After weeks of extreme tensions and diplomatic attempts from the side of the European Union and US political leaders to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 24 February 2022, President Vladimir Putin launched an unprecedented and unprovoked military aggression on a neighbouring country. In fact, the war is the escalation of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict that started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the Russian support of the separatist forces in the Donbas region, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk.Footnote 1 To justify the invasion, Vladimir Putin challenged Ukraine's right to statehood, and claimed that the ‘special operation’ – as Putin and his political establishment call the war – seeks to de-militarise and de-nazify the country, which has been captive by extreme nationalist politicians who perpetrated crimes against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians in Ukraine. When one thought that the Russian justification of the war could not become more shocking, Patriarch Cyril (or Kirill), the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, aligned his discourse with the pro-war rhetoric, supporting, blessing and justifying the political agenda of the Kremlin and the military aggression in Ukraine. In a sermon on 6 March 2022 (which, ironically enough, was Forgiveness Sunday in the Orthodox Church – the final day before the fasting period that precedes Easter), Patriarch Cyril abandoned all caution and blessed the war, saying that the military intervention is a fight against the external and dark forces of the western liberal world, to which Ukrainian politicians have slavishly surrendered.Footnote 2 These forces, exemplified by the promotion of the rights of the LGBT community, alongside individualism, atheism, secularism, pluralisation and globalisation, have, he maintained, been imposed upon Ukrainians, destroying the Christian values of the country and encouraging a sinful life among its citizens.Footnote 3
More recently, the same church leader blessed partial mobilisation in Russia, encouraging people to fulfil their military duty: ‘Remember that if you die for your country, you will be with God in his kingdom, glory and eternal life’.Footnote 4 This looks like the invitation to a crusade or a holy war against the pagan West, with Patriarch Cyril comparing military mobilisation (sending young soldiers to death) with the sacrifice that God the Father made by sending his Son to death.Footnote 5 He even promised indulgence and forgiveness of sins for all Russian soldiers dying in Ukraine. What Patriarch Cyril has done since February 2022 onwards has been to shape the military conflict in terms of a justified war between the forces of good (Russia and its moral traditional values) and the forces of evil (the western world and its growing influence on Ukraine). Instead of using his position to stop the war and bring peace (as might be expected, since the Patriarch of Moscow was at the time the spiritual leader of many Orthodox Ukrainians), Cyril finds justifications for the military conflict, claiming that the aggressor is not Russia but the West and its un-Christian values, which have infiltrated Ukraine and pose a serious threat to the religious and cultural space of what he defines at the Russkiy mir: the ‘Russian world’, composed of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.Footnote 6 The process of westernisation of Ukraine is regarded by the Patriarch as a sinful corruption of the traditions and values of the territories that form the so-called Russkiy mir. For him, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is, therefore, justified as a means of defending the Russkiy mir.
Against this background, this article shows how in the discourse of the Moscow Patriarch the military conflict in Ukraine is identified as a just and admissible war, even a holy war. In doing so, the first section of the article looks at the document titled, Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, a comprehensive statement by the Moscow Patriarchate from 2000 that subscribed to the doctrine of just war. It is this Russian church document that offers Patriarch Cyril the supportive framework to turn the military conflict in Ukraine into a just war. The next section then details how the expansionist and imperialist ideology of the Russkiy mir, developed and promoted by Patriarch Cyril, who is also the man behind the social document, is used to elaborate a justification for the invasion and for sending Russian soldiers into Ukraine. The final section of the article explores an alternative Orthodox view on just war: the approach of the social document issued in 2020 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The social document of the Russian Orthodox Church on just war
In August 2000 the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church issued the document titled Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church.Footnote 7 It was the first time that the Russian Orthodox Church had adopted a comprehensive document that engaged the most relevant political and social issues at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. The document embraces a conservative approach and ‘sets forth the basic statements of the Russian Orthodox teaching on church–state relations and a number of problems socially significant today’.Footnote 8 Divided into sixteen chapters, the social document explores issues such as church–state relationships, church and politics, labour, property, family values, bioethics, ecology, secular science and media.Footnote 9 Patriarch Cyril, at that time metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad and head of the Department of External Church Relations, was directly involved in the development of the social document. As Alexander Agadjanian has highlighted,
the work on the document involved about twenty-five people, including both clerical authors and lay experts, under the supervision of the then Metropolitan Cyril. The fact that the document was drafted in Cyril's office rather than in the Theological Commission of the Holy Synod speaks of the influence of the Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad on the text.Footnote 10
In chapter VIII, titled ‘War and Peace’, the social document details the Russian Orthodox Church's position on military conflicts via five relatively short subchapters, claiming that it reflects the basic principles of Orthodox tradition.
