Eastern Orthodox Churches Assert Independence From Russia

In Ukraine, a Seismic Ecclesiastical Shift

By George Weigel
National Review Online


Independence from Russian Orthodoxy could have serious geopolitical implications.

The creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) on December 15, at a Unification Council in Kyiv attended by representatives of three previously divided Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine, is a seismic event in world Christian history that could also have significant geopolitical repercussions.

For centuries, Orthodoxy in Ukraine was subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, as Ukraine itself was subjected to Russian suzerainty (sometimes under the guise of Soviet “republicanism”). After the Soviet crack-up, Ukrainian Orthodoxy fractured into contentious, rival churches. Now, an independent Ukraine insisting on cultural as well as political independence from Russia will have an “autocephalous,” nationwide church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. That new reality will be formalized once the “first among equals” in world Orthodoxy, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, grants the OCU what is known as the “tomos of autocephaly” — a kind of ecclesiastical diplomatic recognition of the OCU’s self-governing status and its independence from Moscow.

Speaking to a large crowd in Kyiv’s Sofiivska Square after the Unification Council created the new, unified church and elected 39-year-old Metropolitan Epiphanius as its leader, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said that the establishment of the OCU was as significant an event in modern Ukrainian history as the country’s 1991 declaration of independence from a crumbling Soviet Union.  . . .

Russian Orthodox Unfaithfulness

A Betrayal of the Church of the Lord

The Russian Orthodox Church has undermined its spiritual (therefore, true) power.  The Russian Government has recently put the Jehovah Witness cult under the ban.

The Russian Supreme Court upheld on Thursday a decision by the nation’s Ministry of Justice to liquidate the center for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia and to close 395 Local Religious Organizations belonging to the group.  According to a press statement by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the high court’s ruling will go into effect immediately. NPR reports the religious group’s property will now belong to the Russian government.  There are roughly 170,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.

Russia has labeled the group “extremist” on multiple occasions, and NPR says an Interfax report recorded Svetlana Borisova, an attorney for the Justice Ministry, claiming the Jehovah’s Witnesses “pose a threat to the rights of citizens, public order and public security.”  [TheBlaze]

Rubbish.  Worse still is the mistaken position of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Vlad the Impaler)

5 Reasons for Thinking that Putin is No Constantine

By Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

The reason for this small piece is that some Western Christians, who really ought to know better, have been taken in by Russian photo ops, propaganda, and posturing, and have begun to describe Vladimir Putin as a new Constantine. It just goes to show. What, I am not sure exactly, but it does go to show.

I want to outline five reasons why I believe this is not the case, but first I want to put an important disclaimer up front. Some of my reasons below are critical of Eastern Orthodoxy, and so I want to place some important context here as a preamble. We live in a generation when not a small number of eastern Christians have been beheaded rather than deny Christ, and nothing said here should be taken as disparaging the honor of those martyrdoms. They bowed to icons more than they should have, but they have also died for the sake of Jesus Christ more times than I have. So that should be kept in mind. And second, none of my arguments should be taken as justification for continued Western apathy about the plight of such Christians in the Middle East. What we should do about it is a subject for another time, but what we should not do is continue to not care.

That said, why is Putin not a new Constantine?