Orthodox Church in Ukraine in the context of the information war. Part 2: “…therefore go and make disciples of all…” (Matthew 28:19)

How about the Church? How does it respond to the situation at hand, so complicated for it? Even though my words might cause a negative response with a certain part of Orthodox believers, I must say this: “WE ARE RESPONSIBLE for everything what is going on in Ukraine with regard to the Orthodox Church!”

Read also: Orthodox Church in Ukraine in the context of the information war. Part 1: Difficult questions.

The biggest trouble is that we resist admitting that. Of course, we often speak of repentance, of our being imperfect, yet in real life we seldom find a nerve to acknowledge the fact that it is we who have brought the state of Church affairs to the point when the very existence of Canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine is put under threat. Herewith we always have a ready-at-hand excuse that according to the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ, “…and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will prevail against it!” (Matthew 16:18). However, we forget for some reason the fact it is about the Church as a whole, we forget historic facts when canonical orthodoxy ceased its existence in a particular territory either altogether or the amount of its parishes shrank up to several dozen ones (1).

But how did it happen? Given that the overwhelming majority of priests, bishops and laymen are faithful and loyal to Christ and His Church? Why did we appear in such a difficult situation? Why does the society at large not hear our voice and if it does – people do not have confidence in us? Why is it so that we always experience effects of the famous saying, “we tried our best, you know the rest” (we did our worst)?

The main reason of what has happened lies in that we failed to realize we got into a different historic reality following the collapse of the Soviet Union and rebirth of the church life in a post-Soviet space – life had changed, people had changed. This mistake resulted in our attempts to restore intensively a pre-revolutionary orthodoxy. We engaged ourselves with a proper décor of churches and relied in public relations on the dialogue with authorities, cherishing hope to make a comeback of the “symphony” between the Church and the state: in the hot strive for visual improvements in the church life nobody was able to notice a deep internal bias the “symphony” between the Church and state had. It was an idea that couldn’t take into account ontological incompatibility of the Celestial Kingdom and vicious earthly reality.

We forgot the main thing – mission of the Church in this world. Within this time (I mean 25 years of Ukraine’s independence) our rivals chose another, more effective, way to get to the people’s souls).

We were unable to explain to the people what is Church, what It serves, what Its nature is etc. Our foes immediately took advantage of this. They merely played on human passions and delivered the Ukrainian society a “symphony” concept in an attractive nationalist wrapping. They did not make haste with construction of churches; instead they opted for the right course – to master people’s minds. Over the independence years they have raised a number of generations who literally worship everything national. They have created an image of the enemy out of their northern enemy and embedded in the mass consciousness a myth that canonical Ukrainian Church is a servant to Moscow and, consequently, Ukraine’s enemy. In fact, they have shaped a new religion under the name “Ukrainian nationalism”. Its maxim with regard to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is an idea that the Church should serve the government (as good a symphony as any), that interests of the nation are beyond any others: ”Religious homogeneity, as one of the proponents of this idea puts it, means one country, one religion, one church and is viewed as a prerequisite of the state consolidation; religious dissidents alongside religious radicals, who are sure that Jesus Christ alone is a head of the Church, are believed to pose a threat to national churches and subject to persecution (it actually means that canonical Orthodox Church is a threat to the nationalist state – author’s note). National churches produce ideologies that contain specifically national topics and consolidate legitimacy of the recently created states… It is not a state that is created for a religion, but a religion for a state”. State becomes primary in everything… Nation does not want to be merely sanctified by religion, but becomes the religion itself, while nationalism morphs into substitution of the religion: to live, suffer, love, and hate for the sake of the nation is considered as a virtue greater than to suffer for the sake of abstract God.” (2). Consequently, quite a big share of the population in Ukraine today are willing to hear nothing of the canonical orthodoxy and, like a mantra, repeat slogans on founding their own “Ukrainian Orthodox Church” in Ukraine.

We have made the same mistake as we did before the revolution, namely: Orthodoxy was often perceived by common folks as a certain tool for the population’s patriotic upbringing, resulting in quite a firm opinion that Orthodox Church is mostly a nationalist phenomenon. In fact, there was established a stereotype of the Church without Christ and Life according to evangelical commandments. If we add here a purely administrative pressure of secular authorities on the Church, it is clear why a global catastrophe occurred in Russia at the beginning of XX century. ”… Didn’t the revolution hit the Church so dramatically because in consciousness of many people the Church was associated with the power, taken as its instrument?,” noted Holy Patriarch Kiril in one of his public speeches (3).

What shall we do?

Thus, we have made it clear for the issue who is at fault. We are! We could hardly expect mass media loyalty and that of ultra-radicals, power, and other Christian denominations (out of which Ukrainian Greek-Catholics behave most aggressively toward the UOC).

Alas, but over the last 25 years the Church has failed to create real church-related mass media. Of course, there is a diocesan newspaper in every diocese, yet it is not a mass medium (i.e. the one to get the position of the Church across to the public at large being dischurched and duped by propaganda). Such newspaper looks like an in-house bulletin whose quality makes it hardly interesting to the Orthodox themselves (in my opinion, this conclusion concerns most church printed media).

