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Religion is another battlefield in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) has come under intense state pressure due to its perceived ties to Russia. Yet interviews with ordinary UOC members offer a more nuanced picture of the ‘Russian’ church in Ukraine.
A new ZOiS Report provides unprecedented insights into the thinking of rank-and-file members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). In 27 in-depth interviews conducted with UOC priests and parishioners in 2024, report author Andriy Fert asked them for their views on Russia, the war, and how the church should position itself in the current hostile context. The fact that only people who did not identify as pro-Russia were willing to be interviewed means that their answers are not representative of the UOC as a whole. The interviews nevertheless capture the current mood within the church and show that the UOC is more diverse than its image as the ‘Russian church in Ukraine’.
The origins of public disapproval
The decline in public support for the UOC began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and gathered pace after 2022. For many of the church members cited in the report, this public disapproval is due mainly to extrinsic factors. They blame the Ukrainian media for one-sided reporting and claim that the state has orchestrated the church’s negative press. Others find fault with the UOC leadership, suggesting that it failed to properly communicate the church’s break with Moscow in 2022 and condemn collaborators among their clerics.
Reluctance to introduce Ukrainian language
An archaic language – Church Slavonic – is the language of worship in the UOC. Recent calls for the church to switch to Ukrainian – at least in certain parts of the liturgy – have exposed divisions within the church. Some of the church members interviewed for this report feel very strongly about retaining Church Slavonic as a ‘sacred’ language and are reluctant to bend to outside pressure on this issue. Rather than indicating a pro-Russian stance, their reluctance can be attributed largely to habit and theological considerations. Other interviewees are more willing to introduce Ukrainian elements – around half of the parishes studied in the report have done so to date.
Views of ‘rival’ Orthodox Church of Ukraine
Since 2018, the UOC has had a competitor in the form of the more openly pro-Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). According to the official UOC line, the OCU is an illegitimate church that is colluding with the state to undermine the UOC. While a large proportion of the interviewees echo this narrative, many do not and point instead to their good relations with members of the ‘rival’ church. That said, the interviewees’ willingness to re-affiliate to the OCU is very low overall.
The report sheds light on the inner conflict of UOC members as they struggle to find an appropriate reaction to developments in Ukraine. As the author explains, “Many interviewees invoke the idea of religion as an apolitical realm. Yet in the context of the war, even the desire to be unsullied by politics is political.”
Andriy Fert: War and Religion. Views from Within Ukraine’s ‘Russian’ Church. ZOiS Report 6/2024.
https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/press/press-releases/report-captures-mood-within-c...
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