An Apologia for American Evangelicism

An Apologia for American Evangelicism

There is a great need for narratives of the present and recent past that are not simply based on mass media or partisan politics.

The problem with most narratives of the recent past is that they are typically based on nothing--neither small-scale empirical experience reflected upon over time nor large-scale rational analysis of trends over time--and they are even more typically driven by unexpressed, hidden external goals: to win elections, get back at family members, salvage projects, denounce enemies, win arguments, and/or "own the libs."  Direct experience, even anecdotal experience, is extraordinarily valuable--so that in that way at least recent history is the ideal kind of historiography--but it becomes far more valuable when reflected upon and placed into a broader context, and not merely thrown into a blender with "other stuff" and served cold as one soggy inedible mass.

Economic history has made something of a comeback over the last decade, as incoherent, disorganized Leftism and increasingly organized Labor have had a general resurgence. It is still very much needed, however, and still very much not the norm. Religious history remains much rarer, and is just as much needed.

The history of American Evangelicism will prove, I think, to be one of the most important accounts for understanding the last roughly fifty years of American political and social history. But that history will have to leap over many high hurdles to make it into existence. At the present moment, accounts and analyses of Evangelicism are not wanting, but mostly come from (1) the crowing hatred of its partisan enemies, who have never understood it but have been growing ever more enraged by being defeated by it for so many decades, (2) the disdain and contempt of its natural enemies, the upper classes, the academics, the intellectuals, who always despised it but understand it now no better than they did in the '80s, and finally (3) its own former adherents, the "exvangelicals," who hate it and blame it as only disappointed sectarians can, for many genuine sins, but also for falling short of their current sectarian causes and failing to establish the utopia they were promised.

Evangelicism is, to say the least, no longer popular. Not only that, but it is increasingly, oddly obscured in the public and political world and mass media, as though it were entirely a thing of the past--except for among the exvangelicals, who speak of it like John Birchers of the United Nations, trying to constantly warn everyone of its crimes and its conspiratorial plots and its sole responsibility for all the problems of the world.

Yet for all that, it is simply true that the Evangelical movement was one of the most important religious and cultural and political events in America since WW2--and that things would have been, would be, very different without it.

This essay, then, is, if not an apologia in a strong sense, simply a basic, analytical theory of Evangelicism that places its nature in a broader context, and so works against accounts of it as a bizarre, uniquely wicked aberration. 

Orthodox Schism: Permanent Division

 I haven't commented on the Orthodox Schism in quite a while, in part because the pandemic acted to an extent as a "pause button" on that as on other conflicts. That has more than changed now, however, as in the last few months unprecedented steps have been taken that seem poised to solidify, for the foreseeable future, a permanent separation between two sets of antagonistic global Orthodox Churches.

These developments can be put into roughly two categories: (1) the solidifying of permanent schism between the UOC and ROC in Ukraine and (2) antagonistic moves of Moscow against other Orthodox Churches. 

(1) is arguably less significant in global ecclesiastical terms, but very tangible in its effect on the many churches and believers involved. The hope of the Patriarch of Constantinople was that by granting Ukraine autocephaly, the long-standing schism between the "canonical" Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine and the various "autocephalous" bodies in communion with no one but themselves would be resolved by the merging of all bodies into a single united Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Early signs for this were very good, as the "Kyiv Patriarchate" and UAOC were dissolved and merged with the new body and numerous parishes elected to join the new UOC. This movement was aided also by the vocal support of then-President Poroshenko. 

However, from the very beginning most of the bishops of the former ROC in Ukraine refused to go along. Despite this, the ROC in Ukraine suffered significant losses, such that some observers predicted their total or effective dissolution within a few years. To put it mildly, that has not happened. 

With the defeat of Poroshenko at the polls and the election of a President whose policy aims at relative conciliation with Russia, the UOC lost the bulk of their legal and political support. The ROC in Ukraine, meanwhile, led by the energetic Metropolitan Onufriy, has fought back with not only vigorous theological denunciations of the UOC as a schismatic body lacking true baptism but also a legal, media, and publicity campaign emphasizing their alleged persecuted status and including mass protests against the visiting Patriarch of Constantinople. At the same time, a truly massive wave of funding from Russia has enabled an unprecedented building campaign in which the ROC has sought to rapidly replace all the parishes lost to the UOC. Thus, many many villages and towns that as of two years ago had only one parish church now possess two: a UOC parish and a newly-built ROC parish. 

Lying behind this religious conflict are the same underlying ethnic and political conflicts present in many aspects of Ukrainian life today: the divide between ethnic Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers, the divide between Eastern and Western Ukraine (where the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church looms large), the divide between Ukrainian nationalists and supporters of Russian imperialism and a vast middle of Ukrainians of various languages with varying degrees of hatred and love for Russia and attachment to their ecclesiastical leaders but also a highly understandable desire to avoid antagonizing whoever ends up controlling their country, which has been fought over and partitioned by various Empires for roughly the past five hundred years. 

In this sense, there can be little question that Constantinople's plan has failed--though whether and to what degree that should be blamed on Constantinople itself, the Ukrainians, or active obstruction from Russia, is a question that will be debated for a very long time. 

