A Vanishing Point: Unity in Orthodoxy and the Ukraine Crisis — Христиане против войны

Надежда Киценко

Профессоресса и директрисса программы исследований религии Университета штата Нью-Йорк в Олбани (США).

Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture was delievered by Dr. Nadieszda Kizenko in Fordham University, New York, 30 October 2023. Video can be seen here.

When I was invited to give the annual Economos Orthodoxy in America lecture, I first thought of some topic I have studied at length. The sacrament of repentance, perhaps—or nineteenth-century saints. But it seems wrong to speak about some aspect of Orthodox history that is safe or distant. For we are in a situation where Orthodox Christians are not only facing the same dreadful news that everyone sees on the front pages: we are also facing them not unified, but deeply divided within our own Church. It is not only a matter of jurisdictional or national differences. Or rather it is precisely the struggle over jurisdictional boundaries, and who can determine them, that has revealed the problem. The structuresof Orthodoxy, the processes in Orthodoxy, the way we function (or do not function)—all of that seems to be short-circuiting. People used to joke: “No, I don’t belong to an organized religion—I’m Orthodox.” Alas, that is not as funny as it used to be.

There are three issues in the Orthodox Church I’d like to address here. Two reflect issues within the Orthodox Church. Autocephaly (the authority of a church to determine its own primate without confirmation by anybody else) touches on the territorial principle of church organization or structure in general: for any given place, only one bishop is in charge. The second is synodality, or the principle of arriving at consensus in church councils. (One could also call it conciliarity.) The third deals with how individual Orthodox churches relate to the rest of the world, including the relationship between Church and State. Having engaged these issues historically, I’d like to reflect on how we might deal with them in an Orthodox way.

Unity in plurality

Until recently, it was possible to describe Orthodoxy as “unity in plurality.” This seems almost counter-intuitive, given that the Orthodox Church (singular) consisted of more than a dozen local Orthodox churches (plural), all with a wide variety of local practices. Orthodoxy had no overarching structure, body, or person, that held it all together. And yet with all this variety it was still possible to say that Orthodoxy functioned relatively well – indeed, that it functioned as one church. What then held Orthodoxy together—even in times when official hierarchical communion was broken?

Some of it was shared faith and form of prayer. Some of it was secular authorities who wanted to preserve the Church for political reasons. Some of it was mutual need. Some of it—a great deal of it—was the simple fact that there were not many opportunities for Orthodox from different regions to meet and to tell each other what they were doing. And, sometimes, all these things came together.

As our baseline, let us consider a case familiar to many: the travels of Macarius III, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, and his son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo. In the 1650s, a delegation of Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians from Ottoman-ruled Syria went on a long fund-raising mission to seek support from Orthodox rulers and fellow hierarchs to help the Orthodox Christians in. From 1652 to 1659, Macarius and his group visited Constantinople, Moldova, Wallachia, Kyiv, and Muscovy. We know a great deal about their trip thanks to the detailed travel journal of the Patriarch’s son, Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo¹.

In Russia, Paul complained over and over about not being able to eat fish during Lent, standing in freezing Russian churches for hours, days, nights, service after service, “such excess of torment as one might liken to the violence of the rack…almost dead with fatigue from standing.” In one immortal line, he cried out in his diary, “Their legs must be made of iron!”² The Syrians could not simply shake the dust from their feet, however. They were committed to being there, and had to be on their best behavior to make sure they got money. When Paul finally left Muscovy and saw the spires of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, he all but danced for joy.

Still, if we compare Paul’s account to those of Westernvisitors to Muscovy at the same time, we see something interesting. For all the differences Paul noted, the Syriansthought they were operating in the same mental and spiritual universe as the Muscovites and the Moldavians and the Wallachians and the inhabitants of Constantinople. Where Western observers saw tyranny, Paul of Aleppo saw an Orthodox Christian empire; where Westerners saw servility, Paul saw humility; where Westerners thought Muscovites were ignorant for not knowing Greek or Latin, Patriarch Macarius had to struggle with Greek himself³. Especially when it came to prayer life and icons and saints, whatever distinctive practices the Syrians noted in all the Orthodox lands they visited, they had shared standards to measure them by. Paul may not have wanted to stand in church for as long as the Muscovites did, but he understood their fervor and respected it. If we are looking for a sense of unity in diversity, the account of seventeenth-century Orthodox Christians living in the Middle East and traveling to other Orthodox countries and assessing what they saw like insiders is a good place to start⁴.

Perhaps it also helped that it was, after all, the seventeenth century. Distances meant more than they do now; everything took longer. Macarius and his group traveled for over seven years. Perhaps then and earlier, Greek or Russian or Syrian or other bishops may not have agreed, but because they never saw each other and had no idea what the others were up to, it did not matter. In our day, however, thanks to websites and social media, everybody knows almost immediately who said what in a homily last Sunday—not always for the better.⁵

But there are other lessons to draw from that visit as well. Let us not underestimate the pragmatic factor when it comes to getting along. The Syrians were not there for fun. They were under the Ottomans and deep in debt. They had to be there. To get the money he so desperately needed, Patriarch Macarius was willing to bless whomever necessary. That could be Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky when he inspired the Cossacks to rise up against the Poles, putting Ukraine on the mental map of Europe. Or, when that rebellion failed and it came time for the peace treaty of Andrusovo in 1667, that could mean preaching that Slavs on all sides should be friends.⁶

That peace treaty had far-reaching consequences for Orthodox Church circumstances today. Before it was signed, Kyiv had been in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where it was a Slavic Orthodox counterweight to the newly-created Moscow Patriarchate. Now it was to be part of Muscovy.⁷ Soon after, in 1686, that political change was reflected in liturgy. According to an act signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV and his synod, the Metropolitans of Kyiv were henceforth to receive their consecration in Moscow instead of Constantinople. This was an acknowledgement of the changed political circumstances. During Liturgy, however, the Metropolitan of Kyiv still had to commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch as the first (the commemoration is familiar as: “Among the first remember, Lord, our Archbishop (Name); grant him to Your holy churches in peace, safety, honor, and health, unto length of days, rightly teaching the word of Your truth”).⁸ As the years went by, the Metropolitans stopped that commemoration, and everyone acted as if a jurisdictional transfer had happened. But, in 2018, more than three hundred years later, Constantinople cancelled this act, claiming jurisdiction over Ukraine issuing a tomos of autocephaly to the newly-created Orthodox Church of Ukraine.⁹

This blew open issues that had been simmering for over a century, and which I alluded to at the beginning of this lecture: who exactly can grant autocephaly—and, if there is disagreement within the Church on this, how can consensus be reached. One might instinctively respond: through a council. But there had been no ecumenicalcouncil since the eighth century, and not everybody accepted local councils. If we look at how conciliarity has worked as either a process or a solution for thorny situations, the picture is not an especially happy one.

