Editorial|Editorial
Since the start of the Russian invasion, the patriarch of Moscow and Russia as a whole has received attention in the West with his startling speeches.
Moscow Patriarch Kirill has recently received a lot of attention in the West again. In his statements and sermons, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sought to provide a spiritual basis for the attack. In practice, this has meant blaming the West and Ukraine in harsh and often startling words.
In his sermon on the Sunday of Reconciliation, a week and a half ago, the patriarch explained that the war was not accepted in Eastern Ukraine by the “so-called values” offered by the “self-proclaimed world” or the West, from which he highlighted “gay parades”. On Orthodoxy Sunday last weekend, the patriarch again said that today in Ukraine, remembering the name of the patriarch in worship is impossible in places “out of fear of the Jews”.
The mention of “fear of the Jews” understandably attracted attention. Especially when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi is Jewish. Of course, it was only a matter of quoting the 38th verse of the 19th chapter of the Gospel of John. In exegetics, the passage is interpreted as referring to largely secular primacy, and so did the patriarch. He referred to the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in early 2019, i.e. autocephaly, which meant secession from the patriarch of Moscow. Russia opposed it.
Still, the attention was justified. The patriarch would have easily found another term in the Bible to borrow. Speeches are not an injury.
Kirill became patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia in early 2009. During his term, he has again pushed the Orthodox Church firmly into the state.
That in itself is not exceptional. The main line in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church is subordination to secular rulers. According to some scholars, this old position of the Russian Church even helps explain why the rule of law never developed for Russia. Unlike in the West, there was no other concentration of power alongside the emperor in Russia.
Emperor Peter the Great abolished the patriarchal office in the 18th century and replaced it with a holy synod, which was practically a ministry and part of the state administration. A new ecclesiastical assembly was held and the patriarchal function was restored only after the overthrow of the tsarist power in 1917. Soon, however, the Bolsheviks officially established atheist Soviet power and began persecuting the church. The church was almost destroyed by the Communists before World War II. During the war, it got some space and somehow was able to function even after that.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, all institutions were Soviet. The church seemed an exception, so people saw it as a preserver of pre-Soviet traditions. Orthodoxy became a central part of Russianness in the eyes of many. With this enthusiasm, it went unnoticed that the church had also become a Soviet.
Patriarch In the Cyrillic period, the Russian Orthodox Church again resembles a ministry.
It is difficult to say whether there would have been other options for Vladimir Putin in Russia, but Kirill did not defend the status of the church. He became Putin’s guarantor and strengthened the Church’s role as guardian of state ideology. So now, during the war, the speeches of the church leadership obediently follow the line dictated by the Kremlin. It emphasizes the Kremlin’s own interpretation of the Fourth Commandment – and the Fifth Commandment is ignored.
You can still expect loud speeches from the patriarch. Except when the bombing of ordinary people in Mariupol, Kharkov and Kiev should be condemned.
The editorials are HS’s statements on a topical issue. The writings are prepared by HS’s editorial staff and reflect the magazine principle.
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