Among other, the previous Church administration lost even slight opportunities of cooperation with secular mass media which were more or less loyal to the UOC. If our clergy appeared on television or were interviewed by secular newspapers and magazines, they did not touch on the issues of schism, Ukrainian nationalism, and information war.

True though, the situation has somewhat changed for better with the current authorities: there appeared a number of sites through which the Church tries to defend its interests, we began to call a spade a spade, we are not afraid of being criticized and having an open discussion. However, it is too little to turn the tide drastically in our favor: according to statistics, just a few people have confidence in the Internet outlets, and an overall amount of Orthodox e-media (out of which, perhaps, only the site of the Union of Orthodox Journalists can be thought a real electronic mass medium) is not enough to viably oppose to our opponents.

Nevertheless, the situation works to our advantage: impoverishment of the vast share of the population, discrepancy between the reform program, declared by the government, and real life (by the way, it is pretty much similar to the situation in the USSR), an adverse attitude of the majority of citizens to the military conflict in the east of Ukraine and other complexities inherent in the Ukrainian reality, are gradually opening people’s eyes and giving hope that the voice of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine will be eventually heard by the society.

Anyway, what has to be done now? In order to answer this question, one should refer to the history of the Church. If we do it, we will see the Church has always counteracted heresies, schismatics, and basically all those who intended to discredit Christ’s faith in other people’s eyes. While an internal political situation plays at our hand today, our silence, on the contrary, works against us. By showing our fear before the Maidan, we gave cause to dissenters and nationalists to launch persecutions against us. Isn’t it high time we remembered the words of St. John Chrysotom that THE WORST PERSECUTION IS NO PERSECUTION! Let us recall that Jesus Christ urges his disciples in the Gospel NOT TO FEAR! As far as I am concerned, the first thing to be done now is to address the Ukrainian society and call things by their proper names. To be more specific:

• We must communicate to people, employing all possible means, the fact that “Kiev Patriarchate” is a schismatic grouping which is not recognized by anybody in the Orthodox world. We must explain to the people why it is so! In any case, whether they will like it or not, Ukrainians should understand there is no split of Orthodoxy; that there already exists a canonical Church in Ukraine, which is united with the Ecumenical Orthodoxy; that it is irrelevant to talk about having a union with schismatics, the latter having only one way to accede to the Church – through repentance.
• It’s necessary to remind the society as often as possible that the Church has never served and will never serve anything being temporary, corruptible, and fleeting. The Church’s mission is to care about salvation of humans in Christ. It means the Church in essence is a hospital providing sick men with medicines (Holy Sacraments) to heal their souls and to cure the entire human being of the sin, affliction and death.
• Unquestionably, we should not take part in a political fight. Moreover, we should accept the choice of the Ukrainian nation with respect. Still, one has to get the people aware of the pernicious nature of ultra-nationalist ideology. We must do our best to reveal all falsehood of hedonism philosophy (search for pleasures) – the philosophy that has intoxicated millions of people in Ukraine. It has to be done in a contemporary and clear language. We shouldn’t be afraid to answer the most pressing and thorny questions our life sets before us. We shouldn’t get closed on ourselves, on the contrary, we need to turn our face to the society and try to be open and accessible.

But in order to fulfill all this, we need to take efforts to create real church-related mass media, which work will be aimed to unveil the position of the Church and translate the evangelic Sermon to the secular society. We must quit the image of the “silent church”. After all, Christ sent His disciples to preach: “therefore go and make disciples of all…” (Matthew 28:19), rather than commanded them to live in a detached circle and wait for God to bring those who have faith in Him.

Furthermore, the Church must not only teach laymen the Word of God, but be able to reflect on how we are perceived by non-Christians. We must be able to analyze in a serene and careful way what is true and what is not true about certain ideology, to adequately respond to contemporary challenges. Without it neither our country nor the Orthodox Church in Ukraine will have future. Alas, but 5% of our parishioners (mostly elderly people) are incapable of halting a demographic and moral crisis of the Ukrainian society; the crisis that in the nearest future can question the very existence of independent Ukraine. Therefore, we should leave our quiet cells and come out toward people, become more open and accessible, develop an ability to overcome some psychological stereotypes of ours (which prevent us from being orthodox, rather than help). Once more I will say: the most real way to carry it out is to create de facto church mass media.

The report was made at the seminar “Problems of politically biased use of the religious factor in mass media”

References:

1. With the appearance of Islam the Orthodox virtually disappeared from the territory of some Islamic states (contemporary Iran, Iraq). Besides, the history knows when the Church ceased being Orthodox due to the distortion of the religious doctrine. For instance, Armenian and Coptic Churches backed out in favor of the monophysitism heresy, whereas the number-one Orthodox Patriarchate – Constantinople – counts at present as few as 100 parishes, though the Constantinople Church used to be the biggest Orthodox Church in the world.
2. Національна академія наук України. Институт філософії імені Г. С. Сковороди. Релігія і нація: в суспільному житті України й світу. С. 90-91, 192-194 (Перевод автора).
3. Из выступления Патриарха Кирилла. Еженедельник «Седмица». 2009. № 29-30. с. 21.