Territorial and other boundaries

In the nineteenth century, the Bulgarian Orthodox subjects of the Turkish sultan wanted more independence from the Greek-speaking Patriarchate of Constantinople. Eventually, with the sultan’s help, they established their own ecclesial structure, the ‘Bulgarian Exarchate.’ The Patriarch excommunicated the main actors, but tensions continued. Ultimately, in 1872, a council of Greek bishops from the Ottoman empire declared that ‘ethnophyletism,’ or the principle of privileging nationality over territoriality, was heresy. Declaring one’s opponent a heretic, however, neither convinced everyone in Orthodoxy nor resolved the issue. The schism between Bulgarians and Greeks was not healed until 1945.¹⁰

The lessons for us are, first: perhaps if one is pastoral enough early enough—letting the Bulgarians have Bulgarian-speaking bishops when they first ask to have them; or, if you are Moscow in 1990, letting Ukrainians have full autocephaly when they first ask for it—schism might be avoided.¹¹ As Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, said of freeing the serfs in 1861, “It is better to liberate the peasants from above rather than waiting for them to seize freedom for themselves from below.”¹² Second, secular powers, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, often get involved in what appear to be inner-church matters for their own geopolitical reasons and out of their own geopolitical interests.¹³ Finally, if one is willing to wait long enough, schisms sometimes resolve, even if it takes seven decades and two world wars.¹⁴

Still, given all that has happened since 1872, the declaration that putting national impulses first is a heresy is almost amusing. For, from the time that Constantinople declared ethnophyletism a heresy, here in America and in other countries that are traditionally non-Orthodox, it seems to have been nothing but ethnophyletism. Every nationality has its own Orthodox bishop. In cities like New York, one’s next-door Orthodox neighbor might have a different bishop because she belongs to a different ethnicity. This is the reality of the Orthodox church in the ‘diaspora’ (problematic as the term is).¹⁵ Can we honestly say today that we are sticking to the territorial principle of one bishop in one city? Could we say it a century ago?

At the start of the twentieth century, the Russian Church had an established diocese in America, with a resident archbishop and priests appointed to parishes in an orderly manner. The Antiochians and Serbs had their own ethnic vicariates under the Russian archbishop. The Ecumenical Patriarchate never objected to this. But it also did not think of the entire United States as Russia’s canonical territory. ‘Diaspora’—like this city and this country—was a free-for-all.¹⁶

In 1907, however, the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Greece decided that something had to be done about the Greek communities in the U.S. The Patriarchate established a commission of three Metropolitans to examine the Greek diaspora issue. In other words, it was not self-evident just who had authority over these Greek Americans and their churches. Then, for what seems to have been the first time since 451, the three metropolitans appointed to examine the Greek diaspora dusted off Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (without, however, referring to the canon explicitly) and proposed to apply it to the United States. When three metropolitans first invoked it, moreover, they used it to refer to the Greeks in the United States only—and the Ecumenical Patriarch disagreed with them. Patriarch Joachim thought that in Europe, things should stay as they were; in the United States, Greek Orthodox Christians should report directly to Athens.¹⁷ So, at least in the ‘diaspora,’ when the Orthodox world was more or less at peace, the national principle was the most important one. When full-scale war broke out in Europe, however, the territorial principle took a beating.

The Territorial Principle (I): fallout from the Balkan Wars and the World Wars

In 1912, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria declared war on the Ottoman empire and defeated it Bulgaria, angry because it did not get a big enough share of the spoils, then fought against the other original Orthodox combatants. Romania, taking the opportunity to profit at relatively easy cost, joined as well.¹⁸ This was one of the first instances of modernhistorically Orthodox nations attacking one another just to get more territory. Things really blew open, however, when the Great War and the ensuing Russian revolutions broke up Europe’s old empires. This had implications for the territorial principle in Orthodoxy as well as for secular states.

In the former Ottoman Empire, a war between Greeks and Turks, a split in Greek parishes between Royalists and Venizelists, and the population exchange of Greeks and Turks in 1923, marked the end of the Greek Megali Idea.¹⁹ The patriarchs of Constantinople were left with a greatly diminished flock in the new Turkish republic. Perhaps that is why only then they became more inclined to emphasize their wider authority within world Orthodoxy, and to use Chalcedon canon 28 in the United States.²⁰ In the former Russian and Habsburg empires, millions of Orthodox Christians who in 1914 had been imperial Russian subjects now found themselves in different places. Some were within the newly formed Soviet Union, some were in the new Lithuania and the new Estonia, Latvia, and Finland, and some within the new Polish republic. All this had implications for the Orthodox church and the territorial principle.

In Poland, the new government pressured the Orthodox hierarchy to ask the patriarchate of Constantinople for autocephaly, which was quickly granted. A similar process led to autocephaly or autonomy for the Orthodox churches in Finland and Estonia, similarly granted by Constantinople.²¹ In Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, communist persecution all but wiped out the Orthodox Church. In the interwar period, then, the star of Constantinople was rising just as Moscow’s was falling. It looked as if this might be the end of the Russian Church’s erstwhile immense influence on the Orthodox world.²²

After World War II, when the Soviet government allowed the Moscow Patriarchate to reorganize, the Russian Orthodox Church was quick to respond to what it saw as Constantinople’s unwarranted claims and actions. It reasserted its own jurisdiction over Estonia. It declared Czechoslovakia autocephalous. Finally, it made Poland returnthe autocephaly from Constantinople and re-petition for autocephaly from Moscow, which Moscow granted. This illustrated the structural problem of autocephaly in Orthodoxy. Both Patriarchates were claiming the right to grant autocephaly—and there was no consensus on what grounds.