The authors of the social statement do not hesitate to emphasise in the opening lines of chapter VIII that ‘war is a physical manifestation of the illness of humanity’. It continues in the same paragraph by saying that ‘War is evil. Just as the evil in man in general, war is caused by the sinful abuse of the God-given freedom’.Footnote 11 Nevertheless, the document goes on to bring certain clarifications that seemed necessary for the drafters to nuance the statement that war is evil. The document points out that, ‘while recognizing war as evil, the Church does not prohibit its children from participating in hostilities if at stake is the security of their neighbours and the restoration of trampled justice’.Footnote 12 Moreover, it states that ‘in all times, Orthodoxy has had profound respect for soldiers who gave their lives to protect the life and security of their neighbours. The Holy Church has canonized many soldiers…’Footnote 13 To reinforce the idea that the Orthodox Church is not opposed to war, if the protection of the nation and its members is at stake, the social document refers to the ninth-century scholarly exchange between St. Cyril Equal-to-the-Apostles and a Muslim, in which the former rejects pacifism. According to St. Cyril,
we defend one another and give our lives in battle for our neighbours, so that you, having taken our fellows prisoners, could not imprison their souls together with their bodies by forcing them into renouncing their faith and into godless deeds. Our Christ-loving soldiers protect our Holy Church with arms in their hands. They safeguard the sovereign in whose sacred person they respect the image of the rule of the Heavenly King. They safeguard their land because with its fall the home authority will inevitably fall too and the evangelical faith will be shaken. These are precious pledges for which soldiers should fight to the last. And if they give their lives in battlefield, the Church will include them in the community of the holy martyrs and call them intercessors before God.Footnote 14
Paragraph VIII.2 is not the only place in the social document that is at odds with pacificism and acknowledges a sort of a holy war (though without naming it as such). As Inga Leonova rightly observes, ‘the document further invokes the image of St. George killing the dragon as a metaphor for the rejection of pacifism’ and the reinforcement of the right to use force over evil.Footnote 15 By doing so, the social document subtly conveys the idea that a war that defends Christian faith and morality is just and blessed.
Without any reserve or constraint, the next sub-section of chapter VIII explicitly defends the theory of just war – a move which took many by surprise because eastern Christianity, unlike western Christianity, does not have a tradition of a just war doctrine. Matthew 26:52 (‘They that take the sword shall perish with the sword’) is used by the drafters of the document to biblically anchor the idea of just war. After praising Christianity for the development of high moral standards in international relations and military conflicts along with the idea of just war, the social document enumerates the criteria that would need to be fulfilled in order to name a war ‘just’, acknowledging their western Christian origin, which goes back to Augustine.Footnote 16 The theory of just war not only justifies a military campaign (jus ad bellum), but also sets the ethical limits of war and prevents extreme violence (jus in bello). Although the document admits that ‘it is sometimes difficult to distinguish an aggressive war from a defensive war’, and that ‘the question whether the Church should support or deplore the hostilities needs to be given a special consideration every time they are initiated or threaten to begin’, it maintains that there are situations when the use of force is justified to eliminate evil and restore justice.Footnote 17 For this reason, the document rejects pacifism and non-resistance to evil, stressing that ‘the Church has a special concern for the military, trying to educate them for the faithfulness to lofty moral ideals’.Footnote 18 The discussions on war are followed by a relatively long sub-section on peace, which concludes with the statement that ‘the Church also opposes the propaganda of war and violence, as well as various manifestations of hatred capable of provoking fratricidal clashes’.Footnote 19 As Leonova points out, this concluding statement sounds quite interesting given the instrumentalisation of the Moscow Patriarchate by the Russian political establishment, as well as the discourse of Russian church leaders in the months following the beginning of the war.Footnote 20