(2) is related to the situation in Ukraine, but more indirectly. The fundamental question about the new UOC was what degree of recognition they would be granted by the other independent Orthodox Churches of the world. The more successful the UOC, the more overwhelming the pressure to recognize them and deal with them. The less successful the UOC, the easier to ignore or even actively condemn them. 

Half of Moscow's strategy, then, has been to prevent the UOC from succeeding. The other half has been to apply extreme, aggressive measures against any Orthodox Church found publicly recognizing the UOC. 

Moscow responded to Constantinople's recognition by breaking communion with them and publicly denouncing them; it then did precisely the same thing with the other Orthodox Churches to follow Constantinople in formally recognizing the UOC. 

This basic strategy has been reasonably effective, as an early wave of support has given way in the case of the majority of Orthodox Churches to a tense silence. This has not prevented, however, any number of informal contacts, sharings of communion, and so forth between many Orthodox Churches and the UOC, particularly as time has passed and their position has solidified. As I said at the beginning of these events, the most desirable path for most Orthodox Churches in this conflict as in others has been simply to keep their heads down, avoid taking sides, and remain in communion with all parties. This is, in essence, how almost all conflicts within Orthodoxy have been dealt with since the Fall of Constantinople.

Moscow, however, has been from the beginning of the present crisis the innovator of a radically different model of ecclesiastical conflict that has pushed things much farther than ever before.

One further step taken in recent years has been various attempts to call large gatherings of Orthodox primates aimed at achieving some kind of formal synodical condemnation of the UOC and/or of Constantinople. This has been almost comically unsuccessful, as essentially all major Orthodox Churches other than the marginal bodies affiliated with Moscow have refused to go along with these efforts, first by refusing to show up to initiatory meetings aimed at a "pan-Orthodox synod" called by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and more recently by refusing to participate in another, smaller synodal meeting where it was rumored the Patriarch of Constantinople would be condemned.

There are signs, however, that Moscow is rapidly reaching a point where they will go through, with or without support from other Churches, with some kind of formal, synodical condemnation of the Patriarch of Constantinople and/or his allies as heretics and schismatics. If this move takes place, as is rumored, in May, it would likely herald a stricter and more explicit separation from the Orthodox Churches still in communion with Constantinople. 

The second, and arguably more determinative move that Moscow has taken has been to actively instigate schism in those Orthodox Churches that oppose them. Those few Churches that have recognized the UOC have been met, not only with breaking off of communion, but also by active measures aimed at "dividing and conquering." This initially took the form of general offers to remain and further communion with those bishops and priests who would refuse to go along with their Primates' and synods' and Churches' recognitions of the UOC.

In the last few weeks, however, it has taken a much more overt and permanent form: the forming of an active Moscow-affiliated "counter-Church" out of the ranks of the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria. After actively canvassing for support, Moscow accepted hundreds of priests who had broken communion and obedience with their own bishops and primates, and formed out of them a totally new, pan-African Church body directly subordinate to Moscow and headed by a Moscow curial official who had formerly served as ROC bishop in Armenia and "nuncio" to Alexandria.

It's hard to overstate how unprecedented and game-changing this move is: Moscow has directly signaled to all other Orthodox Churches that any Church opposing them will be, not just cut off from their communion, but actively divided and permanently "replaced." 

These moves have been accompanied by remarkable theological, ecclesiastical, and ideological explanations emanating from Moscow. In his explanatory comments accompanying the move, Metropolitan Hilarion declared that by accepting faithful from the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the ROC was offering them the ability "to be in communion with a canonical Orthodox Church and to receive Holy Communion and other Sacraments from canonical priests." In other words, in the eyes of the ROC any Orthodox Church that recognizes and enters into communion with the UOC ipso fact becomes "uncanonical," and hence schismatic, and hence in immediate need of being superseded by newly-created ecclesiastical structures of Moscow's design. 

On a broader theological level, appeals to principles of Church order and unity and hoary myths about "the pentarchy" have been replaced by appeals to the Great Schism and denials that ecclesiastical communion is of any great importance or that any particular Church has any particular permanent place within Orthodoxy. In recent talks, Metropolitan Hilarion has referred to the Patriarch of Moscow, in tandem with the Pope, as simply the leader of one of the two largest bodies of Christian believers in the world: the Russian Orthodox Church. 

So far as Moscow is concerned, the Patriarchate of Alexandria and Patriarchate of Constantinople, two of the most important and oldest sees in Orthodoxy, simply no longer exist; and any Orthodox Church found joining them will go the same way.

At the moment, these tactics have only been applied to those Churches who have formally recognized the UOC. Then, too, the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria, despite its descent from one of the three original Apostolic Sees of the Church, has always been a weak and marginal presence within Byzantine Orthodoxy; and one could argue that Moscow's extreme measures are caused in part by a sense of betrayal, as the Patriarch of Alexandria was one of the few Orthodox Primates to publicly side with the ROC and oppose the formation of the UOC prior to the actual act. For most Orthodox Churches, neutrality is still possible, at least for the moment.

Nonetheless, taken as a whole, it seems that Moscow's goal in the short to long term is to render such neutrality impossible.

 If Moscow formally anathematizes the Patriarch of Constantinople and demands that all Churches break off communion with him, and applies these tactics against those Churches that do not do so, then in short order there will be, in almost every part of the world as in Ukraine, two Orthodox Churches not only not in communion with each other but directly antagonistic to each other.

