The Sacralization of the Russian-Ukrainian War in the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches: Conceptual, theological, and ritual dynamics and rivalries

Since the start of the war of aggression and conquest against Ukraine launched by Russia on February 24, 2022, the divergent positions taken by the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, as well as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, have come increasingly into focus in academic circles, the media, and politics. In addressing the question of whether the churches, in the context of the ongoing war, act as peacemaking or rather war-mongering forces, reference is increasingly being made to specific religious and non-religious dynamics within discourses on peace and war.

Thus, Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev), the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, continually promotes a theology of war in his sermons, religious-theological statements, and ritual acts during the current Russian-Ukrainian war—a theology aimed at justifying and legitimizing the war as a holy war— grants unrestricted support and absolution to state power and the military, bestows a blessing upon the war effort, and invokes Russia’s victory. A defining feature of this is a comprehensive sacralization of war through repetitive recourse to hegemonic concepts of space, biblical passages, icons, hagiographies, prayers, church architecture, and their specific commemorative function—all of which are placed in the service of the present reality of war and its legitimization. The clergyman justifies the war as a struggle for the unity of Kievan Rus’ and the Russian Orthodox Church, elevates it to an eschatological battle for the salvation of humanity, and offers the clergy, the population, and the military an opportunity to sacrifice themselves and embrace martyrdom in the name of Christ. The rector makes no mention of the terrible consequences of the war, but rather asserts a suffering shared by the countries encompassed by the sacrally charged, hegemonic concept of the “Russian World” and the claimed territorial and religious order of unity (“If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it,” 1 Cor. 12:26).

However, such a comprehensive justification for war can also be countered by competing interpretations and, consequently, divergent dynamics of (de)sacralization—which, in the case of recent Ukrainian Orthodox statements, on the one hand focus on emphasizing the immeasurable value of human life, but on the other hand also seek to deconstruct the “sacred war” asserted by Patriarch Kirill and to sacralize it in the sense of a defensive war or even an inevitable struggle for just peace. The contributions to the discourse by the leaders, Metropolitan Onufrij (Berezovsky) and Metropolitan Epifanij (Dumenko), as well as those of other dignitaries and clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, take shape in constant interaction with non-religious spheres of action, which include, in particular, state, military, and social institutions. The corresponding processes of negotiation are permeated by the use of specific conceptual, theological, and ritual narratives and motifs, which are partially detached from Patriarch Kirill’s discursive logic, resacralized, and incorporated as a legitimizing instance into their own position in the discourse on war and their expressions of resistance—including, for example, sacred concepts of space such as Kievan Rus’ or the notion of “Kievan Christianity” derived from it.

By analyzing the conceptual, theological, and ritual dynamics of the (de)sacralization of war in the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this study provides an explanatory framework for understanding the contemporary reality of war, recent positions in the discourse on war and peace, and the underlying interpretations of war. Combined with representative theological and canonical clauses on war, peace, and military service, as well as the development and reception of overarching relevant concepts in war theory and peace ethics (including just peace, as well as sacred and just war), concepts (Kievan Rus’, Kievan Christianity, and the Russian World), and against the backdrop of the history of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches, their role in the post-Soviet period, and their interaction with state power, the military, and society, the aim is to situate these contributions to the discourse within the broader framework of interdisciplinary research on (de)sacralization.