Autocephaly for Ukraine Seen Transforming Russian Orthodox Church into a Narrowly National One

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 16 – The impact of autocephaly on Ukraine is receiving widespread attention, but many Russian commentators are focusing instead on how that action will affect the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia more generally, with suggestions ranging from predictions of the final degradation of both to claims it sets the stage for a reformation in Russia.

            Such speculation comes on top of two other developments worth noting: On the one hand, ever more Russians are blaming Patriarch Kirill and his ecumenicism for Ukraine’s success, an indication that he may be forced out soon in favor of Putin’s favorite Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) (realtribune.ru/news/people/1173).

            And on the other, Russians are learning that autocephaly for Ukraine will have real consequences for them, including restrictions on which churches they can attend while travelling and the circulation of church relics from abroad (spektr.press/pravoslavnyj-razvod-chego-lishilis-prihozhane-rpc-iz-za-raskola-s-konstantinopolem-i-pri-chem-tut-ukraina-vsya-istoriya-korotko/).

                Andrey Kurayev, a dissident churchman, reflects the full range of views. On the one hand, he says that the actions of the Moscow Patriarchate in breaking with Constantinople will reduce Russian Orthodoxy to a national church rather than to one aspiring to be the leader of the Orthodox world (newizv.ru/article/general/16-10-2018/andrey-kuraev-rpts-zhdet-degradatsiya-do-urovnya-tserkvi-odnoy-natsii).

            That is because none of the other Orthodox churches in the world is going to follow Moscow and break with Constantinople. They will instead remain in communion with it, leaving the Russian church isolated and forced to go its own way rather than be in a position to create “an Orthodox Vatican” in Moscow. 

            Moscow’s isolation from the Orthodox world will only grow with Orthodox churches on the territories of former Soviet republics increasingly pursuing autocephaly. That process is now underway even in Belarus, Kurayev says; and although it has relatively few supporters at present, their numbers will only grow as the Moscow church reduces itself to a national one. 

            And on the other, the Russian churchman says the new “isolation” of the Russian church will open the way to its reformation by reducing the way in which the Moscow Patriarchate has been intertwined with the Russian state and by allowing the church to function as a church rather than as the ideological department of the state domestically (mk.ru/social/2018/10/15/razryv-otnosheniy-rpc-s-konstantinopolskim-patriarkhatom-ocenil-andrey-kuraev.html).  

                Others agree that the Moscow Patriarchate’s actions will lead to the further isolation of the church and of Russia, but they put a far less positive spin on that in terms of what the Church is likely to do in the future – and consequently on its contribution to the future development of Russia as a whole.

            Igor Eidman, a sociologist who serves as a commentator for Deutsche Welle, argues that Moscow’s break with Constantinople means that the ROC MP can no longer credibly present itself as a Christian church. Instead, it is following in the track of the Kremlin’s Manichean worldview (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2073448429384792&id=100001589654713).

            In that world, Russia represents the forces of light and the West the forces of darkness. To the extent the ROC MP promotes that idea, Eidman says, it will change but only by becoming even more the handmaiden of the Kremlin that it has been since Stalin re-established the Moscow Patriarchate during World War II.