Christianity expert Alfons Brüning knows Ukraine well: he has been there about 30 times since 1990. “My wife is from there, and we have friends there. Honestly, I have no idea how the country can find peace at this time. I’m afraid it will be a very long process.”
Border country
Many people think that there is a clear dividing line in Ukraine: between people who speak Ukrainian and Russian or between the different orthodox churches. But that is not the case. Brüning: “There has always been a large group in the middle. At least 70% of the population is bilingual. Even within the Christian community, people would say: ‘God is not Ukrainian or Russian. I am just orthodox.’ They did not make a distinction between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian churches.”
Those in-between forms were a characteristic of Ukraine as a border country, as it is often described. “Border country” is also the literal translation of the name Ukraine. And Brüning emphasises that is exactly what is being lost now. “In addition to the physical suffering and the material damage, the mentality of being able to live with different groups is also a victim of the war. There is a lot of anger and lack of understanding. Even if it comes to a ceasefire, there is a huge amount of destruction, mentally, and psychologically. It will probably take a generation or more to restore society. Look at how this process is progressing in former Yugoslavia.”
Dividing line
The Russian Orthodox Church and the Patriarch of Moscow support the invasion. The theologian says that this resonates in other Orthodox churches. “The main dividing line at present is whether churches find the war theologically justifiable. There are indeed stories that are used by some clerics in Russia in particular to justify the war. But personally, I do not think these stories have much to do with religion.”
In those stories, Kyiv was always a Russian city. In the tenth century, the first grand prince was baptised in Kyiv. This has been interpreted as the start of the Russian state. This is how some Russians justify the invasion: they think that Ukraine has never actually existed and that Kyiv should rejoin Russia. Putin encourages that idea and exploits it.”
But a lot has happened in a thousand years. “It is like France and Germany arguing today about whether Charlemagne was a French or a German emperor, and then using that to lay claim to Strasbourg or Aachen," says Brüning. “A claim like that ignores history and has nothing to do with universal Christianity.”
Fratricide
Besides the orthodox churches that want to justify the war, there are also churches — inside and outside of Ukraine — that take a more universal view and almost automatically condemn the war. “They emphasise that Christianity is above borders, states, and ethnic loyalties. And that war within universal Christianity is always fratricide.” The World Council of Churches is currently discussing whether the Moscow delegation will still be welcome at the next major conference in early September. “They wonder what there is to talk about with a delegation that approves of the war. The council has existed since 1948, but even during the Cold War tensions rarely rose as high as they do now. That is also a casualty of war: even very established forms of diplomacy and dialogue are suffering.”
This is the translation of a Dutch article that was previously published in Radboud Magazine #72. Photo: A church in Moscow. Source: PxHere