The Territorial Principle (II): Autocephaly

It might seem as if the way to solve the problem would be an ecumenical council. In the year that I was born, 1961, Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople built on a long-standing idea to initiate a series of pan-Orthodox conferences to prepare the way for a Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church. The process grew as slowly or as quickly as I did.²³ By the time I turned ten (1971), an Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission met for the first time and published draft documents on topics that might be discussed at such a council. After Patriarch Athenagoras died in 1972, however, enthusiasm for the council project waned. Some thought that perhaps the original topics no longer truly corresponded to the needs of the church: perhaps things like autocephaly and the status of churches in the diaspora were more important.²⁴ The elephant in the room was the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which had petitioned the Russian Orthodox Church for autocephaly in 1970 on the grounds that Russia was its mother church. Moscow granted the autocephaly; Constantinople refused to recognize it.²⁵ Ignored by nearly everyone was the little Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the church in which I was raised, which claimed that it was the free part of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Moscow Patriarchate was a tool of the Soviet state.²⁶ Since this was Orthodoxy in America, however, where just about any group can call itself an Orthodox Church, we could all go on in our own worlds.

In 1976, the revised agenda of the First Pan-Orthodox Preconciliar Conference included autocephaly and the diaspora. But the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission did what many of us do, setting aside those thorny topics until the very last. They hoped that working together on simpler issues, like the date of Easter, would make agreement on more difficult issues easier to achieve. 1988 brought the celebrations of the millennium of Christianity in Rus in both the Soviet Union and in the diasporas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine—and the collapse of communism in all of Europe soon after. This meant freedom for churches which had struck an uneasy balance between persecution and cooperation, but an unexpected diminuendo in Orthodox dialogue. As the churches in formerly communist countries gained new freedom and opportunities for growth, they naturally focused on rebuilding their position in their own countries rather than think about inter-Orthodox cooperation on a global level.²⁷ The flurry of activity included a petition for canonical independence from Ukraine.²⁸ Preparatory work for a council continued, but in a desultory kind of way.

In 1990 and 1993, the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission dealt with the issues of diaspora and autocephaly.²⁹ There were three basic points of view.³⁰ Alexandria, Constantinople, and Greece based their argument on Chalcedon canon 28 (the one they sought to apply in the United States in 1922), which reads:

Following in all things the decisions of the holy Fathers, and acknowledging the canon, which has been just read, of the One Hundred and Fifty Bishops beloved-of-God (who assembled in the imperial city of Constantinople, which is New Rome, in the time of the Emperor Theodosius of happy memory), we also do enact and decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most holy Church of Constantinople, which is New Rome. For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome, because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops, actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her; so that, in the Pontic, the Asian, and the Thracian dioceses, the metropolitans only, and such bishops also of the Dioceses aforesaid as are among the barbarians, should be ordained by the aforesaid most holy throne of the most holy Church of Constantinople.³¹

It is hard to imagine a canon that more resembles the arguments over the ‘well-regulated militia’ clause in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Depending on whether one thinks the privileges accruing to Constantinople hinge on its being a royal city, depending on how one defines the territories of Pontus, Asia and Thrace, and depending on how one defines “among the barbarians,” only Constantinople has the right to exercise jurisdiction outside its territorial boundaries in all geographical areas that lie outside the boundaries of the other duly established and universally recognizedautocephalous churches. If one regards the United States as being ‘among the barbarians’ (and one might sometimes be tempted to do so), the Ecumenical Patriarchate would be in charge here. But that was never the case, and is not now. This clearly shows the problem of modern interpretations of antique texts.

Moreover, this interpretation of Canon 28 is only one point of view. The Romanian Orthodox Church disagreed, proposing an alternative principle. Each autocephalous mother church, it argued, has the right to govern its own national “diaspora.” Churches formed as a result of missionary activity constitute a special case, “since they belong to a different nationality than the members of the missionizing church.” For them, autocephaly is possible. Russia and Antioch also disagreed with the Greek interpretation of Chalcedon canon 28 and I Constantinople canon 3 on the grounds that historical events since the fifth century had to be taken into account. Every situation, they argued, had to be considered on its own terms. Whatever their origins, churches of the diaspora “must gradually receive the opportunity to grow into new local churches and to receive autocephaly (or initially autonomy) from their own mother churches.”³²

With three clearly different points of view, the Preparatory Commission could hardly forge a consensus.³³ Instead, they dropped autocephaly from the agenda, and completed a more modest text on “Autonomy and the Means by Which it is Proclaimed.”³⁴ By 2016, when I was 55 years old, the Council was finally scheduled to take place. To ensure that all would go smoothly at the Great and Holy Council, autocephaly was dropped from the agenda, and only safe topics that everyone had agreed upon were on the docket. Suddenly the Bulgarian Orthodox Church pulled out, disputing some of the texts that had already been approved and saying that there was not enough time for preparation.³⁵ Then the GeorgianOrthodox Church pulled out because of its owndisagreements about several of the documents (again, texts that had already been agreed upon). The Antiochian Orthodox Church pulled out because of its dispute over the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Qatar (Qatar is also claimed by Jerusalem). Finally, the Russian Orthodox Church pulled out, arguing that without the Antiochians, the Bulgarians, or the Georgians, one could hardly call this council pan-Orthodox.³⁶

When the Great and Holy Council took place, then, it was more of a testimony to the dis-unity of the Orthodox church than to its unity. This was the first obvious fissure and fault line in World Orthodoxy. But it is important to note that the Great and Holy Council might still have worked, if participants had exercised irenic patience and if there had been the kind of conciliar follow-up process proposed by the Romanian patriarch Daniel, among others:

To emphasize the necessity of the meeting of the future Holy and Great Synod, we must recall that conciliarity represents a canonical norm of the ecclesial life in every Autocephalous Orthodox Church. However, synodality must also become a rule for universal Orthodoxy, by regular Synodal meetings (every 5, 7, or 10 years). From this point of view, the future Holy and Great Synod must not be considered an eschatological event, but rather an important historical event for the development of synodality on a Pan-Orthodox level. More precisely, other Pan-Orthodox Synods must successively follow the Pan-Orthodox Synod, to discuss the themes on which consensus has not been yet reached, or other new themes related to current problems in the life of the Church or society.³⁷

