A Weaponized Church Is a Threat to Ukraine | RealClearPolitics
Just before Christmas, the Ukrainian government added Orthodox patriarch Kirill of Moscow to its most wanted list, its latest move against the Moscow Patriarchate and its affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). Ignoring the larger church state context, Tucker Carlson and other conservative opponents of military aid to Ukraine have been quick to accuse Kyiv of persecuting Christians. Yet, Ukraine has the right to defend itself from Russia s aggression, and that should include defending itself from a weaponized church.
Kyiv s security services had already arrested as clerical spies 68 priests and Metropolitan Pavel of the UOC. The government is moving to confiscate the UOC s church within the millennium-old national-heritage site inside Kyiv, known as Pecherska Lavra, and to ban the UOC altogether. Though these measures are extreme, Patriarch Kirill is far from an innocent bystander of Putin s war, and the Russian Orthodox Church has been long co-opted by the Russian state.
Patriarch Kirill is vigorously trying to reassert Russia s political hegemony and religious authority over Ukraine. He gave his blessing to the invasion before it began and now frames it as a holy war, justified by Christian theology.
Religion was not Putin s primary reason for invading Ukraine, but Kirill has been his stalwart partner in the fight. In 1927, after Stalin slaughtered or imprisoned over 50,000 Orthodox religious, and even greater numbers of laity, the Russian Orthodox leadership capitulated with a Declaration of Loyalty to the Soviets. Today, the Moscow Patriarchate continues as an active and loyal Putin ally.