In the context of such global ecclesiastical warfare, not only between but within individual Churches and individual dioceses, every Church, and almost every believer, will be forced to choose a side.

It remains to be seen whether these final, fateful steps will in fact be taken. The longer the present situation continues, however, the more Moscow continues to foment schism within other Orthodox Churches, the more pressure there is to recognize and hold communion with the UOC, the more bad blood Moscow summons up both from allies of Constantinople and from neutral Orthodox Churches angered by its aggression against other Churches, the more the gap will widen, and the more schisms will erupt. At this point a swift, clean separation may in fact be the least destructive option (short of a total surrender on the part of either party).

Prayers, as always, are in order.

RELEVANT RECENT LINKS:

The Moscow Patriarchate's English-language announcement of the move against Alexandria.

The "explainer" from Metropolitan Hilarion.

The encyclical letter of the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria in response to this move, labelling the Moscow Patriarchate Satanic wolves using "dirty money" to gain adherents.

Orthodox Schism: The Meeting of Primates at Amman Did Not Take Place

For those keeping track of the Orthodox Schism at home, the last few days saw the gathering (by Moscow, acting through Jerusalem) of a purported "Meeting of the Primates of the Local Churches" in Amman, Jordan. Of all the nonsensical-surrealist events in this schism so far, this may be the most nonsensical and the most surreal.

To recap, late last year, after visiting Moscow, the Patriarch of Jerusalem issued a call to all the heads of the autocephalous churches to meet and fraternally dialogue in order to end the schism in Orthodoxy. This initiative was immediately backed up and trumpeted abroad by the Patriarchate of Moscow, leading to the overwhelming conclusion among almost all bystanders that the initiative in fact originated with Moscow and was going to be used by them as a means to gather support and take further steps against Constantinople. Almost immediately, Constantinople and the autocephalous churches closest to it refused to attend, citing both this perception and the quasi-doctrinal claim that only Constantinople has the authority to summon Pan-Orthodox meetings like this. More recently, the Patriarch of Jerusalem met with the Patriarch of Constantinople and by all reports was soundly berated, then dismissed with a letter that strongly denounced the initiative as a threat to Orthodox unity and accused Jerusalem of openly courting the favor of the Russian state. In the aftermath of this, the Patriarch of Jerusalem issued a statement "clarifying" that the proposed meeting was to be only a very informal initial conference, not an official Synaxis or Meeting of Primates. Several more autocephalous churches issued statements indicating they would not attend, while the majority steadfastly maintained silence on the whole issue, leading to a great deal of understandable confusion, literally until the minute when delegations were supposed to arrive in Jordan, over who would attend and who wouldn't. Less than a week before the meeting, the Patriarch of Antioch finally issued a statement (predictably) saying he would not be there due to his continuing (unrelated) schism with the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

What finally met in Amman over the last few days, therefore, was a highly winnowed group, consisting of delegations from only six of the universally-acknowledged autocephalous churches of Orthodoxy, including most notably His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow himself. Besides the Church of Jerusalem, all the churches represented were in Eastern Europe with close ties to Moscow. Even then, two of these churches refused to actually send their Primates and instead sent delegations of subordinate bishops. After a single day of meetings around a small conference table presided over by a fuschia powerpoint bearing the legend "Maintaining the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace," a joint press release was issued that is so generic in its content that it asserts practically nothing other than the fact that the meeting took place.

From accounts of the meeting itself, it seems to have been dominated, predictably, by Moscow, with the Patriarch of Moscow himself delivering a lengthy speech that is effectively a manifesto on Moscow's position in the Schism, once again comparing the present conflict to that between Rome and Constantinople in 1054, asserting that the fundamental issue is the quasi-Papal abuse of primacy by Constantinople, and laying out a set of detailed policy proposals that should be taken up and implemented by a Pan-Orthodox Council. The leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) also delivered a speech denouncing Constantinople's interference in his canonical territory and calling for "a conciliar church administration that will be in demand and effective for salutary ministry of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Orthodox Church in a new world space." Every other remark I've seen from every other bishop present seems to amount to little more than vague platitudes about the need for peace and fraternal dialogue. At the end of the meeting, the bishops apparently agreed to meet again at some point this year to hopefully begin discussions on a possible agenda for a possible Pan-Orthodox Synod or a possible Meeting of Primates.

It's honestly hard to know how to read this event. On the one hand, Moscow's inability to wrangle up more than a handful of primates, and their inability to get even this handful of primates to actually clearly side with them and denounce Constantinople, is a clear sign that, for all Moscow's success in dividing local churches and preventing them from openly siding with the UOC, they have no ability at present to actually take Constantinople's place as leader of global orthodoxy. The other autocephalous churches, whatever their problems with Constantinople, evidently have little interest in breaking communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and even less in in any way submitting to any purported authority of the Moscow Patriarchate within global Orthodoxy. Even divided, Orthodoxy will remain a set of balkanized national churches, with little ability, even among those cut off from Constantinople and following Moscow's lead, to act in concert.

That being said, Moscow has predictably made much of even this, openly arguing (through Metropolitan Hilarion, their head of external relations) that the number of primates present doesn't affect the meeting's importance, and that even a Pan-Orthodox Synod would not, in fact, have to include all the Orthodox churches to be both valid and authoritative. They will likely continue to press ahead on further meetings, giving themselves more time and applying more of their substantial resources towards getting more primates and churches to show up to the next meeting, seeking to lay the groundwork for a possible anti-Constantinopolitan "Pan-Orthodox" Synod.