Such a slow-and-steady approach to synodality had real potential. What next happened in Ukraine, however, made that impossible. Until 2018, everybody in the Orthodox Church, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate, had agreed that there was one canonical church in Ukraine—the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). For reasons that are not entirely clear, however (perhaps Russia’s not attending the Great and Holy Council played a role), in 2018 the Ecumenical Patriarchate rediscovered and revisited its decision of 1686. In effect, it sought to revoke a decision over three hundred years old, claiming the de facto transfer of Kyiv to Moscow had never happened. The ostensible goal was to try to bring together all the churches in Ukraine, canonical and previously non-canonical, together, by issuing a tomos of autocephaly to a newly-established Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The Patriarchate of Moscow saw this an encroachment of its own canonical territory that Constantinople had not challenged for over 300 years, and broke communion.

In their analysis of the ensuing church crisis, a group of theologians, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, argued that even before Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, the conflict around the emergence of an autocephalous church in Ukraine had already split World Orthodoxy into two main camps.³⁸ One camp was represented by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which edited the tomos granting autocephaly, and three other autocephalous churches which recognized that act. The other was that of the Patriarchate of Moscow, which opposed the new ecclesial structure in Ukraine and regarded it as schismatic. As of this writing, some churches have made statements supporting Moscow’s position, but none has interrupted communion; other churches are staying neutral. Thus, although Ukraine is the focus and the cause of this conflict, the argument has exposed deeper divisions within world Orthodoxy: autocephaly, the territorial principle, and the synodal process as inadequate to the task at hand.

It is important to emphasize, however that there is not one simple fault line between twocamps. All churches have the whole spectrum within themselves. It is not a question of where this or that autocephalous church stands: it is a question of positions within each church, within Orthodoxy. Because I am a historian, not a theologian, I cannot judge who is right and who is wrong on theological grounds. As both a historian and a contemporary observer, however, I can note that there are at least two mutually exclusive competing opinions in Orthodoxy, and neither is going away. That is the deadlock for which Orthodoxy needs a way out. And we need to find it in an Orthodox way.

We may think that shared Orthodoxy means sharing communion. In our day, that would be a curious definition. Moscow and Alexandria are not in communion with each other, but many local churches—Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians——are in communion with both. Canonically, this situation is not supposed to exist. Practically, however, the situation may have its uses, as it allows things to hang together.

Perhaps the solution is just to stumble along. Indeed, stumbling along and ignoring problems has its advantages. Many Orthodox Christians do not perceive the crisis in the Orthodoxy I am describing. For many, Orthodoxy is not only or not mostly about shared communion or canonical regularity, but about identity. Some people want the church to be mostly a place of community, where one can talk to fellow Bulgarians or fellow Serbs or with whatever other nationality one identifies. The Orthodox Church in North America understood this when it tried to do something about the phenomenon of many Orthodox groups on one territory, or at least find a way of living with it. The organization now known as the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America essentially decided that bishops would not compete for turf, but would form a standing committee and cooperate. That was a healthy look at reality. But perhaps we should take it a step further and stop acting as if the territorial principle is still absolute. In fact, for dealing with inner-Orthodox Church problems, perhaps it’s time to rethink the territorial principle altogether.

The Synod (or Council) as a functioning decision-making mechanism

The traditional form of decision-making in the Church was a council or synod. If we look at the Seven Ecumenical Councils, however, we see that some of them were not places of decision-making in our modern sense, with discussions and exchange of arguments, but rather places of confirming the emperor’s or empress’s opinion. Nor was Crete a ringing testament to the conciliar process as a means of forging unity.

If we consider what our councils look like now, and what they could look like, let us take the example I know best. In 2006, when the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia was meeting in council to discuss going under the omophorion of the Moscow Patriarchate, each parish was asked to send one or two lay delegates to represent it. It seemed obvious to most parishes that they should send their most active, most dedicated, and most hands-on members. To some parishes, that meant women. These were ROCOR parishes—not communities traditionally known for their liberalism. This was not a feminist statement. Rather, having women represent parishes at a council was something that one of the most conservative jurisdictions in the United States thought was no problem. “A parish representative, got it. Let us send the person or people who actually work in and for the parish.”

The disconcerted Synod organizers then specified that all council participants had to be male. When the genuinely confused parishes asked why, the excuse was that the last all-Russian council, the historic All-Russian Council of 1917-18 that elected a Patriarch of Moscow for the first time since Patriarch Adrian died in 1700, had not had women participants. While that is true, the Council’s 566 delegates did include 91 bishops, 20 monks, 170 parish clergy of various ranks, and 288 laymen. Having laymen be more than half of the total number of delegates was an innovation compared to earlier periods, but in 1917 it seemed normal, even pressing, given the momentous changes of revolution.³⁹ Similarly, to many ROCOR parishes in 2006, it seemed normal to have women represent them. And in 2016, it seemed normal to several pious Orthodox women that they could contribute to the Holy and Great Council. When they inquired if they might, the result was ‘special observer’ status for four women (out of 243 ‘full’ participants), who ultimately were able to contribute part of one sentence in the final document. Still, four is greater than zero.⁴⁰

One may not typically think of the Russian Orthodox Church as a progressive example, but as regards the participation of women in church councils, it is. The last two local Russian church councils included a 10% participation rate by women designated as representatives (the numbers include both nuns and laywomen): 38 women out of 317 delegates in 1990, and 72 out of 711 in 2009.⁴¹ A modest proposal might be: maybe having parishes decide who their representative to a church council should be normal. Maybe including women at a council, reflecting the reality of parish and Church life, should be as normal as having a woman deliver the annual Economos Orthodoxy in America lecture.

Which raises another question: why privilege the synod as a form? I recently attended a conference of OCAMPR, the Orthodox Christian Association of Medicine, Psychology, and Religion. Participants included medical doctors, psychotherapists, monks, priests, and bishops.⁴² This was a normal, functioning conference where things got done. Might meetings like that be a model for how can we move forward? This raises a more fundamental question. What is the most useful way for the Church to meet?