Patriarch Cyril's rhetoric on the war in Ukraine stays in line with the vision of the social document on admissible and justified military conflicts. His false identification of the aggressor (Russia) with the victim that needs defence and protection is deliberately manipulated to fit the scenario and the criteria of a just war, even a holy war: what happens in Ukraine is morally justified and serves a noble purpose (jus ad bellum). It has a just cause, which is self-defence: the protection and liberation of the Russian world and civilisation (of which Ukraine is presented as an integral part) from the colonisation and enslavement by the aggressive forces of western liberalism and secularism. For Patriarch Cyril, the godless West and its corrupted agenda pose an existential threat to the integrity and stability of the Russian world, which is uncritically portrayed as the depository of morality and defender of authentic and traditional Christian values. Given the fact that after 2014 Ukraine has continuously tried to depart from the Russian orbit and embrace an identity shaped by foreign non-Christian values, Patriarch Cyril maintains that the military intervention needs to be wholeheartedly supported as a justified campaign against the degenerated West for the salvation of Holy Russia and its people. The defence of the Russian world is the main narrative used by Patriarch Cyril to justify the war in Ukraine and to inspire people to fight for its superior and world-saving cause. Since the concept of the ‘Russian world’ was not developed in the context of the war but is much older, and since it has turned out to be the driving ideological force behind the military conflict, the next section of the article takes a closer look at the notion of the Russkiy mir. Particular attention is paid to the development of the Russkiy mir doctrine and its dualistic worldview.
The Russkiy mir ideology: a dualistic worldview
A comprehensive definition of the concept of the ‘Russian world’ is offered by the 2022 Declaration of Orthodox scholars denouncing the Russkiy mir as the driving ideology behind the war in Ukraine. Issued on 13 March 2022, at the initiative of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University and Volos Academy for Theological Studies, ‘A Declaration on the “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir) Teaching’ (DRWT) was signed by an impressive number of 1500 international scholars of various Christian confessions, reaching a global audience. According to the drafters of the declaration, the concept of the Russkiy mir refers to
a transnational Russian sphere or civilization, called ‘Holy Russia’ or ‘Holy Rus’, which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world. It holds that this ‘Russian world’ has a common political center (Moscow), a common spiritual center (Kyiv as the ‘mother of all Rus’), a common language (Russian), a common church (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate), and a common patriarch (the Patriarch of Moscow), who works in ‘symphony’ with a common president/national leader (Putin) to govern this Russian world, as well as upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture.Footnote 21
Scholars define the notion of the Russkiy mir in various ways: a doctrine, a concept, an ideology, a neo-imperial project, a theory, a strategy, a series of norms, an imagined community, etc.Footnote 22 Kathy Rousselet speaks of the Russkiy mir as a post-secular rhetoric and strategy that ‘entwines the political, the cultural, and the religious’ to protect ‘the existence of a deeply rooted Christian civilization’ both in Russia and western Europe.Footnote 23 The Russkiy mir positions Russia as ‘a forefront of the Christian civilization’, a sort of global defender of religious faith and traditional or conservative values against western secularism and liberalism.Footnote 24 Cyril Hovorun prefers to define the Russkiy mir as another version of the ideology of ‘civilizational exceptionalism that has permeated Russian political thinking and Russian culture in general since at least the early modernity’.Footnote 25 The medieval Muscovite state, the Russian empire, and the Soviet Union saw themselves empowered with a special historical and messianic mission.