Whether any of this will ever actually happen in any meaningful sense, however, is very doubtful. Certainly this meeting did not take place. Barring some kind of miracle, global Orthodoxy will only continue to divide.

Orthodox Schism: Moscow's Ecclesiastical Total War

For those keeping track of the Orthodox Schism at home, the Patriarch of Moscow has recently taken a number of steps that I find, frankly, both surprising and extremely disturbing.

In the first place, in response to the recognition of Ukrainian autocephaly by the Church of Greece and the Greek Church of Alexandria, they have predictably broken communion with these churches. This was expected. However, in doing so, they have gone out of their way to make clear that they are not breaking communion with the whole of these churches, but only with those individual bishops and dioceses within them that have publicly agreed to the recognition, and that they are happy to maintain or increase relations with any bishops or faithful within these churches who will side with them. In other words, Moscow is not just breaking communion with these churches as united autocephalous jurisdictions, but is attempting to break them down internally, dividing them diocese-by-diocese into rival bodies at war with one another and siding either with Moscow or Constantinople. This is, to say the least, an extreme move--a total division of Orthodox believers without any tangible attempts at justification in ecclesiology or doctrine--and it only remains to be seen how effective it will prove as a strategy. Most likely it will be very effective indeed, thanks to Moscow's money and influence: internal dissension is spreading everywhere, and by one count twelve Greek bishops have already spoken out against their own head and aligned themselves with Moscow.

Secondly, Moscow, via the bare proxy of the Church of Jerusalem (whose alleged primacy has never in all of church history been anything but a joke), has called for a "pan-Orthodox synod" made up of all the heads of the autocephalous churches to meet in February to discuss and settle the issue of Ukraine. Given the fact that Constantinople claims the sole right to summon such pan-Orthodox assemblies, this has functioned from the beginning as an obvious and naked attempt to get the remaining autocephalous Churches to openly "pick sides" in the conflict, as well as to provide further cover for Moscow's own global ecclesiastical consolidation of power. Constantinople and its closest allies almost immediately refused to attend, and the Patriarch of Antioch will almost certainly not be present at any meeting called by Jerusalem (with which he is currently in schism for unrelated reasons). What will eventually meet in Jordan in February will not be all the heads of Orthodoxy, but a partial, factional grouping of Moscow's allies and anyone else they can bully into showing up, which will predictably do whatever it is Moscow wants: denounce Ukrainian autocephaly and Constantinople, certainly, and perhaps go even farther. The mere holding of an allegedly "pan-Orthodox" meeting without and in opposition to Constantinople will act as a public showcase of the formation of two rival global Orthodox Churches.

Both of these moves, in response to the fairly modest gains by Constantinople of two recognitions by autocephalous Churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, represent extreme escalations toward a sort of ecclesiastical total war. Both have the clear goal of dividing global Orthodoxy permanently into two rival camps, one led by Constantinople, one by Moscow, with battle-lines drawn not between, but within, existing Orthodox jurisdictions.

I have never exactly been a fan of the Moscow Patriarchate, but in my judgment these latest moves are nothing short of revolting, and I sincerely hope they can be undone before they do further damage.

The farther Moscow continues on this path, however, the more suffering and division it will bring for our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters everywhere in the world, cutting across nations and Churches and parishes and even families. Prayers are in order for the praying types. God have mercy on us all.

The Orthodox Schism: a Few Comments

Alright, here's a brief explanation and a few comments on the Orthodox Schism, which I'll give in two sections: (1) the immediate crisis, and (2) a little bit of the deeper historical and ecclesiastical background as I see it.

The Scenario

The immediate crisis can be most easily understood by looking at things from a very basic standpoint of ecclesiastical entities and numbers. Since math is hard and exact numbers impossible to come by, these will be by design very approximate and drawn from readily-available-through-googling sources.

The Russian Orthodox Church is numerically the largest Orthodox church in the world; by usual estimates, about half of the three hundred million Eastern Orthodox in the world are under the direct jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. It is this, rather than any ecclesiastical claim to primacy, that makes Moscow one of the most important centers of world Orthodoxy, with a great deal of sway even other Patriarchates.

The modern ROC encompasses not only the modern nation of Russia, but also the Orthodox believers in (most) former Soviet nations. One of these, by far the most important, is Ukraine.

Ukraine, like Russia, is an extraordinarily large and populous country, with about thirty million nominal Orthodox believers and a very large number of parishes, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical holdings. It is also, by most estimates, a rather more religious society than Russia, where the vast majority of the populace are nominal members of the ROC, but where actual Church attendance is the lowest of any European country (consistently under 10%, and closer to 1-2% in major cities). It is this basic issue of numbers and parishes, more than anything else, that makes the question of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church so important for Moscow. As matters stand now, roughly half of the parishes of the ROC are in Ukraine rather than Russia; and this does not including the many parishes that have left Moscow and joined other Orthodox groups in the last thirty years.