Patriarchs themselvessee the problem of what happens once a meeting is called a synod. When in 2020 the Patriarch of Jerusalem invited Bartholomew and the rest in 2020, he called it ‘a fraternal meeting in love’ instead of a synaxis or a synod, because that would have set off the canon and primacy warning bells ringing. Maybe we should just call a time-out on synods or synaxes for five or ten years. Maybe we should focus on councils, or whatever we call them, that include wider participation of clergy and laity, like 1917, like 1921, like 2006, like 2016. And maybe we can accept that women are also laity, and also love the Church, and can also represent their parishes or their professional fields (if the Church has to discuss bioethics, for example, the defining qualification should be that one is specialist in bioethics). As Father John Erickson put it: “Maybe at this point conciliarity at ‘lower’ levels of church life, including a wider range of participants, might be a better way of sharing real stories rather than self-serving myths, real memories rather than official positions.”⁴³ Those—along with wanting to hear more from the Romanian and the Finnish churches—are my wishes for inner-Orthodox relations.

The territorial principle (III): Orthodoxy and the state (and the rest of the world)

There are two sharply different paradigms for how Orthodox churches deal with the states in which they are located, and with the rest of the world, with other Orthodox churches falling somewhere in between.⁴⁴ As Nathaniel Wood has noted, how a church relates to the broader society in which it is located it depends—not surprisingly—on its concrete political circumstances and on how much access it has to state power.⁴⁵ At one end of the spectrum is the Patriarchate of Moscow. After communism, Moscow chose to continue Orthodoxy’s tradition of close ties between church and state symphonia.⁴⁶ Profoundly pessimistic about the potential of this world, it opposed any kind of liberalism, including theories of human rights. This was evident in Basis of the Social Concept, a document the Russian Orthodox Church prepared in 2000—the first such document of its kind in modern Orthodoxy. Some of the ideas in this text were developed in 2008 with another text called Teaching of the Russian Orthodox Church on Human Dignity, Freedom, and Rights. At the center are values and morality, which the Church must spread in society. Secular rights and freedoms are dangerous because they can legalize sin. The Russian Orthodox Church called on the state to restrict secular rights and freedoms so as to help sinful humanity rightly fulfill its God-given dignity.⁴⁷

In its Basis of the Social Concept, the Russian Orthodox Church called Russian Orthodox Christians to serve the Fatherland and the state and support of the Army (VIII.2, 3, 4). On the other hand, it also stipulated that if the government were to misbehave, the Church had the moral right to oppose it (III.5)—an important corrective.⁴⁸ Legitimizing «just war,» as that text does, was something fundamentally new for Orthodoxy (VIII.3).⁴⁹ Given the atrocities committed by the Russian army in Ukraine, it is now both ironic and tragic to read the ROC talking about how one of the ways we can distinguish a just war from an unjust war is how soldiers treat prisoners and the civilian population, especially children, women, and the elderly (VIII.3). Perhaps these features of the 2000 and 2008 texts reflect the crisis and fragmentation Russia was in after communism.⁵⁰ But Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine and the ongoing war have no such excuse. From the time the war began, the sermons of Patriarch Kirill have gone beyond simply championing ‘traditional values.’ They have abandoned any criticism of a state that compels Orthodox believers ‘to commit sinful and spiritually harmful actions.’ Indeed, Patriarch Kirill seems to fully share the Russian state’s rationalization for the war.

On Forgiveness Sunday in March 2022, soon after the full-scale invasion, the patriarch described the war as having metaphysical significance.⁵¹ In another homily delivered in Septemberof that year, he said, “The Church is aware that if someone, moved by a sense of duty, by the need to fulfill his oath, remains faithful to his calling and dies in the performance of his military duty, he certainly commits an act tantamount to sacrifice.…he offers himself as a sacrifice for others. And so we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins a person has committed.”⁵² When I first read this, it was shocking. Nowhere in Orthodox tradition, I thought, do we find the claim that death in war washes away someone’s sins. Christ offered himself as a sacrifice—he did not kill others. Sins are washed away only by repentance, not by death «for a righteous cause.»⁵³ In his sermon, Patriarch Kirill seemed to be following not Eastern Christian tradition, but the ‘atoning purification’ aspect of the Crusades.⁵⁴ In fact, because Christianity is not even mentioned, one could also argue that Kirill was trying to appeal to Muslim soldiers in the Russian army as much as to Christian ones. At least one Orthodox bishop (Arseny (Heikkinen) of Kuopio and Karelia in Finland) called the claim that death in war constitutes martyrdom and earns salvation a heresy.⁵⁵

This argument, however, has precedents in Russian religious tradition. In a missive blessing Ivan III and his troops before the Ugra battle in 1480, Gerontii, Metropolitan of Moscow, described shedding one’s blood in battle as a second baptism cleansing one’s sins and earning one a place with the martyrs. While Patriarch Kirill’s sermon may not be characteristic of Orthodox Christianity in general, then, its pedigree does seem to be authentically Muscovite.⁵⁶ It would be very interesting to examine Orthodox wartime sermons over a span of centuries, as their message has varied significantly among nations, empires, and wars.⁵⁷

At the other extreme of how to relate to the world is Constantinople. Because Constantinople has no state, it has chosen to focus its public influence on the international level.⁵⁸ One may wonder about the degree to which Patriarch Bartholomew and his predecessors have collaborated with states not their own in the interests of expanding their flock—and way such collaboration is perceived in other churches.⁵⁹ Independently of the issue of church-state collaboration, however, Constantinople’s own text on relating to the world reflects the geopolitical and temporal context in which it was produced just as Moscow’s documents did. The differences between the two texts reflect both the different times in which they were composed and the different audience each had in mind. If Moscow’s attitudes may resemble those of other churches in a historically Orthodox currently sovereign state, For the Life of the World has put forward a more radical model for Orthodox Christian politics in a pluralistic world. It was composed in a ‘synodal’ process which involved both laypeople and clergy, male and female. For the Life of the World is based on compassionate acceptance of the global pluralism of our time. Where the Russian texts were pessimistic, that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is optimistic. Its language is oriented towards interdisciplinary ethical discourses.⁶⁰

It may not be surprising that I find the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s vision a more attractive Orthodox theology that responds with an openness to the challenges of secularism, liberalism, and human rights theory. Like many of For the Life of the World’s authors, I am a lay scholar who lives in the religiously diverse United States where Orthodox Christianity is a minority. This American perspective may also contribute to an appreciation of Aristotle Papanikolaou’s suggestion that, “After the Eucharist, the Christian must enter the world in such a way as to ascetically struggle to learn how to love in the face of an Other who does not share her Orthodox presuppositions.”⁶¹ Especially valuable in this idea is that it brings together the structural issues in Orthodoxy with the individual’s spiritual life. This pluralistic world we have been given is the arena for each Orthodox Christian’s ascetical struggle towards theosis.

