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History moves fast in today’s Ukraine. Driven on by an undeclared war
with Russia that is about to enter its seventh year, Ukraine is
currently shedding centuries of imperial baggage and emerging from
obscurity as a genuinely independent nation. This is sending ripples of
geopolitical turbulence across the wider region and has plunged the
entire world into a new Cold War. However, the epicenter of the
unfolding historical drama remains inside Ukraine itself. The sense of
upheaval and national awakening is evident throughout Ukrainian daily
life, from politics and the economy to culture and identity.
Among the many
momentous developments to rock Ukraine since 2014, few have carried
greater symbolic significance than the establishment of an
independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This landmark event took
place in early 2019 with the granting of autocephaly, or
self-governing status, by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople,
Bartholomew I. For centuries, Ukraine’s Orthodox faithful had
previously fallen under Moscow’s jurisdiction. The Soviet collapse
saw the rise of a Kyiv Patriarchate to rival the Moscow Patriarchate,
but this Ukrainian upstart lacked international recognition. The
Constantinople Patriarch’s 2019 intervention completely transformed
this picture and gave Ukraine an internationally acknowledged
national Orthodox Church of its own.
One year on, the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine is firmly established at home and
gradually gaining ground internationally. However, much like Ukraine
itself, the new Church remains a work in progress that faces enormous
challenges from a Russian establishment unwilling to accept the loss
of its traditional dominance in a country that many in Moscow
continue to view as an integral part of the Russian heartlands.
“This is a young Church with ancient roots,” commented the Orthodox
Church of Ukraine’s Metropolitan Epiphaniy during an anniversary service
at Kyiv’s venerable St. Sophia Cathedral in early February.
Metropolitan Epiphaniy went on to describe Ukraine’s newly independent
Orthodox Church as the continuation of an ancient lineage stretching all
the way back to the conversion of the Slavs in late tenth century Kyiv.
This echoes ongoing efforts to attribute similarly deep political
foundations to today’s Ukrainian state.
St. Sophia Cathedral was a particularly apt setting for such bold
proclamations. Looming over the congregation were thousand-year-old
frescoes depicting the Kyiv Rus royals who first brought Christianity to
Ukraine. These secular icons are regarded as the direct ancestors of
the modern Ukrainian state. Like so much else in Ukraine’s reemerging
national story, they are also coveted by modern Russia, which claims
them for its own foundation myth. As today’s Ukrainians fight to
establish a national narrative of their own, this inevitably places them
on a collision course with their northern neighbors.
The issue of
Orthodox independence has long been a highly politicized aspect of
Ukraine’s post-Soviet nation-building efforts. In the years
following the 2004 Orange Revolution, President Yushchenko sought but
failed to secure autocephaly for the country. When it finally did
come a decade later, the breakthrough was widely attributed to
President Poroshenko, who invested considerable political capital in
his wooing of the Constantinople Patriarch and sought to use this
success as a springboard to reelection.
Other factors
prevented Poroshenko from earning a second presidential term, but the
importance of his achievement should not be underestimated, even if
this is not immediately apparent from the available data. In the year
since the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was established, around 600
parishes have left the Moscow Patriarchate and joined the new Church.
This is a relative drop in the ocean compared to the estimated 12,000
Ukrainian parishes that continue to owe their loyalty to the Russian
Orthodox Church. By comparison, the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine
currently has a total of around 7,000 parishes. However, counting
parishes is not an exact science, with many featuring tiny rural
congregations and others existing on paper only.
Perhaps more tellingly, a nationwide poll
published by the respected Razumkov Center think tank on February 3
found that over one-third of Ukrainians (34%) now identify as members of
the newly established Orthodox Church of Ukraine, while around 14%
follow the Moscow Patriarchate. Meanwhile, over a quarter of respondents
(27.6%) defined themselves simply as Orthodox Christians without
choosing any particular branch and affiliation.
As this survey suggests, the move away from the Moscow Patriarchate
is a long-term trend that predates the relatively recent advent of
autocephaly. More than any other single factor, Vladimir Putin’s
six-year undeclared war against Ukraine has been disastrous for the
Russian Orthodox Church’s fortunes in the country. Members of the Moscow
Patriarchate clergy have been accused of actively supporting Russian
military aggression in Ukraine, while numerous incidents of priests
refusing to perform religious services for Ukrainians killed defending
their country have sparked widespread public anger and dismay. Until
2014, church affiliation had been a non-issue for many Ukrainians, but
the conflict has transformed it into yet another front line in the
bitter geopolitical divorce between Russia and Ukraine.
Despite the setbacks of recent years, the Russian Orthodox Church
will likely remain part of Ukrainian society for many decades to come.
It continues to control the majority of Ukraine’s most important
religious sites and has deep, multi-generational roots in Ukrainian
society that are strong enough to withstand the current political
storms. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine has also
demonstrated over the past year that it is capable of putting down roots
of its own. As well as consolidating its position domestically,
Ukraine’s new Church has been officially recognized by the Greek
Orthodox Church and the Patriarchate of Alexandria. During anniversary
events, Metropolitan Epiphaniy said he expected further recognition from
within the Orthodox world in the coming months. Efforts are also
underway to engage with wider Ukrainian society through the creation of
the Mazepa Foundation, an initiative backed by the Orthodox Church of
Ukraine that will support good causes and dialogue across the country.
Perhaps the most important role played by the Orthodox Church of
Ukraine is as a symbol of Ukrainian statehood. Prior to autocephaly,
followers of Ukraine’s Kyiv Patriarchate were often derided as members
of an unrecognized sect. This mirrored similar attacks on Ukraine as a
whole, with the country’s lack of historical pedigree as an independent
nation brandished by opponents as evidence that it was somehow less
worthy of the respect due to a sovereign state. In this context, the
international recognition Ukraine’s new Church received in 2019 was a
significant step forward in Ukraine’s long nation-building journey. It
did not bring Russian religious influence in the country to an end, but
it did send a message that Ukraine was an independent nation with a
national church of its own.
Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert blog.