The question of Ukrainian autocephaly, then, is not at all a distant or theoretical one for the Moscow Patriarchate. Giving up Ukraine means giving up a very large proportion of believers and institutions, and all that goes with them--including a great deal of Moscow's status in the Orthodox world generally. A fully united, autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church would be, immediately, the second largest Orthodox jurisdiction in the world, and a strong counterweight to Moscow. This is something that Moscow has shown itself entirely unwilling to accept.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople, on the other hand, directly presides over, in Turkey itself where it is located, one of the tiniest flocks in the world (perhaps 5,000), though it also has jurisdiction over many ethnic Greeks worldwide and most Orthodox in America and the West. Still, even with this, its numbers are a tiny fraction of Orthodox in the world (perhaps 6 million): its status in the world of Orthodoxy comes far more from the fact that it is universally regarded as the First See of all the Orthodox patriarchates and the "center" of Orthodoxy as a whole. What this means is not always very clear, but since the Eastern Orthodox churches are all descendants of the Church of the Byzantine Empire, and since Constantinople was, of course, the absolute center of that Empire and of the Church attached to it, that fact alone carries with it a great deal of prestige and influence.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople wishes to grant autocephaly to Ukraine, as it has to many other Churches formerly subject to it (including Moscow itself). Autocephaly, "having one's own head," means that the Church in question is self-governing, typically led by a Patriarch who has jurisdiction over the Church and all its dioceses and ordains its bishops.

Part of the issue is that there is no clear procedure or structural principle underlying "autocephaly" or its granting. The Byzantine Empire was an extraordinarily centralized society where Church and State were deeply entwined, with both centered around Constantinople and the office of the Emperor, who possessed religious as well as political authority. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, however, and later with the rise of modern nationalism, Byzantine Christians became politically and ecclesiastically "balkanized," gradually divided among multiple competing political and religious structures. The practice of "autocephaly" that has become the norm in modern Orthodoxy is little more than the regularized practice of Orthodox groups, largely for political reasons, breaking off from the Constantinopolitan center and managing their own affairs instead, generally with at least nominal (even if effectively coerced) consent from Constantinople itself.

The immediate impetus for Constantinople's move in Ukraine, though, is not so much ecclesiastical order (there are nation-states whose Churches are not autocephalous, and nation-states that are) as the desire to resolve a long-standing crisis and schism in Ukrainian Orthodoxy itself.

When the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine became for the first time in modern history an independent nation, a request was made to Moscow that the Orthodox in Ukraine be immediately granted autocephaly. The request was predictably denied, but in an equally predictable response, a large group of Orthodox clergy and believers in Ukraine broke off anyway and elected their own Patriarch, Filaret Denysenko. It is very difficult (at least for me) to tell precisely how many members this Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, as it is known, has, but some polls have shown its number of self-declared members to be actually larger than the ROC in Ukraine (though the ROC has many more parishes in Ukraine, and the numbers are muddied due to the large number of Orthodox in Ukraine who had no explicitly declared allegiance at all and who probably attend, if at all, ROC parishes), and has grown in recent years due to the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. For the last thirty years, it has, however, not been recognized by, and not in communion with, any other Orthodox Church outside of Ukraine. There is also, confusingly, a third Orthodox jurisdiction also in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, which has its roots in independent resistance among the Orthodox to Russian rule, but in the more immediate past is largely the result of distrust and hostility towards Patriarch Filaret, who had been a prominent Russian Orthodox bishop under the Soviet Union and thus is a man with strong past ties to the KGB and the Russian government. The UAOC is not in communion with any other group, including the Kyiv Patriarchate. Taken together, then, these two jurisdictions represent, both within Ukraine and for world Orthodoxy as a whole, a sizeable proportion of believers, parishes, and clergy separated from and not in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

Constantinople's solution to this problem is, in the abstract, relatively obvious: to officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, thus reuniting all three Orthodox groups in Ukraine into a single Church with a single Patriarch, in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

In reality, of course, this solution is far from simple, predominantly because Moscow (for the reasons discussed above) will never accept it, but also because of internal divisions within Ukrainian society that make reconciliation between pro-Russian and pro-nationalist factions (for obvious reasons associated strongly with the ROC and the two independent jurisdictions, respectively) very difficult. This is the basic situation leading up the events of the past few weeks and months.

The events themselves have proceeded fairly straightforwardly, though how they will proceed in the future is very open to question. Constantinople has proceeded quickly towards the process of granting the UOC autocephaly, declaring their intentions, sending exarchs to Ukraine to negotiate with the independent jurisdictions (the ROC naturally ignored them), and finally, in recent days, unilaterally declaring all the members and clergy of the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC to be in communion with Constantinople and canonically regular. In the near future, one would expect, they will officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, and the Ukrainians who accept this will elect a single Patriarch (who may or may not be Filaret, as discussed above).

Moscow, on the other hand, has responded to this first with belligerent rhetoric, then with increasingly extreme canonical and ecclesiastical moves. Members of the ROC, including most prominently Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the ROC's official head of external relations, have referred to the conflict as a "war," have threatened not only to break communion with Constantinople, but also to permanently dethrone Constantinople from its position as the First See of Orthodoxy, and have compared the forthcoming schism to that between the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy as "the largest schism in a thousand years."