Accepting pluralism as an ascetic endeavor, as Pantelis Kalaitzidis wrote, ‘comes at a cost—relinquishing religious nationalism, delinking religious and ethnic identity, and a reduction in institutional power—but, at least, the churches would finally resist the temptation of Judas.’⁶² Strong words, to be sure. But one could also apply to the world the words of Isaiah: “Behold, I and the children the Lord has given me.” Here we are with each other and the Church, or churches, the Lord has given us, in the world in which we live. As this lecture comes to an end, and as we prepare to go out into the world, let us be heartened by the words of Fr John Erickson:

‘The current storm that started with the autocephaly of the OCU, like that over the autocephaly of the OCA a half century earlier, has revealed the limitations of the … ecclesiology that the churches depended on for so many centuries. We are challenged to be church in a new and radically different context, recognizing our own temporality while trusting in the Lord’s promise to be with us always, even unto the close of the age (Matthew 28:20).’⁶³ – Let us be that Church.

Заглавная картинка — Public Orthodoxy.

1
Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, Part the Fifth, Muscovy (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1834).
2
Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius,83-4, 96.
3
Charles Halperin, “In the eye of the beholder: two view of seventeenth-century Muscovy,” Russian History, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter 1997/Hiver 1997), 409-423.
4
For considerations of the insider-outsider aspects of Archdeacon Paul’s diary, see Sonja Luehrmann, introduction to Praying With the Senses: Contemporary Orthodox Christian Spirituality in Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 2-4.
5
On November 24, 2017, the Patriarchate of Moscow announced http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5066650.html? a kind of ‘Best of’ website called ‘The Patriarch Speaks,’ https://slovo.patriarchia.ru, collecting the most notable quotes organized by theme from Patriarch Kirill from the time he began clerical service in 1969. It was meant to be the digital counterpart to his book, Thoughts, Comments, Pronouncements (Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow, Mysli, Vyskazyvaniia, Suzhdeniia (Moscow: Abris/OLMA, 2017). The site is no longer available, however. The official site detailing Patriarch Kirill’s activity and statements is http://www.patriarchia.ru/patriarch/.
6
Frank Sysyn, “Framing the Borderland: The Image of the Ukrainian Revolt and Hetman Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi in Foreign Travel Accounts,” in From Mutual Observation to Propaganda War: Premodern Revolts in their Transnational Representations, ed. Malte Griesse (Transcript Verlag/Series: Histoire, 2014), 127-157.
7
Serhii Plokhy, “The Ghosts of Pereyaslav: Russo-Ukrainian Historical Debates in the Post-Soviet Era,” Europe-Asia Studies vol. 53, No. 3, 2001, 489-505.
8
For a thorough discussion of the Act, see Vera Tchentsova, “The Patriarchal and Synodal Act of 1686 in Historiographical Perspective,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 45-72.
9
For a critical assessment of the event, see Thomas Bremer and Sophia Senyk, “The Current Ecclesial Situation in Ukraine: Critical Remarks,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 63, no. 1 (2019), 27-58. For an overview, see “Symposium: Orthodoxy and Autocephaly in Ukraine,” Canadian Slavonic Papers vol. 62, issue 3-4 (2020), contributions by Heather J. Coleman (editor), Nicholas Denysenko, Thomas Bremer, Radu Bordeianu, Andrii Krawchuk, Jaroslaw Buciora, Anatolii Babynskyi, Tetiana Kalenychenko, and Frank Sysyn, 421-521.
10
Daniela Kalkandjieva, “A Comparative Analysis on Church-State Relations in Eastern Orthodoxy: Concepts, Models, and Principles,” Journal of Church and State, vol. 53, no. 4 (Autumn 2011), 587-614.
11
For the Ukrainian petition and Moscow’s response, see Volodymyr (Sabodan), Metropolitan, Dopovidi, zvernennia, promovy (Kyiv : Fond pam’iati Blazhennishoho mytropolyta Volodymyra, 2014), 98-102; “Zvernennia episkopatu Ukraïnskoï Pravoslavnoï Tserkvy do Sviatishogo Patriarkha Moskovs’kogo i vsieï Rusi Aleksiia II ta Sviashchennoho Synodu Rus’koi Pravoslavnoï Tserkvy,” Pravoslavnyi Visnyk 4 (April 1992), 8-9.
12
“Rech Aleksandra II v Gosudarstvennom sovete 28 ianvaria 1861 g.,” Konets krepostnichestva v Rossii. Dokumenty, pis’ma, memuary, stat’i, ed. V. A. Fedorov (Moscow: izd. MGU, 1994), 193-4. For the digitized collection of documents pertaining to the emancipation, see https://www.prlib.ru/collections/467127.
13
The Russian consulate, the German consulate, the Greek government, and the Ottoman sultan all sought to influence the Patriarch of Constantinople regarding the Bulgarians in 1872. Matthew Namee, “The Longest Schism in Modern Orthodoxy: Bulgarian Autocephaly and Ethnophyletism,” https://orthodoxhistory.org/2022/03/15/the-longest-schism-in-modern-orthodoxy-bulgarian-autocephaly-ethnophyletism/
14
Some take this a step further, arguing for schism as a means of nation-building. See Dragan Šljivić and Nenad Živković, “Self-Ruled and Self-Consecrated Ecclesiastic Schism as a Nation-Building Instrument in the Orthodox Countries of South Eastern Europe,” Genealogy 2020, 4(2), 52.
15
For a criticism of the applicability of ‘diaspora’ to the United States, see Alexei D. Krindatch, “Orthodox (Eastern Christian) Churches in the United States at the Beginning of a New Millennium: Questions of Nature, Identity, and Mission,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41 No. 3 (Sept. 2002), 533-563; Maria Hämmerli, “Orthodox diaspora? A sociological and theological problematisation of a stock phrase,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 10, nos. 2-3 (May-August 2010), 97-115. For an approach that emphasizes the perspective of laypeople in a new country, see Berit Thorbjørnsrud, “‘The Problem of the Orthodox Diaspora’: The Orthodox Church between Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Universality,” Numen vol. 62, No. 5/6 (2015), 568-595.
16
Orthodox America 1794-1976: Development of the Orthodox Church in America ed. Constance J. Tarasar and John H. Erickson (Syosset: The Orthodox Church in America, 1975); Orthodox Christians in North America, 1794-1994, ed. Mark Stokoe et al. (Syosset: The Orthodox Church in America, 1995). For the most detailed survey, see Alexei D. Krindatch, Atlas of American Orthodox Churches (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011).
17
