beyond as well. I'm confident that Ukrainians will be delighted to have us stand side-by-side with them. So it's up to us to decide if we will stand with them, or merely watch from afar, blinded by the obstructed vision of sensational headlines featuring disputes between the heads of Churches.
