Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says religion was a topic his family never raised at dinner. That could be because he is from the Jewish minority or because the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians have split into different branches. Ukraine's Orthodox have gradually become more Ukrainian, to the detriment of the once powerful pro-Russian Church, and this trend has accelerated now that Kyiv and Moscow are at war. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is lost in the international coverage of the battlefield drama. But with about 80% of Ukrainians identifying as Orthodox Christians, though probably less than half are regular churchgoers, this rift between the two churches seeps into politics. Christmas in KievReligious conflicts made headlines last month when the pro-Kyiv church allowed all Ukrainian communities to celebrate Christmas on December 25 if they so wished, instead of the traditional Orthodox date of January 7. The symbolism of being able to celebrate Christmas on the date used in the West has not gone unnoticed by Ukrainian believers. The roots of this confrontation go back to the communist era. Although Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, it was under the umbrella of the Russian Orthodox Church .When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued to operate in the newly sovereign Ukraine, but declared its allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate. Ukrainian patriots protested, saying they deserved a church of their own. Their rival Ukrainian Orthodox Church was founded in 1992 shortly after Ukraine's independence. He was recognized as autocephalous (independent) in 2019 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul, the highest authority on Orthodox Christianity. The Politics of Prayer in UkrainianThe two churches have the same theology, liturgy and even architecture as the church in Moscow. But the Kiev Church prays in Ukrainian instead of Church Slavonic and professes the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul instead of the Moscow Patriarch Kirill. Originally much larger, the Moscow Church saw parishes devolve to their rivals, especially after the start of the war. Under this pressure, the Ukrainian branch declared independence from Russia in May, condemned the invasion, and refused to recognize Patriarch Kirill in his liturgies in . Now it is not clear which church is larger.But the head of the Kiev Patriarchate, Metropolitan Epiphinius, told Religion News Service in May: “Every day Ukrainians are beginning to understand which church is truly Ukrainian and which is Russian. The Moscow Patriarchate tried to protect itself from the Russians. -Occupation of Crimea by creating a separate metropolitan area (archdiocese) there in June. The Kiev Church refused to recognize this. When Putin annexed four Ukrainian territories in September, while not fully controlling them, he tried to justify it in terms, calling it a "magnificent spiritual choice".
Sermons, spies and the Security Service
But Kyiv increasingly saw the pro-Moscow Church as a fifth column, or spies of Putin. In October, the acting head of Ukraine’s Security Service revealed it had found 33 suspected Russian agents among the Moscow Church’s clergy in Ukraine.
Some preached pro-Russian sermons, Kyiv said, some had anti-Ukrainian literature and some were army chaplains who passed on information about Ukrainian artillery batteries to Russian agents.
That’s when the Kyiv Church authorized all Ukrainian parishes to celebrate Christmas on December 25 if they wished. On December 1, Zelensky upped the ante by calling for an official ban on all activities of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Church in Ukraine. Parliament was asked to draft a suitable law, which may be difficult given the provision in the Ukrainian constitution of freedom of religion.
In late December, Ukraine refused to renew the Moscow Church’s lease on the Cathedral of the Dormition at Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves, traditionally the center of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
On January 7, Metropolitan Epiphanius, head of the pro-Kyiv Church, celebrated the traditional Christmas there to show he was the new man in charge now.
And in its latest turn to faith, Russia called for a 36-hour truce to mark the traditional Christmas on January 7. Kyiv and its western allies rejected this as a cynical ploy, and both sides continued shelling each other as if nothing had happened.
The battlefield struggle is still the main story, both in its ultimate importance and in the David-and-Goliath story that readers understand. The religious rivalry will always be secondary.
But these pinpricks on the faith front add up to a new phase in the growth of local nationalism, which helps buoy Ukrainian morale. In hoping to defeat a country he thought would easily give in, Putin has done more than anyone to forge a united and defiant Ukrainian nation.