A few weeks ago, while out of town, my wife and I attended a Sunday morning service at a local church. The pastor announced that the archbishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church requested that churches around the world recite Psalm 31 that morning as a prayer on behalf of the Ukrainian people. So we read aloud the psalm.
It begins: “In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; / do not let me ever be put to shame; / in your righteousness deliver me. / Incline your ear to me; / rescue me speedily. / Be a rock of refuge for me, / a strong fortress to save me.”
The tragedy, and travesty, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is compounded by the complicity of the Russian Orthodox Church in Vladimir Putin’s criminal enterprise. For regrettable historical reasons, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has not only refused to condemn the invasion, he has lent his endorsement to it.
The various churches of the Eastern Orthodox tradition are generally independent of one another, based in the language of the nations where they exist, and loosely unified by allegiance to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul. The Russian Orthodox Church has always been aloof from this arrangement, maintaining its own sphere of influence that has included Ukraine.
When the czars ruled Russia, the hierarchy of the church was little more than a spiritual prop for the monarchy, giving its blessing to whatever the czar decreed. Then came the communist revolution, and the church truly suffered persecution and suppression. In general the hierarchy simply tried to keep its head down and survive. It’s well known that the KGB regularly infiltrated the priesthood in order to look for signs of subversion and ultimately to control the church.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the persecution lifted and Russians were free once more to embrace their religious tradition. But Putin saw the church as a tool for building Russian identity and to restore it to its former role of blessing the leadership of the state. He invited Kirill to ceremonies, saw to it the church had plenty of money for building great cathedrals and drew the Patriarch into the top echelon of Russian society. Kirill and his bishops went along with this nationalist agenda. He was quoted as calling Putin “a miracle of God,” not surprising since he is rumored to have been one of those KGB agents who infiltrated the church.
Now Putin is using Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church to bolster his view that Ukraine and other near-Russian countries are part of “Holy Russia,” a czarist-era concept of empire that has little basis in modern reality. As Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service reported this week, “This religious ramp-up to war was the culmination of a decade-long effort to wrap Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in faith. … (T)he partnership of Putin and Kirill laid the ideological and theological groundwork for the current invasion.”
After the invasion, Kirill issued a general statement calling for peace and a limit to civilian casualties. Whether the Kremlin leaned on Kirill to be a little more on board is unknown, but since then Kirill’s rhetoric has become more vitriolic. He referred to Ukraine’s resistance as “evil forces” and in a sermon described Russia’s invasion in terms of a contest between Russian values and immoral Western values.
The invasion is not only costing Russia militarily and economically but also is costing the Russian Orthodox Church whatever respect it may have had. Already Russian Orthodox priests and bishops in Ukraine as well as diaspora locations such as Europe and North America have denounced Kirill for his stance and removed his name from weekly commemorative prayers. The Russian church, like its political leadership, is facing isolation.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is being devastated by Putin’s army, leaving its people to recite Psalm 31, which concludes:
“I have become like a broken vessel. / For I hear the whispering of many – terror all around! – as they scheme together against me, / as they plot to take my life. / Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me / when I was beset as a city under siege. / Be strong, and let your heart take courage, / all you who wait for the Lord.”
Cary McMullen is a retired journalist and the former religion editor of The Ledger.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Russian Orthodox Leader is Complicit in the Crime of Ukraine
