Othodox Christianity and The Ukraine War

 Well, The Guardian finally noticed the religious aspect of the Ukraine War: The enemy within? Ukraine’s Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church faces scrutiny. Putin wants to get rid of the Ukraine church.

A little deeper and is The Tower of Babel and Sobornost Unity in Multiplicity by Tiffany Butler, and published by Public Orthodoxy. It does not directly following the above news report, other than as a rebuke to Putin:

I believe one contemporary application of this account is that people need to come into one another’s space and language to experience the collective blessings of God. This movement takes extreme humility, time, and many questions. Such action means no single “language,” that is, no one border or nation, is “the gate of God.” The dispersion of Noah’s descendants, no doubt, would destabilize all that was known and comfortable, but it presented an opportunity for many nations in communion. In this space, I believe the Russian Orthodox idea of sobornost presents a critique of the Moscow Patriarchate’s support of Putin’s war in Ukraine as well as offers a unique opportunity.

During the Reunion movement to bring together the Byzantine emperors and as an affront to the Papacy, the word sobornouu appeared in a late medieval Slavonic version of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed and means “gathering together,” as opposed to kafolitcheskoou, which is often understood as “spread through the whole world” (Nichols, 1989). The idea of sobornost was developed further among the Slavophiles, particularly Aleksei Khomiakov, and it is captured in Paul Gavrilyuk’s distillation: “Church unity based on freedom and love, rather than external authority” (2014). There are three main interpretational strains of sobornost: sobornost-catholicity, sobornost-conciliarity, and sobornost-fellowship (Valliere, 2016). While all three constitute a whole picture, I believe further reflection on sobornost-conciliarity and sobornost-fellowship is necessary for public Orthodoxy. These two emphasize the “how” over the “what.”

In the development of Khomiakov’s engagement with sobornost, Paul Valliere notes the “sin of the Western schism for Khomiakov lies not in what the Western church did but in how it did it, by acting unilaterally rather than in fellowship, by executive decision rather than by consensus” (2016). Therefore, a “gathering together” implicit in sobornost may seem counterproductive with the example of the Tower of Babel, but it is pertinent in discussions of a process or the spirit, if you will, of how Christians are connected and interact amidst being scattered throughout the whole world. This consideration necessitates a way of interacting in conciliarity and fellowship. But there is one approach that will never be tenable and that immediately disqualifies an unrepentant person or leader: the shedding of blood.

Public Orthodoxy has more Ukraine articles here.

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