Following the sending of exarchs, the ROC officially "suspended relations" with Constantinople, a step that has been taken only once in recent history, when Constantinople granted autocephaly to the tiny, formerly Soviet nation of Estonia (with little over a million inhabitants in total) in the early '90s. At that time, however, the ROC and Constantinople fairly quickly came to terms and agreed to a solution that would allow two independent jurisdictions in the nation, one under the ROC, and one independent.

Following Constantinople's rehabilitation of Filaret and the UAOC, however, Moscow has in recent days taken the more drastic step of totally breaking communion and all clerical relations with Constantinople. This means not only that the Patriarch of Constantinople will no longer be prayed for in the Liturgy along with the other Orthodox Patriarchs, but also that all faithful of the ROC are forbidden to receive communion in Churches under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, and vice versa. In the past few days, officials of the Moscow Patriarchate have forbidden their faithful from receiving communion at any Churches ecclesiastically subject to Constantinople, even on Mount Athos, the world center of Orthodox monasticism--they have also publicly declared that the position of Primate in Orthodoxy, formerly held by Constantinople, simply no longer exists.

The question at this point is what happens next, on multiple levels. Constantinople has shown no signs of slowing their process, and in the near future they will likely finally and officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine; this will in turn likely trigger a response from Moscow, which may go so far as a formal act of excommunication or anathematization directed at the Constantinople Patriarchate.

On the ground, in Ukraine, the question is to what degree the granting of autocephaly actually unites the various Church groups involved. At minimum, the UAOC and the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate will be united with one another and with Constantinople. The ROC in Ukraine will also certainly continue to be out of communion with them, and will now no longer be in communion with Constantinople as well. The ROC in Ukraine, however, may, and almost certainly will, lose parishes and faithful to the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This process, though, has the strong potential to lead to judicial conflicts and even open violence, as faithful and clergy of different factions vie for individual parishes and all that goes with them. In the long run, this process may, or may not, lead to a decisive victory for one side or another; but in all likelihood both groups will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

Outside of Ukraine, though, the situation is even more incalculable. The fact of the ROC being out of communion and actively hostile to Constantinople is in itself, by sheer force of numbers, significant; it means that the most sizeable group of Orthodox in the world no longer consider Constantinople to be the Primatial See of Orthodoxy and no longer participate in any of the common structures or projects spearheaded by Constantinople--which are, essentially, all of the common structures and projects that exist within Orthodoxy. Whatever Constantinople does apart from the ROC will be, by that fact alone, dramatically less significant, less prestigious, and less effective.

The real question, however, is how the other autocephalous Churches of world Orthodoxy choose to respond to this state of affairs, which presents them with an immediate and highly fraught puzzle. Within Ukraine itself, these Churches will be forced to decide which of the two jurisdictions to be in communion with; and outside of Ukraine, they will have to decide what, if any, steps to take in response to Moscow and Constantinople's breach in communion.

The most likely step for all these Churches, at least in the short term, is, paradoxically, simply to do nothing. It is far from unprecedented within Orthodoxy for a Church to be simultaneously in communion with multiple Churches that are not in communion with each other. There is, in fact, such a situation going on right now; the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, the two most important Middle Eastern Orthodox Churches, have not been in communion with each other over a jurisdictional dispute for a number of years. No other autocephalous Church, so far as I know, has made any move in response to this; they have simply continued to simultaneously relate to and be in communion with both.

Of course, with Constantinople and Moscow, the issue is not nearly so simple. Jerusalem and Antioch are poor, marginal, and persecuted; both Constantinople and Moscow have strong ties of direct and indirect influence extending all across the world of modern-day Orthodoxy. It is practically impossible for any autocephalous Church to simply ignore either one, let alone both.

Leading up to this break, Moscow, at least, has been actively seeking support from other Patriarchates; by my count, the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Serbia, and Bulgaria have all been brought to make strong statements of support for the ROC in Ukraine and against Constantinople's actions in recent weeks. The Orthodox Church in America, which has close ties to the ROC but is nominally autocephalous (an autocephaly granted by Moscow, and thus not recognized by Constantinople), has simply stated that they would not break communion with Constantinople. The Patriarch of Antioch has pointedly refused to endorse either side, but has bitterly complained about the divisions in the Church and the lack of attention shown to his own conflict with Jerusalem.

We are, really, in uncharted waters here. There are any number of theoretical ways this situation could resolve itself, but much depends on the precise actions and reactions of the parties involved. What is very close to certain is that neither side will, at this point, back down in their immediate conflict with one another: Constantinople will officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine, and Moscow will continue to try to cut itself loose from Constantinople.

Other autocephalous jurisdictions will try to mediate this conflict, but there is not really anyone in the Orthodox world with any significant amount of sway with either Patriarchate. A Council could be called, but it is extremely unlikely Moscow would ever attend such a meeting. Only a few years ago, Constantinople tried to summon a Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete, but was stymied by Moscow's unilateral refusal to attend (ostensibly for doctrinal and organizational issues)--a fact that ipso facto rendered the Council a dead letter. It does not seem likely Moscow would ever attend a Council where it actually had something to lose; and there is no longer an Orthodox Emperor to force them or anyone else to do so.

An Estonia-like solution is, of course, still very much possible; an agreement whereby both jurisdictions are allowed to exist in Ukraine simultaneously in communion with one another and with the rest of Orthodoxy. With every day that goes by, this becomes less and less likely, but it is still an obvious solution and can never be discounted. This resolution would presumably lead to at least a healing of the immediate Schism, though it would not bring an end to the deeper issues bringing Moscow and Constantinople into conflict. The status quo would be maintained, in other words, but not reconciled.

