Russia’s war against Ukraine has changed Ukraine’s religious landscape. Due to its ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), once the biggest Christian denomination in the country, has faced declining membership, public scrutiny and restrictive government policies.
This report focuses on the perspectives of rank-and-file UOC members regarding public disapproval of their church. Based on qualitative interviews conducted with priests and parishioners in nine parishes in 2024, it provides insights into the mood within the UOC and its members’ (un)willingness to change their religious practices and affiliation against the backdrop of growing anti-Russian sentiment in Ukrainian society. These are the main findings:
Most interviewees attribute the current public disapproval of the UOC to the misrepresentation of their church in the media. However, a few acknowledge that the church also bears some blame, arguing that its leaders failed to effectively communicate their break with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2022 or condemn instances of collaborationism within the church. While many believe that the church leaders should improve their communications with society, most interviewees doubt that this will help to change public sentiment or alleviate state pressure on the church.
- With few exceptions, the interviewees are not in favour of changing the language of UOC religious services from Church Slavonic to Ukrainian. They explain their reluctance with reference to habit and theological considerations. At the same time, some concede that if Ukrainian society perceives Church Slavonic as Russian, it might be helpful to introduce elements of Ukrainian into the liturgy. However, only a few parishes have taken this step to date.
- Since February 2022, UOC members have been under pressure from society, the media, and the authorities to change their affiliation to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the church that now has the largest share of support in Ukraine. For most of my interviewees, re-affiliating with this ‘rival’ church is not an option. Yet several expressed a readiness to re-affiliate, provided the whole parish agree to do so. Only two priests were somewhat ready to change affiliation if it means protecting their parish and retaining a place of worship.
- Interviewees by and large echo internal UOC propaganda about the illegitimacy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and describe the state policy towards their church as religious persecution. Yet many challenge these narratives, acknowledge the religious validity of the OCU, and deny that religious persecution is taking place in Ukraine. Even those who subscribe to anti-OCU narratives still concede that many OCU priests and parishioners they know personally are good Christians.
- Roughly half of the interviewees admit that there are some pro-Russia people in their church. The concept ‘pro-Russia’ varies from interviewee to interviewee. For some, it includes those who believe that Russia and Ukraine should be united, that Ukraine is to blame for the war, or that the bonds between the UOC and the Russian Orthodox Church should be preserved. Others speak of people who are ‘indirectly pro-Russia’ – those who think that Russian culture is superior, refuse to take sides in the ongoing war, or are critical of what they see as the anti-Christian agenda of Ukraine and the West.
- Nearly all of my interviewees are dismissive of politics as something they do not, under any circumstances, want their church to be involved in. For them, the term encompasses everything that has nothing to do with prayer, one’s relationship with God, and parish life. Their resistance to engaging in debates about the veneration of Russian saints in the UOC, autocephaly or language change is palpable in our conversations. Politics is thus a concept the interviewees use to implicitly justify their apolitical stance and discursively protect themselves from what they see as hostile and wrong.