Matthew Namee, “The Origins of the ‘Barbarian Lands’ Theory: The Greek Archdiocese of America and the Interpretation of Canon 28 of Chalcedon,” https://orthodoxhistory.org/2022/10/12/the-origins-of-the-barbarian-lands-theory/.
18
Constantin Iordachi, “Diplomacy and the Making of a Geopolitical Question: The Romanian-Bulgarian Conflict over Dobrudja, 1878–1947,” in Entangled Histories of the Balkans: Concepts, Approaches, and (Self-) Representations, vol. 4 (Brill, 2017), 291-393.
19
Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: the Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).
20
Matthew Namee, “The Origins of the ‘Barbarian Lands’ Theory: The Greek Archdiocese of America and the Interpretation of Canon 28 of Chalcedon,” https://orthodoxhistory.org/2022/10/12/the-origins-of-the-barbarian-lands-theory/ For the international law implications of the term ‘ecumenical,’ see Emre Öktem, “La question de l’«œcuménicité» du Patriarcat orthodoxe d’Istanbul: Réflexion sur un arrête de la Cour de cassation turque,” Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, Nuova Serie, vol. 77, No. 3 (307) (June-September 2010), 407-429.
21
Irina Paert, “A family affair? Post-imperial Estonian Orthodoxy and its relationship with the Russian Mother Church, 1917-23,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 62:3-4, 315-340; John H. Erickson, “Territorial Organization of the Orthodox Church: Historical and Canonical Background to a Current Crisis,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 40-1.
22
The literature on communist persecution of the Church is vast, but see Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986);William B. Husband, «Godless Communists»: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000); Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church Under the Soviet Regime 1917-1982 (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984);and Vera Shevzov, “The Orthodox Church and Religion in Revolutionary Russia, 1894-1924,” in The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought ed. Caryl Emerson, George Pattison, and Randall A. Poole (Oxford University Press, 2020), 38-59.
23
In the spoken version of this lecture, images of the author from age 0 to age 55 were used as a framing device for the section that follows. These may be seen in the recording of the presentation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3_4mpNUGtA&t=3061s.
24
https://holycouncil.org/towards-the-council
25
For the text of the agreement, see https://www.oca.org/history-archives/autocephaly-agreement
26
Nadieszda Kizenko and Andrei V. Psarev, “The Russian Church Abroad, the Moscow Patriarchate, and their Participation in Ecumenical Assemblies During the Cold War 1948-1964,” in Paul Mojzes, ed., North American Churches and the Cold War (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 324-342. For more detailed studies of the ROCOR in English, see Andrei Psarev’s online project, https://www.rocorstudies.org; in Russian, see the works of Andrei A. Kostryukov.
27
For a discussion of what these processes meant at the grassroots level in Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia, especially regarding suspicion of hierarchs who had collaborated, see Ina Merdjanova ed. Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2021).
28
Nicholas Denysenko, The Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A Century of Separation (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018).
29
Abp. Paul/Paavali (Olmari), “Suggestions for Solutions to the Problem of the Diaspora,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 23 (1979),186-204; Hierotheos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, “The Debate Over the Declaration of Autocephaly in a Church,” https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2018/12/the-debate-over-declaration-of.html.
30
John H. Erickson, “Territorial Organization of the Orthodox Church,” 42-3.
31
John H. Erickson, “Chalcedon Canon 28: Its Continuing Significance For Discussion of Primacy in the Church,” https://orthodoxsynaxis.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/erickson-chalcedon-canon-28.pdf
32
Department for External Church Relations, The Russian Orthodox Church, “Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission completes its work,” https://mospat.ru/en/news/58017/.
33
This text along with its supplementary “Rules of Operation of Episcopal Assemblies in the Orthodox Diaspora” is widely available online, most conveniently at https://www.holycouncil.org/-/diaspora
34
Online at https://www.holycouncil.org/-/autonomy.
35
Given that I had gone from age zero to age 55 in the timespan of the Council preparations, one can only wonder how much time a church needs.
36
Andrew Higgins, “Orthodox Churches’ Council, Centuries in Making, Falters as Russia Exits,” New York Times June 24, 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/world/europe/orthodox-church-council-russia.html.
37
Address of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of Romania, delivered in the opening of the Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, January 22, 2016, Chambésy, Switzerland:https://orthochristian.com/89992.html
38
The next two paragraphs summarize the introduction to Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 11-15.
39
Aleksandr Kravetskii and Scott M. Kenworthy, “The Moscow Council of 1917-1918,” Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Conciliarity in Modern Orthodox Christianity, in press. I am grateful to Scott Kenworthy for sharing this manuscript with me.
40
The Reception of the Holy and Great Council: Reflections of Orthodox Christian Women, ed. Carrie Frederick Frost (New York: GOA, Department of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical & Interfaith Relations, 2018), vi.
41
For information on the Council proceedings, see http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/document/530010/ (2009), https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Участники_Поместного_собора_Русской_православной_церкви_(2009) and http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/document/525407 1990).
42
https://ocampr.org/2023-ocampr-conference-summary/.
43
Erickson, “Territorial Organization,” 30, 44.
44
Orthodoxy in the Agora: Orthodox Christian Political Theologies Across History ed. Mihai-D. Grigore and Vasilios N. Makrides (Mainz: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024).
45
Nathaniel Wood, “Church and State in Orthodox Christianity: Two Versions of Symphonia,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 397-418.
46
Sergei Chapnin, Tserkov’ v postsovetskoi Rossii: vozrozhdenie, kachestvo very, dialog s obshchestvom (Moscow: Arefa, 2013); Scott Kenworthy and Alexander S. Agadjanian, Understanding World Christianity: Russia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021), 284-93.