If the Schism continues and escalates to the point of open excommunication, whatever the other autocephalous Churches do, this would de facto lead to a situation where world Orthodoxy, over time, becomes more and more separated out into two clearly divided, hostile, competing institutions. Other autocephalous Churches could, in all probability would, be drawn into it and break communion with one side or the other. Or, if all of them maintain an ostensible neutrality, the labyrinthine, schizophrenic dimensions of modern Orthodoxy would be greatly increased. Either way, the ability for Orthodoxy to operate in any univocal or united way, or to ever join in on any common projects or statements, would be effectively neutralized.

In the long run, of course, regardless of what happens in the near future, one side or the other could "win out" in such a way as to render the other side impotent and of far less significance in Orthodox affairs. This does not seem particularly likely to me, but both sides have partisans who strongly believe in these scenarios, so they should not be entirely discounted.

The scenario by which Constantinople "wins" is fairly straightforward, and generally involves less "total war": due to on-the-ground conditions, the united Ukrainian Orthodox Church rapidly absorbs the ROC in Ukraine, and becomes too large and successful for any other Orthodox Church, including Moscow, to not to be in communion with. After the other autocephalous Churches gradually accept it as an equal and partner, Moscow is forced to accede, and the UOC thus takes its place in the pantheon of autocephalous Churches as a strong counterweight to Moscow's supremacy; and in the long run, a smaller, chastened, and more humble Moscow becomes a more reliable and less independent part of Orthodoxy under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The scenario whereby Moscow wins is also fairly straightforward, but rather more brutal: Constantinople has very few Orthodox believers under its direct jurisdiction, relying for its position and authority on soft power and prestige. If Moscow can successfully use its clout, which includes at least potentially the entire political and diplomatic power of the Russian state, abundant monetary funds, and numerous believers scattered throughout the world, to persuade other autocephalous Churches to join it in breaking from or even excommunicating Constantinople, at a certain point, Constantinople would simply become a tiny, poor, and insignificant Church, and a threat to no one. At this point, it would matter very little what they did or decided on any question; Moscow would be free to operate however they wished, whether, in the long run, they returned to communion with Constantinople or not. Moscow could even, depending on the situation, take the most drastic step of all: claim for themselves the Primacy ostensibly vacated by Constantinople.

As I said, I do not think either of these scenarios particularly likely, though they each have something to commend them.

Historical/Ecclesiastical Background

The difficulty with Orthodoxy as a modern phenomenon is always that it has never had a fixed Church order or ecclesiology. The Church of the Byzantine Empire had two institutional sources of unity at the highest, universal level, both of which modern Orthodoxy has no access to: the office of the Emperor, and the office of the Pope.

While it initially contained multiple Patriarchates with some degree of independence, following the Muslim conquests, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch were all lost to the Empire, while Rome and the Latin Church became gradually estranged from Byzantium first politically and later religiously; this led, in the long run, to an almost total ecclesiastical hegemony of Constantinople in the Empire.

Constantinople's status even as a Patriarchate, however, had been heavily disputed, to say the least. Prior to Constantine, there had been three Apostolic Sees generally recognized: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, all of which had personal ties to the Apostle Peter. Rome was, of course, the acknowledge Primate, as the See where Peter and Paul had shed their blood. Byzantium, on the other hand, was a minor city politically and ecclesiastically, with no even legendary ties to Peter or any other Apostles.

After Constantine re-founded Byzantium as his new capital, Constantinople or New Rome, the vastly increased political importance quickly translated into greater ecclesiastical importance as well. During the late 4th and 5th centuries, clerics of Alexandria and Antioch competed over and against Constantinople and to maintain their own primacy in the East, a conflict that led eventually to the estrangement of significant numbers of their followers from the Empire and the Imperial Church. Finally, at the Council of Calchedon, the assembled clergy, absent the Roman legates, passed a canon declaring that Constantinople, because it was the Imperial City, ought to be the second See in the Church after Rome. Pope Leo the Great, however, reacted angrily to this appeal to politics in Church order, and publicly annulled the canon, since Constantinople was neither an Apostolic See, nor could it possibly take precedence over the older Apostolic Churches of Alexandria and Antioch.

Still, in the long run, the close ties between Church and State in the Byzantine Empire, where the Emperor held ultimate sway in both spheres, made Constantinople's religious hegemony simply a fact of life, one that received little official legitimation for centuries, but which became more and more official over time and especially as Rome's role in the Byzantine Empire, for many centuries (particularly those of the so-called Byzantine Papacy) powerful and decisive, gradually waned.

When the Byzantine Empire fell, however, the believers and Church structures that had once been a part of it were brought into a state of disarray. Nations and ethnic groups were forced to fend for themselves, which they did in different ways. Some (the large proportion of Antiochenes who now form the Melchite Church, the majority of the Kyivan Rus who now make up the Ruthenian and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches, etc) re-entered Communion with Rome and became a part of the modern, post-Reformation Catholic world of multiple sui iuris Churches under the ultimate governance of the Pope; others remained in communion with Constantinople while learning to manage their own affairs, leading to the existence of "autocephalous" Orthodox Churches in the modern sense.

