Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (1 of 2)

Fr Cyril Hovorun on the “sacralization of the war”

Today’s Wall Street Journal (12/30/22) has two editorials on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (I’ll write about the second later). The first is an interview with Fr Cyril Hovorun, an Orthodox priest-monk, theologian, and the former private secretary to his Holiness Patriarch Kirill.

Contrary to what we sometimes hear that Vladimir Putin is a genius and master strategist Hovorun “dismisses the Russian president as a shallow man, incapable of deep thought.” Instead, he owes his over-arching ideology (“messianic inspiration”) for the invasion “not from his own reading of Russian history and Scripture, but from Patriarch Kirill, who has thrown the weight of the Russian Orthodox Church behind the war.” As Fr Cyril says directly

My hypothesis is that the war would have been impossible without input from the church.

Much like 9/11, the invasion of Ukraine is not simply a geopolitical matter but a religious war. According to Fr Cyril, Putin and his associates “have the mentality of Crusaders, for whom Ukraine is their Jerusalem.” Like the Crusaders’ attempt to “purge the holy land of infidels,” the invasion is just because in their view Ukraine is “in thrall to the West”—namely, “gay people, secularists and Catholics.”

Again like “political Islam,” Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is part of a larger war against the West; Ukraine is the battlefield, in a war against the West motivated by Kirill’s “pursuit of the Russki Mir—’Russian world’—…an ideological ploy to restore the Orthodox Church to the uppermost place in the public square.”

This last point I think explains the sympathy for the invasion we sometimes see from many Western Christians conservatives. As the essay points out, “Patriarch Kirill believes in the superiority of the church over state,” a political philosophy (with some tweaks—like which Christian group would rule) is held by Catholic integrationists and some Protestant Christian nationalists.

But our concern here is OST in the West and I think events in Russia offer us a cautionary tale not only for Orthodox Christians in the West but Catholic and Protestant Christians. Patriarch Kirill's alliance with Putin “has resulted in the ‘sacralization of the war’” based on a “narrative of a godly Russia versus a satanic Ukraine” that is attractive not as well to many in the West as well.

Look at how the former president of Russia and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev defend the invasion on Telegram:

“Who is fighting against us?” Mr. Medvedev asks, before answering his own question. “We are fighting against those who hate us, who ban our language, our values, even our faith, who spread hatred toward the history of our Fatherland.” The enemy, he continues, is “a bunch of crazy Nazi junkies . . . and a large pack of barking dogs from the Western kennel.” The Ukrainians have “no faith and ideals” and “deny the morality bestowed on normal people.” Therefore, Mr. Medvedev writes, “by having risen against them, we have acquired sacred power. . . . We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey them.” Mr. Hovorun says he doesn’t “exclude the possibility” that Mr. Medvedev writes such screeds when he gets drunk.

Many Christians (again, not only Orthodox but Catholic and Protestant as well) have adopted this rhetoric about the invasion. More worryingly, the rhetoric in our cultural conflicts in the West often echoes Medvedev’s.

Fr Cyril “suggests that Putinism ‘needs to be deconstructed theologically.’” In a similar fashion, OST can serve to deconstruct the more harmful forms of political ideology current in Christian circles. More importantly, it can also serve as an inoculation against future outbreaks of the cultural and political polarization that we see today in the US.

Uniting the Russki Mir, Christian nationalism, and Catholic Integrationalism, on the Right, to cancel culture and Wokism on the Left, is a sense that we don’t simply disagree with each other but that we are “waging a ‘metaphysical battle’ between the powers of goodness and evil.” What unites all of these ideologies is a willingness to sacralize war, to see those who disagree not simply as wrong in matters of prudence or factually in error but wicked.

From here it is a short hop, skip and jump, as “the presumptively drunk Mr. Medvedev” posts on Telegram to undestanding our actions as a heroic attempt “to stop the supreme lord of hell, whatever name he uses.”