The definition provided by the DRWT captures the doctrine of the Russkiy mir in its final and most elaborated stage. However, the concept – as several scholars point out – has witnessed a certain development over the past three decades. In the 1990s the notion of the Russkiy mir was introduced in the public space to fill in the void created by the collapse of the Soviet Union.Footnote 26 In this regard, it was meant to comfort Russian people and revive their sense of cohesion and identity in times of political, social and economic uncertainty. In this context, the concept of the Russkiy mir was conceived of as a liberal project to unify Russian-speaking people, reinforce the link of the post-Soviet Russian diaspora with their homeland and show the contribution of Russia to a global civilisation as a democratic state.Footnote 27 After 2000, by contrast, the concept of the Russkiy mir took a more institutional and religious direction, especially because both Kremlin and the church became interested in it. For Vladimir Putin, the notion served the development of the idea that Russia is a sui generis form of democracy, different from western democracies, which gradually paved the way for the emergence of his autocratic leadership style. Especially after 2004, the notion of the Russkiy mir evolved into an ideology that emphasised more and more Russian particularism and exceptionalism. And from 2006 to 2007 onwards, the evolution of the concept has been significantly shaped by the Russian Orthodox Church, especially by Patriarch Cyril, who has infused the ideology of the Russkiy mir with a religious, eschatological and messianic elementsFootnote 28: the Russkiy mir is defined by traditional and conservative Christian moral values, as opposed to the decadent West and its globalist, liberal and secular agenda.Footnote 29 Such an understanding of the Russkiy mir served the political goals of Vladimir Putin: the only solution for Russia to become again a world superpower is to defend the so-called traditional or conservative values that challenge the actual global political order and the dominance of liberalism and globalism. ‘The moralization of its message’ allows Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate to advance ‘global claims’ and unite under its leadership all political and religious structures that reject the unipolar world order imposed by the West.Footnote 30 The Russkiy mir concept is, therefore, key to understanding the nature of the war in Ukraine and its transformation into a defensive and just war by Patriarch Cyril and Russian politicians. Ukraine, which, according to the architects of this ideology, belongs volens nolens to the cultural, political and religious space of Russkiy mir – from which it tried to depart as a rebellious child seduced by the West – needs to be purified from foreign influences and brought back home. Hence, the war in Ukraine is justified because it saves and defends the entire space of the Russkiy mir.
Over the past decade, and particularly since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, scholarly criticism has mounted against the ideology of the Russkiy mir. For example, the DRWT takes a firm stance against the Russkiy mir ideology, condemning it from a theological perspective as a toxic and harmful heresyFootnote 31 – a ‘form of Orthodox ethno-phyletist religious fundamentalism, totalitarian in character’.Footnote 32 It is regarded by the drafters of the DRWT as profoundly un-Christian and un-Orthodox, especially because it substitutes for the kingdom of God earthly kingdoms and political systems that are expected to save and redeem the whole of humanity.Footnote 33 In this sense, the Russkiy mir attributes divine authority to a particular (viz., Russian) culture, which assumes a messianic role. In addition, the Russkiy mir ideology shows the enslavement of the church by the state and the church's failure to stand prophetically against all injustices and crimes. The church and Orthodox values are instrumentalised by the state to promote its political ambitions and goals.Footnote 34 The Russkiy mir ideology thus promotes a myth of purity that is uncritically ascribed to a particular political system and nation. This myth of purity adopts a dualistic and Manichaean worldview, which divides everything into good and evil, in which the evil is always the other: non-Russian people, the West, etc. This myth of purity and moral superiority of Russian Orthodoxy and culture can easily be debunked simply by noting that ‘on issues such as abortion, alcoholism, domestic abuse, political and economic corruption, the conditions in hospitals, in institutions for the elderly, the orphans, and the disabled, and in prisons, the overall situation in Russia and eastern Europe gives no reason for boasting’.Footnote 35 This is to say, the Russkiy mir doctrine does not create space for genuine self-criticism and self-questioning. Also, it is structured by a sort of determinism, which opposes diversity, human agency, change and evolution. Russians construct a fixed identity for the Ukrainians and for themselves, defined by certain values, which should always be part of who they are, regardless of what Ukrainians are and what they really want, think and believe.
This criticism is extremely important, because when religion is distorted, politicised and instrumentalised to serve military purposes, it is the role of theologians to show that religion can also be used to counter the war rhetoric of the Russian church leaders and politicians. However, it is not only the Russkiy mir ideology that should be targeted as a source of criticism; the idea of just war in eastern Christianity should not go unchallenged. In fact, the notion itself is simply rejected by many Orthodox churches, which claim that the language of just war has never been part of the eastern Christian tradition. The social document For the Life of the World: Towards A Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, which was issued by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2020, is illustrative in this regard.Footnote 36
The social document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on just war
The document titled, For the Life of the World: Towards A Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (FLOW), was drafted in 2020 by a special commission of twelve Orthodox theologians coming from various regions within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.Footnote 37 All members of the commission were appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew with the blessing of the Holy and Sacred Synod in Constantinople. As John Chryssavgis noted, ‘in many ways, FLOW complements the work and comprises part of the reception process of’ the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, which was convened in Crete, in June 2016.Footnote 38 FLOW comprises nine chapters that address burning social questions such as the role of the church in public space, secularisation, human rights, environmental issues, nationalism, poverty and violence, just to name a few.
