Who witnesses to Christ among the Ukrainians?

An interesting study was put out recently by the German-based, CDU-aligned Konrad Adenauer Foundation, looking at the composition of religious communities in the Ukraine. Among the communities studied were the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) under Metropolitan Onufriy (Berezovskiy), the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) under Sergei Dumenko, and the uniate Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) under Svyatoslav Shevchuk. This study can be found in the Ukrainian language version here. One fact which stuck out fairly blatantly concerned the attitudes of religious communities to each other.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church membership consistently displayed higher positive attitudes toward, and willingness to cooperate with, believers in other religious bodies. UOC parishioners polled at 42% having a positive view of OCU members, and only 12% having a negative view of OCU members. UOC parishioners were slightly cooler on UGCC parishioners, but still positive: 30% had a positive view and 3% had a negative view.

On the other hand, the memberships of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church showed significant prejudice against the UOC’s membership. More OCU members had negative views (37%) of UOC members compared to positive views (29%). And far more UGCC members had negative views (53%) than positive views (10%) of UOC members.

There are several ways to interpret this data. However, the most convincing to my mind is the one which follows Ockham’s Razor: that the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church simply does a better job of witnessing to Christ and transforming hearts than the other two religious bodies do. The fact that UOC parishioners have a more understanding and positive view of other religious bodies and their memberships, and are willing to work with them on matters of the common good, suggests to me that the UOC priests are demonstrating an actual œcumenical spirit in the best bottom-up sense of the term, and that they possess an actual commitment to the civic good of the country and to the democratic ethos than either of the other two major confessions do.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on a certain level, has nothing to prove. Metropolitan Onufriy has been keeping well clear of sæcular politics and attending to his proper business of spiritually guiding a flock which has been, in many cases, literally under siege. He has been preaching consistently a message against resentment and violence. Vladyka Onufriy’s message throughout all these eight years of crisis in his country has been one of unity and love.

The primates of the other two bodies, on the other hand – schismatic and uniate – had been busily cosying up to far-right nationalist political forces and parties formerly in power, and courting the organs of state throughout this crisis. They did not put their trust in Christ but instead in Petro Poroshenko (see also here). They have taken the same attitude and aspect with regard to the politics in their own country, that ‘evangelical’ Protestants have done here with regard to Donald Trump—and their witness to Christ has similarly suffered as a result. They see the other people within their own country primarily as culture-war enemies to be vanquished, rather than as icons of Our Lord.

I understand that, given the tenor of some of my past posts on the subject, I am sometimes seen as anti-Ukraine or anti-Ukrainian. I openly admit to being anti-nationalist, and I see Ukrainian nationalism as a uniquely noxious form of that political poison. But the fact of the matter is that I want what is best for the Ukrainian people, materially and spiritually, and I have done ever since the beginnings of this blog when I first began paying attention to Ukrainian affairs. The Ukrainian people are incredibly blessed to have among them a witness to the love of Christ such as Metropolitan Onufriy: they should pay him greater attention—and not to the court clerics of businessmen and politicians who want to manipulate them for money and power.