Most right-wing anti-Ukrainian propaganda is based on the narratives about “religious persecution” in Ukraine. “Defending the rights of Ukrainian believers,” Republicans like J. D. Vance propose to cede their lands to the occupiers. It’s a quite doubtful way to defend the believers, since in the occupied territories they are met with violence, torture, and deportation. So, whose rights are they actually defending?
Source: Public Orthodoxy
The “religious persecution” label refers to the tension between the two Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine: the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). In essence, this “protection of the rights of believers” in Ukraine boils down to protecting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the expense of all other religious communities: Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant. But the UOC itself—the “victim of persecutions”—is not as monolithic as propaganda puts it. A large part of her own faithful urge her to break off her affiliation with Moscow, becoming a genuinely Ukrainian Church.
The debate on religious tensions in Ukraine, focusing on the poles of inter-church conflict, often leaves out the dialogue movement, which presents the situation in Ukrainian Orthodoxy in a very different light. Since 2018, when the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) emerged, there has also been a third force at work in Ukraine. This grassroots movement of laity and clergy of both Orthodox jurisdictions is represented by several closely related societies: the group “10 Theses for the OCU,” the movement of “signatory fathers” in the UOC, and the inter-church Sophia Brotherhood (continuing the old Ukrainian tradition of Orthodox brotherhoods). This movement, aimed at finding common ground between jurisdictions, is increasingly gaining momentum. Nevertheless, for years, the movement’s initiatives have been silenced at best. Clerics from the UOC faced pressure from their bishops and threats of being banned from ministry for their participation in the Sophia Brotherhood. Timely publicity helped to prevent such sanctions, but many UOC clergy still prefer to support the Brotherhood in silence.
In fact, the Brotherhood’s activities reveal that the so-called “protection of the rights of Ukrainian believers” is often reduced to the defence of the pro-Kremlin wing of UOC. The Sophia Brotherhood has become the voice of a large but mostly silent pro-Ukrainian part of the UOC: those believers who actively support the Ukrainian army and condemn the doctrine of the “Russian world.” Creating various online and offline dialogue platforms, the Brotherhood engages clergy and faithful of both churches in a peaceful, amicable, and humorous communication.
The very existence of the dialogue movement since 2018 proves that at the grassroots level, there are many more points of intersection and many fewer points of conflict between the Ukrainian Orthodox than the biased church media claim. This is not surprising, as not all believers who attend churches of the UOC for various reasons support the position of the leaders of this jurisdiction. The simple fact of peaceful communication between representatives of the “enemy camps” is disappointing for each party. It is not beneficial to the radical wing of the OCU, which seeks to turn into a state church (a status that is still very far from reality). It is even more unprofitable for the pro-Kremlin synodals of the UOC, who have been inciting hostility between Ukrainian believers for decades. The narrative of “religious persecution” in Ukraine allows them to criticize the Ukrainian government, promoting pro-Kremlin interests around the world under the guise of “protecting the rights of believers.”
Today, journalists of the pro-Kremlin wing write openly: “It is now much better for the UOC to maintain the status of a ‘banned church’ and get the most out of it in the international arena.” “Obviously, the very idea of the unity of Ukrainian Orthodoxy poses a threat to the security of the occupying country,” concludes an observer.
Moreover, the dialogue movement seeks to actively influence both churches. The 10 Theses community condemned violence during the transition of parishes to the Local Church, calling on the OCU to resolve conflicts in a civilized manner. At the same time, UOC priests from the Brotherhood published “10 questions” to Metropolitan Onufriy regarding the current status of their church and its actions aimed at breaking with Moscow. These questions, immediately signed by more than a thousand UOC believers, were never answered, and when their authors (“signatory fathers”) sought a meeting with Metropolitan Onufriy, they were told that he was taking a bath. While the Primate performed his ablutions, the community officially condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine, voicing the position of the majority of Orthodox Ukrainians. The following year, the Sophia Brotherhood called on the Local Churches to condemn the criminal actions of Patriarch Kirill. Some of these were published on Public Orthodoxy.
These bold statements predictably were met with hostility by the leadership of the UOC. However, since the summer of 2024, the UOC has begun to see some changes. For one reason or another, political or internal, the leadership of this church has finally “begun to notice” and even cautiously approve of the dialogue movement. There was no shortage of reasons for this. On the one hand, the government passed a bill prohibiting the affiliation of religious organizations with Russia. On the other hand, in August, a delegation from the Patriarchate of Constantinople visited Kyiv to negotiate with all parties to the inter-church conflict. The details of the negotiations have not yet been disclosed, but the Sophia Brotherhood also played a role in the process. Having initiated a meeting with the delegation, the members of Brotherhood shared with them their ideas for reconciliation, which had been cherished over many years of reflection and discussion. Representatives of Constantinople promised to take these ideas into account.
Of course, the final outcome of these negotiations will depend primarily on the will of the UOC leaders—and this structure undoubtedly has problems with the “will to change.” But at least dialogue options appeared among their ways of tackling a trouble, and they even consider appealing to external moderators, including the Patriarch of Constantinople (with whom the UOC, following Moscow, broke off communication in 2018). It seems that the unnoticed and ignored movement of dialogue is suddenly turning out to be a cornerstone.
All these processes demonstrate that church life in Ukraine is by no means reduced to a conflict between the “canonical” and the “patriotic” Orthodox Christians. On closer inspection, most Ukrainian believers are pro-Ukrainian, and many of them resist the hierarchs’ desire to divide them into church parties. According to statistics from 2023, 67% of Ukrainians consider interfaith relations to be calm or friendly, with only 11% complaining about interfaith tensions. Thus, Ukrainian believers, except for a handful of pro-Kremlin bishops and clerics, do not need protection from each other; they all need protection from Russian aggression.