Violating Religious Freedom, Ukraine Is on the Verge of Banning Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Ukraine is on the verge of effectively banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, accusing it of being tied to Moscow through connections to the Russian Orthodox Church. From the Orthodox Christianity story:

The new law, which awaits the signature of President Zelensky, outlaws any religious organization that is centered in Russia, known as an “aggressor country” in Ukrainian legislation.

According to the law, the parish and monastery communities of the UOC will have 9 months to sever ties with the Russian Church.

There’s only one problem. Apparently the UOC already has:

Although the Local Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church voted to separate itself from the Moscow Patriarchate already in May 2022, as reflected in the Church’s updated statutes [full text of the statutes available here], the Ukrainian state continues to brand it as a Russian Church as a justification for its persecution of the Church.

It is worth noting that there is a competing church to the UOC in Ukraine — the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) — which has been recognized as Ukraine’s national church by the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople,  the “first among equals” among all Orthodox bishops yet not a pope, and the OCU is deemed by Zelensky to be loyal.

The dispute about whether the Ukrainian Orthodox Church or the Orthodox Church of Ukraine legitimately represents Ukrainian Orthodoxy is a matter for the Orthodox Church to work out. Indeed, the UOC remains canonical within most of international Orthodoxy, as are the Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Antiochian, etc., churches. It’s all one church, even if relations among the different administrative “jurisdictions” can become, well, Byzantine.

But the government of Ukraine should not decide which church is “legitimate” and which is not, which can operate openly and which should be suppressed.

This is a grievous mistake. If there are members of the UOC who can be shown to be helping Russia, by all means, deal with those individuals legally. But banning a church and forcing it out of its monasteries and other religious institutions because it is part of the same overarching international religious institution as the state church of its enemy is not the act of a country dedicated to defending liberty.

This law, if it becomes that, won’t hurt Russia. But it will divide Ukrainians along religious lines and victimize innocent Christians who are not aiding Russia in its aggression. If Zelensky wants to tout Ukraine as a bulwark of freedom against a despotic Russia — which I believe it is — he will reconsider this tactic and veto the bill.

(Full disclosure: I am an Orthodox Chrisitan and a member of the Orthodox Church in America, which has unequivocally condemned the invasion. But I do not in any way represent the OCA or speak on its behalf in this post.)