This week, a Russian Orthodox priest said to his congregation, “Hopefully soon, we’ll have Moldova, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltic States join our great Russia.”
I feel like someone put me in a time machine and transported me back to the Dark Ages. Are the Russians engaging in some kind of crusade?
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var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_47358020", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"972350"} }); ","_id":"0000017f-8e34-d4d8-a3ff-aeb57baa0000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedThis behavior by a person of the cloth is, simply put, abominable. How is it possible for any Christian leader who reads the same Bible I do to endorse the senseless, brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia? How many civilians must die before the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Kirill of Moscow, intervenes?
Putin’s war is no holy war. It isn’t even the war of the Russian people, but only of him. The powerful Russian Orthodox Church ought to be using whatever influence it has to stop these senseless acts.
But Kirill’s rise and the Orthodox Church’s growing influence in Russia have paralleled Putin’s rise. Putin ensured the longevity of his power by changing the Constitution of Russia and destroying dissent along the way. He subverted a comparatively free post-Soviet Russia and made himself a czar. Now, we’re seeing in stark form how his vision of a renewed Soviet empire required the hijacking of religion to achieve its aims.
The Russian Orthodox Church needs to take back its religion. How tragic it is that Putin’s political mission required the cooperation of a church that was viciously persecuted during the same Soviet era that commands Putin’s nostalgia?
While the world amps up political and economic pressure on Putin, global Christianity must rise up and put unrelenting spiritual pressure on the Russian Orthodox Church, too, beginning with its patriarch.
The Russian Orthodox Church is ubiquitous, extending into all spheres of Russian society. Roughly 80% of Russians are under Kirill’s pastoral care. He is revered not just in Russia but by the entire Orthodox world. He may be the only person in Russia who can rival Putin’s power.
This patriarchate’s influence is also ubiquitous. Observers call him the “soft power arm of the Kremlin.” Under his leadership, the Russian Orthodox Church is now the largest landowner in the Russian Federation. He has solidified his power in part by walking in lockstep with Vladimir Putin, even profanely referring to Putin as “a miracle from God.”
The Russian Orthodox Church believes that, along with Putin’s administration, they are stalwarts against a culturally corrupt West. Their vision is of a “Holy Russia” will continue expanding until it controls the Eurasian landmass. This provides a moral ideological base from which they legitimize the Kremlin’s anti-Western war.
This vision also shouldn’t surprise us. It’s a failure of global Christianity we didn’t see it and intervene earlier.
None of this is new information. The former director of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs wrote that it is actually religion that has served to restimulate Russians fears about the security of their southern borders. And a noted international relations adviser stated in a recent editorial, “The Russian Orthodox Church is a powerful force as it marches in the footsteps of the expeditionary Russian Army trespassing into the sovereign territories of neighboring countries.”
Now, it seems, the tide is turning.
Already, Russian Orthodox leaders around the world are standing up to their own patriarch in opposition to Putin’s war, but it isn’t enough. More must stand, and we must stand with them. Who will be the Zelensky of the Russian Orthodox Church? Who will be its Churchill?
The churches of Europe critically failed during the rise of Hitler to speak and act on behalf of the Jews. While Hitler is a singular figure in modern history to whom we should not compare, his hatred lives on in every generation. It’s the job of the Church to say, “Not on our watch.”
I pray the patriarch reverses course, but, in the meantime, he must hear from billions of Christians, now. We should not reserve our prophetic voice just for politicians alone but also for the church. Patriarchs should not have blood on their hands. Putin’s spiritual oligarch needs to be sanctioned by our prayers and from our pulpits. The church must not sit idly by while our religion is used to justify the shedding of innocent blood.
Archbishop Joseph D’Souza is the archbishop of the Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India and serves as the president of the All India Christian Council.