47
Kristina Stoeckl, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London and New York: Routledge, 2014); Regina Elsner, The Russian Orthodox Church and Modernity: A Historical and Theological Investigation (Hannover: ibidem, 2021).
48
“If the authority forces Orthodox believersto apostatise from Christ and His Church and to commit sinful and spiritually harmful actions, the Church should refuse to obey the state. The Christian, following the will of his conscience, can refuse to fulfil the commands of state forcing him into a grave sin. If the Church and her holy authorities find it impossible to obey state laws and orders, after a due consideration of the problem, they may take the following action: enter into direct dialogue with authority on the problem, call upon the people to use the democratic mechanisms to change the legislation or review the authority’s decision, apply to international bodies and the world public opinion and appeal to her faithful for peaceful civil disobedience”https://old.mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/iii/ ).
49
For a consideration of Orthodox attitudes to war and martyrdom, see Liliya Berezhnaya, “Soldaten und Märtyrer: Zum Prozess der Militarisierung der Heiligen im östlichen und westlichen Christentum,” in Die Militarisierung der Heiligen in Vormoderne und Moderne, ed. Liliya Berezhnaya (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2020), especially 14-20.
50
For this argument, see Regina Elsner, “Different Voices, Same Challenges: ‘For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church’ of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the Light of the ‘Basis of the Social Concept’ of the Russian Orthodox Church,” in Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, Vol. 5, Number 1, 2022, 127-129, and Heta Hurskainen, “The Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Social Ethos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: A Comparison of Central Aspects,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations, 73-96.
51
“Patriarchal homily on Cheesefare Week after Liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,” March 6, 2022, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5906442.html.
52
“Patriarshaia propoved’ v Nedeliu 15-iu po Piatidesiatnitse posle Liturgii v Aleksandro-Nevskom skitu,” 25 September 2022, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5962628.html.
53
Die Militarisierung der Heiligen in Vormoderne und Moderne ed. Liliya Berezhnaya (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2020), especially the introduction by Liliya Berezhnaya, “Soldaten und Märtyrer: Zum Prozess der Militarisierung
der Heiligen im östlichen und westlichen Christentum,” 9-58.
54
Ane L. Bysted, Crusade indulgence: spiritual rewards and the theology of the Crusades, ca. 1095-1216 (Brill, 2015), 71.
55
Kirill Aleksandrov, “Unexpected theology from Patriarch Kirill,” 4 October 2022, https://spzh.news/en/zashhita-very/90916-neozhidannoje-bogoslovije-ot-patriarkha-kirilla.
56
“Poslanie Gerontia mitropolita velikomu kniaziu Ivanu,” in Russkii feodal’nyi arkhiv XIV – pervoi treti XVI veka . A. I. Pliguzov comp., (Moscow: iazyki slavianskikh kul’tur, 2008) 283-4. For an argument that militarism is inherent to both post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Christianity and to modern Christianity, see Boris Knorre and Aleksei Zygmont, ‘“Militant Piety” in 21st-Century Orthodox Christianity: Return to Classical Traditions or Formation of a New Theology of War?’, Religions 2020 11 (1), 2.
57
For a sampling of the variety before the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, see, for the eighteenth century, Andrey Ivanov, “David and Goliaths: Image of the Enemy in Early Imperial Russian Military Sermons,” Canadian American Slavic Studies 56 (1), 1-32 https://doi.org/10.30965/22102396-05601010. For the early 20^th century, see Betsy Perabo, Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017). For an overview, see Patrick L. Michelson, “Russia’s Christian Soldiers: War, Tradition, and the Limits of Russian Orthodox Studies,” forthcoming in Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies. For a comparison to Byzantium, see Paul Stephenson, “Religious Services for Byzantine Soldiers and the Possibility of Martyrdom, c. 400-c. 1000,” in Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi (Oxford: Oxford Academic, 2012), 25-46 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755042.003.0001.
58
Nathaniel Wood, “Church and State in Orthodox Christianity: Two Versions of Symphonia,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 399.
59
Matthew Namee, “Patriarch Athenagoras, the CIA, and the State Department,” https://orthodoxhistory.org/2023/03/23/patriarch-athenagoras-the-cia-and-the-state-department/ ; https://gr.usembassy.gov/ambassador-tsuniss-remarks-at-reception-honoring-his-all-holiness-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew/ ; Robert C. Blitt, “U.S. Interference in Ukraine’s Autocephaly: An Ineffective, Unnecessary, and Unlikely Affair,” https://talkabout.iclrs.org/2020/01/09/u-s-interference-in-ukraines-autocephaly-an-ineffective-unnecessary-and-unlikely-affair/ ; https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/russian-talking-point-blaming-us-ukraine-church-split.
60
For different perspectives on FLOW, see a collection of essays entitled “For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church,” ed. Carrie Frederick Frost and Nadieszda Kizenko, in Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, Vol. 5, Number 1, 2022, 119-139. Contributors include Radu Bordeianu, Will Cohen, Regina Elsner, Tamara Grdzelidze, Lidiya Lozova, Evgeny Pilipenko, and Rowan Williams.
61
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “The Ascetical as the Civic: Civil Society as Political Communion,” in Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy, ed. Thomas Bremer, Alfons Brüning, and Nadieszda Kizenko (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022), 394-5.
62
Pantelis Kalaitzidis, “Church and National Identities,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 47, no. 1–4 (2002): 357–379.
63
Erickson, “Territorial Organization,” 44.

Надежда Киценко

Unity in plurality

Territorial and other boundaries

The Territorial Principle (I): fallout from the Balkan Wars and the World Wars

The Territorial Principle (II): Autocephaly

The Synod (or Council) as a functioning decision-making mechanism

The territorial principle (III): Orthodoxy and the state (and the rest of the world)

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