The social document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate engages the topic of war in chapter V, ‘War, Peace, and Violence: For the Peace of the Whole World’, which comprises eight paragraphs (§§42–8) of equal length. Unlike Bases of the Social Concept, which limits its discourse to the issue of war, the social 2020 document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate explores and rejects every kind of violence: sexual assault, domestic violence, abortion, hate-crimes, acts of terrorism, acts of war, etc. Chapter V opens with the idea that
the violence intentionally perpetrated by rational human agents, especially when organized and prosecuted on a massive scale as war between peoples or nations, is the most terrible manifestation of the reign of sin and death in all things. Nothing is more contrary to God's will for creatures fashioned in his image and likeness than violence one against another, and nothing more sacrilegious than the organized practice of mass killing. All human violence is in some sense rebellion against God and the divinely created order.Footnote 39
FLOW adds in the next paragraph that any form of violence, war included, ‘is sin par excellence. It is the perfect contradiction of our created nature and our supernatural vocation to seek union in love with God and our neighbor’.Footnote 40 Because it is intrinsically evil, ‘the Orthodox Church cannot, naturally, approve of violence, either as an end in itself or even as a means for achieving some other end’.Footnote 41 Nevertheless, like the Moscow social document, FLOW acknowledges that even though violence is always and univocally condemned by the church, ‘there are times when there are no perfectly peaceful means of cultivating peace for everyone’. The church is, therefore, deeply aware of the ‘tragic necessity of individuals or communities or states using force to defend themselves and others from the immediate threat of violence’.Footnote 42 What FLOW emphasises is the idea that there are times when the protection of the vulnerable, the prevention and limitation of violence, as well as the promotion of peace, cannot ‘be accomplished without the judicious use of force’.Footnote 43 Paragraph 46 is fundamental to the Ecumenical Patriarchate's approach to military conflicts: it rejects the theory of just war, even though it does not embrace pacifism. By doing so, it differs from the approach of the Moscow social document. FLOW states:
The Orthodox Church has not historically insisted upon a strictly pacifist response to war, violence, and oppression … And yet the Orthodox Church has also never developed any kind of ‘Just War Theory’ that seeks in advance, and under a set of abstract principles, to justify and morally endorse a state's use of violence when a set of general criteria are met. Indeed, it could never refer to war as ‘holy’ or ‘just’. Instead, the Church has merely recognized the inescapably tragic reality that sin sometimes requires a heart-breaking choice between allowing violence to continue or employing force to bring that violence to an end, even though it never ceases to pray for peace, and even though it knows that the use of coercive force is always a morally imperfect response to any situation.Footnote 44
To support such a statement, FLOW brings into discussion the devastating physical and spiritual harm inflicted upon those involved in war,Footnote 45 as well as the famous Canon 13 of St Basil of Caesarea,Footnote 46 which prescribes penitence for soldiers and invites them to stay away from the Eucharistic gifts for a certain period of time, even though that they are not considered criminals by the church:
even in those rare situations in which the use of force is not absolutely prohibited, the Orthodox Church still discerns a need for spiritual and emotional healing among all persons involved. Whether one suffers or inflicts violence, no matter what the cause, the whole person is always harmed, and this harm is invariably deleterious to one's relationship with God, neighbor, and creation. Hence, for example, St. Basil recommended that a soldier who kills in the course of fighting in a defensive war, though not himself an intentional ‘murderer’, should nonetheless abstain from the Eucharist for a limited time, and undertake penitential discipline, as his ‘hands are not clean’.Footnote 47
The position of FLOW on just war is not singular within the Orthodox Church. Many eastern Christian scholars who research the topic of war in the Orthodox tradition have reached similar conclusions. For example, Stanley Harakas, who explored in detail the topic of war in Orthodox Christianity, shows that ‘there is an amazing consistency in the almost totally negative moral assessment of war in Eastern Christianity, coupled with an admission that war may be necessary under certain circumstances to protect the innocent and to limit even greater evils’.Footnote 48 However, Harakas immediately adds that, ‘in this framework, war may be an unavoidable alternative, but it nevertheless remains an evil. Virtually absent in the tradition is any mention of a “just” war, much less a “good” war. For the Eastern Orthodox tradition … war can be seen only as a “necessary evil”’, and never as something good, holy or just.Footnote 49 As John A. McGuckin explicates, this does not mean that eastern Christianity was no guilty of inflicting violence on others throughout history; it rather means that ‘Eastern Christianity simply does not approach the issue from the perspective of “Just War” and endorses no formal doctrine advocating the possibility of “Just War”’.Footnote 50 Furthermore, it indicates that there should be no congratulatory theory on the morality of war, as it always remains an evil act. What Basil's Canon 13 conveys is that ‘a truly honorable termination of war, for a Christian, has to be an honorable repentance… What this Basilian canon does most effectively is to set a “No Entry” sign to any potential theory of Just War within Christian theology’.Footnote 51
