An Odious Narrative

During his time on the stage at the Family Leader candidates’ forum in Iowa, Mike Pence was goaded by moderator Tucker Carlson into a heated back and forth over the notion that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has “persecuted Christians.”

The entire exchange is worth watching:

Carlson asked Pence whether on his visit to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky he had “broached the question of [Zelensky’s] treatment of Christians within Ukraine.” Not only did Pence say that he had, but he went on to clarify the many misconceptions Carlson articulated about the competing nationalistic versions of Orthodoxy in Ukraine and the highly political roles they play in Russia’s war of conquest.

Carlson didn’t accept Pence’s answer. “On this question, it’s very clear that the Zelensky government has arrested priests for having views they disagree with,” Carlson continued, calling that an “attack” on religious liberty. Asked how he squares these views with his egalitarianism, Pence once again explained that Carlson had misrepresented the situation in Ukraine.

What followed was a tense exchange in which both Carlson and Pence talked past one another, in part, because neither was willing to hear the other’s response. Pence deserves credit for sticking to his guns. He’s right. Carlson is retailing an odious narrative here.

Back when he was a Fox News Channel host, Carlson often tried to popularize the notion that the Zelensky government was waging a “war on Christianity.” It is not true. What Carlson construed as an attack on the faith was, in fact, Kyiv’s efforts amid its war of national survival to limit the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and its patriarch, Kirill, to destabilize the country from within.

According to Ukrainian authorities, those efforts included hard-currency-funded efforts to recruit for the Russian war effort inside Ukraine and the promotion of the patriarch’s many sermons calling for ever more Ukrainians to die (and be cleansed of sin in the act of dying in combat against Ukraine). Ukrainian security services conducted raids on pro-Russian religious enclaves after, in one instance, congregants were filmed singing hymns to Russia’s “awakening.” At the regional level, Ukrainian authorities have pursued bans on the Russian-aligned Orthodox Church of Ukraine, citing the ways in which it “ideologically validates and supports the war, and justifies the war crimes that Russia commits on Ukrainian territory.”

It may be anathema to Americans, for whom the Bill of Rights is a civic religion, to violate the separation of church and state in wartime. But that is not the social covenant that prevails in Eastern Europe, and certainly not amid the closest thing the world has seen to total war since 1945. Those separations are observed by neither the state nor the church.

If Zelensky were waging a religious crusade against the 78 percent of Ukrainians who identify as Orthodox, it’s reasonable to expect that they would be frustrated by their persecution. But they’re not. Even accounting for the difficulty of polling the Ukrainian population, you would be hard-pressed to find a survey that shows Zelensky enjoying anything less than overwhelming approval. Why? His leadership in the war, for sure, but also the fact that only 14 percent or so of Ukrainians are faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine exists independent of Moscow, and its membership has only grown during the war.

Ukrainians understand these distinctions. They know Kirill and his church are Kremlin cat’s-paws. They know that Moscow’s church supports the genocidal ethnic cleansing to which Vladimir Putin has condemned them. If they don’t feel persecuted, it’s only because they are not being persecuted.

Now, it would be tempting to attribute Carlson’s comments to ignorance, though he has had ample time to correct the misapprehensions he retails so regularly. But these comments do not exist in a vacuum. Carlson is apt to suggest that Ukraine’s defenders have personalized the conflict, but that sounds increasingly like psychological projection. In a heated, emotive segment on his Twitter show, Carlson savaged Zelensky in intensely personal terms — calling Ukraine’s Jewish president “shifty” and “rat-faced,” a “sweaty” figure engaged in domestic “terrorism.” And now, Carlson alleges, he’s persecuting Christians — presumably, just for the fun of it.

You don’t need a cheat sheet to be able to read the subtext here (though such sheets are readily available to those who seek the education). Carlson is promoting something very dark here. Mike Pence deserves all the credit in the world for having none of it.