Russian Orthodox Finding Ways to Break with Increasingly Bellicose Moscow Patriarchate, Zanemonets Says

 

Russian Orthodox Finding Ways to Break with Increasingly Bellicose Moscow Patriarchate, Zanemonets Says

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – This week, the World Russian Popular Assembly, which is led and controlled by Moscow Patriarch Kirill, declared Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “a holy war in which Russia an its people, in defending the single spiritual space of Holy Rus is fulfilling the mission of defending the world from globalism and satanism.”

            Moreover, Kirill’s group declared that “the possibility of the existence on this territory of a Russophobic regime hostile to Russia and its people and one run from an external center hostile to Russia must be completely excluded” (vrns.ru/news/nakaz-xxv-vsemirnogo-russkogo-narodnogo-sobora-nastoyashchee-i-budushchee-russkogo-mira/).

            Such a call represents a call for the destruction of the Ukrainian state and certainly is what Kirill and his bosses in the Kremlin want, but Aleksandr Zanemonets, a Finnish Orthodox churchman, says that it doesn’t reflect what many in the Russian Orthodox Church believe and that its members have options (theins.ru/opinions/alexander-zanemonets/270112).

            Given Russian tradition and the tendency of others to follow it, many assume that whatever the top person says in any Russian hierarchy is what everyone below him or her believes, but that is not the case in any of these, the priest, who is subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constaninople and who follows Russian Orthodoxy from the Netherlands, says.

            Many people in the ROC MP do not accept what Kirill and his like are saying. As in Soviet times, it is dangerous for them to speak out; but many of them do what they can by acting to help Ukrainians who have fled the war and by discouraging young Russians from going there to fight.

            Some Russian Orthodox churchmen have fled the country where they find it far easier to express their views, Zanemonets says, because Orthodox leaders in other countries including Finland don’t follow Moscow’s line. But while they have greater freedom of speech, they have less influence in practical ways than those who remain inside Russia.

            He concludes his commentary by quoting the observation of the late émigré churchman, Father Aleksandr Shmeman, who observed that “there is one path for those who leave and another path for those who remain” but who also insisted that in either situation, Orthodox Christians must strive to remain human.

Fewer Russians Now Identify as Orthodox Christians than Did Seven Years Ago but a Larger Share of Those who Do are Active, VTsIOM Finds

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – During a period when the Kremlin has been promoting Orthodox Christianity, the share of Russians who identify as followers of that denomination has fallen from 75 percent in 2017 to 66 percent now, according to a VTsIOM poll. But of those who identify as such, the share who say they keep fasts has risen.

            According to surveys from 2017 to 2022, 71 to 75 percent of Russian Orthodox said they did not keep the fast; but now, only 56 percent say they don’t. And this change has been especially great in the last two years: in 2022, 74 percent said they ignored the fast t; now only 56 percent do (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=65FF23B07DC10&section_id=50A6C962A3D7C).

            At the same time, VTsIOM finds that only four percent of those who identify as Russian Orthodox observe all fasts, with somewhat higher percentages simply restricting their consumption of alcohol or meat or avoiding using foul language. More generally, only 22 percent regularly attend church services, and only 13 percent pray on a daily basis.

            A large portion of all these developments reflect generational change: Only 38 percent of Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 identify as Orthodox (and only 52 percent of those between 25 and 34 do so) while among those 35 and older, the percentage doing so is 69 to 75 percent.

            Commenting on these results, Moscow analyst Aleksey Makarkin says that “with the change of generations, the number of believers is contracting as among young people atheism has become “fashionable” just as three decades ago it was “fashionable” to identify oneself as Orthodox.”

            But “at the same time, among the Orthodox is observed a trend toward following the rules, albeit selectively, with people themselves defining” which ones they will observe and how rather than blindly following what the ROC MP declares.