The Church of Moscow, however, adopted a rather more aggressive strategy, forging extremely close ties to the expansionist Muscovite Empire. Its "autocephaly" was gained essentially by force, including an incident where the Patriarch of Constantinople--who had traveled to Moscow to raise funds, since the Ottoman Empire maintained the Patriarchate only on the basis of compulsory extortion and simony--was held captive in Russia until he agreed to grant the Bishop of Moscow the title of "Patriarch." Along with this aggression in Church matters came the ideology of "Third Rome," which held that, just as Constantinople had been the First See in the Church not due to any Apostolic pedigree, but solely due to its role as the capital of the Orthodox Empire, so too, Moscow, the capitol of the Orthodox Russian Empire, had now inherited that same primacy. As Moscow and the Russian Empire expanded politically, so too did the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, leading to many churches that had been formerly been subject directly to Constantinople now becoming subject instead to Moscow.

When the Russian Empire modernized under Peter the Great, so, too, was the Russian Orthodox Church modernized; in 1721, the Patriarchate of Moscow was actually abolished, replaced by a Synod subject to the Czar, and not reinstituted until 1917, in the throes of the Russian Revolution. The ROC, however, was soon, under the Soviets, officially abolished--and it was not until 1943, when Stalin made the decision, to benefit nationalistic sentiment against the Nazis, to revive and sanction Russian Orthodoxy, that the Patriarchate was officially restored once again. Under Stalin and his successors, however, the ROC was thoroughly penetrated and largely controlled by the KGB, even as it was marginalized and downplayed by the officially atheistic state. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladmir Putin, however, the ROC has re-forged its close ties to the Russian State, receiving a great deal of support and approbation from Putin, and in return endorsing his policies and political affairs.

Constantinople, on the other hand, suffered after the fall of the Empire through centuries of repressive Ottoman rule--until the rise of the modern Turkish state following World War One, which paradoxically butchered its followers and drove them out of the country, reducing it to a tiny fraction of its former numbers, while at the same time by its official secularism giving it, for the first time in centuries, almost total freedom to operate independently on the global stage. This, for the most part, seems to be Patriarch Bartholomew's vision: of a restored Orthodox Church separate from, liberated from, the State and now operating in a unified way under the strong, independent leadership of Constantinople.

If this break is happening now, then, it is in large part because these two institutions are both in positions of relative strength--and also because their basic visions for the structure and order of Orthodoxy as a global institution are radically in conflict. Moscow, in a sense, is the less ambitious one; it wishes to ratify a Church order tied to political structures, and in particular to the ethnic-national Orthodox Empire embodied in the contemporary Imperialism of the Russian State, which sees all of its former holdings, whether nominally independent or not, as part of its sphere of influence and consequently under its spiritual and jurisdictional sway. Patriarch Bartholomew, on the other hand, ambitiously wishes to forge a modern Orthodox Church that exists as a universal institution independent of national, ethnic, and political divisions, ruled by a strong independent Primate whose status comes, not from current Imperial sway, but from past tradition, and divided in an orderly fashion into autocephalous Churches whose boundaries are dictated by those of nation-states.

The two groups also have more intellectual debates and alignments, the largest of which is how Orthodoxy ought to relate to other Christian groups--in particular the Catholic Church. Patriarch Bartholomew is famously ecumenical, and is personally close friends with Pope Francis, with whom he as cooperated on a vast number of projects. The Patriarch of Moscow, however, is generally opposed to rapproachment with other Christian groups; though he was finally brought to meet with the Pope for the first time in history in recent years, the ROC has always been the main foot-dragger and obstacle to cooperation between the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy.

Over Ukraine, the issue is also one of jurisdiction. Kyiv was formerly under the direct jurisdiction of Constantinople, which was eventually forced, by the political realities, to allow Moscow to ordain its bishops. Moscow thus claims Constantinople has no right to grant Ukraine autocephaly, since it is its own canonical territory. Constantinople, for its part, claims the exclusive right, as Primate, to grant autocephaly; it has, in the past, refused to recognize Moscow's attempts to grant its subject Churches this status. It also claims that Ukraine, regardless of the changes brought about by conquest or the grant in question, is properly its own canonical territory--and thus Moscow has absolutely no right to jurisdiction over it.

This is not an easy dispute to resolve, on any level. Constantinople's claim to a strong primacy independent of any Orthodox Empire is at least historically an innovation; Moscow's claim to absolute jurisdiction over the Church of another nation-state due to past Imperial rule is at base ruthlessly political: but the far deeper issue underlying both these stances and the conflict as a whole is that there is, in fact, no clear way to resolve any of these disputes, neither in terms of Church structure nor in terms of canonical jurisdiction, within the institutions and traditions of Orthodoxy as it has existed since the Fall of the Byzantine Empire.

The resolution of this dispute, then, depends in reality not on any intra-Orthodox ecclesiastical principle, but simply and solely on the will of the parties involved, as well as the chaotic conditions and fortunes of politics and history.

As a Catholic, all I can say is that we ought to pray, whatever Christian group we may belong to, for all those believers who are caught up in the middle of this fiasco: and trust, ultimately, in Christ, who loves his Church, and will unite all those who belong to him, finally and forever, in the Kingdom of his Father.