It is not the goal of this section to offer a thorough investigation of the way eastern Christianity has approached war throughout the centuries. The references to the position of the social document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on just war, coupled with the research findings of several experts in eastern Christianity, are meant to show that the Moscow Patriarchate's subscription to the theory of just war is contested by many as un-Orthodox. Such a theory goes against the basic principles of Orthodox tradition that violence and war are inconsistent with the values of the kingdom of God. Even when circumstances render violence and war necessary and unavoidable, the shedding of blood is never justifiable from an Orthodox perspective. It is a manifestation of evil and sin, which, although necessary in certain circumstances, requires penitence and spiritual healing. However, even if the theory of just war were consistent with the teachings of Orthodox Christianity, as the Russian Orthodox Church claims, the military conflict in Ukraine cannot be approached in the way the Moscow Patriarchate frames it. First, the Moscow Patriarchate deliberately confuses the aggressor with the victim of aggression to fit the narrative that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a defensive and justifiable war. Needless to say, Ukraine's embracement of the liberal values of the western world does not justify Russia's use of military force against a sovereign and independent state. In other words, the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian political establishment fail to provide a just cause (jus ad bellum) for the invasion of Ukraine. Second, the theory of just war equally regulates the conduct of the parties engaged in an armed conflict (jus in bello). This aspect of the Just War Theory was completely and intentionally overlooked by the Moscow Patriarchate, which remained silent during the Butcha massacre and other atrocities committed by the Russian army in Ukraine.
Conclusion
This article has explored the vision of the Moscow Patriarchate on the military conflict in Ukraine by paying attention to Patriarch Cyril's justification of the Russian invasion, which is framed in the language of a just and even holy war. The first section of the article engaged with the 2000 social document of the Moscow Patriarchate to show how Patriarch Cyril's reference to the war in Ukraine as a justified military conflict echoes the 2000 synodal teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church, which subscribe to the theory of just war. The second section critically explores the ideology of the Russkiy mir as the main narrative behind Patriarch Cyril's justification of the war in Ukraine. This section was meant to show that the framing of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in terms of a just war relies on a false ideology that instrumentalises religious motifs, subordinates the church to the state, adopts a dualistic worldview and empowers a particular nation with divine and messianic rights. The last section of the article referred to the 2020 social document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to challenge the language of just war adopted by the Moscow Patriarchate in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
By way of conclusion, an essential aspect deserves to be highlighted: as the editorial of the first issue of the 2022 St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly rightly pointed out, the consequences of the Moscow Patriarchate's weaponisation of Orthodox faith are devastating, long-lasting and extend far beyond the boundaries of eastern Christianity. ‘The moral cover’ granted by the Moscow Patriarchate to the war in Ukraine is ‘not only deepening the divisions within the Orthodox Church; it is sowing seeds of distrust, disillusionment, and even apostasy within the Church worldwide. We will all pay a high price in loss of credibility for generations’.Footnote 52 Because of this, whenever religion and religious elements are distorted and invoked to justify and back up the political ambitions of church and secular leaders, and especially when they are used as the main driving force behind military conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, it is the prophetic role of theologians and scholars to show that the same religion offers resources to deconstruct the false claims of the same leaders and their weaponisation of Christian faith for political gain. What is needed is sound theological reasoning to reject war propaganda that embraces a religious rhetoric. This article hopes to have contributed a bit to such efforts.
