Restoring Trust in the Global Orthodox Communion

by deacon Nicholas Denysenko

In the last 30 years, the Churches belonging to the global Orthodox communion have suffered from internal strife. Insiders are aware of disagreements between the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, a series of disputes involving the patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople, and the schism afflicting the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The pressure to deliver instant analysis in the age of social media feeds the unfortunate tendency to hastily declare the causes of strife. Most analyses identify a single event or blame one person for the divisions in an otherwise peaceful Church. The most-frequently invoked guilty parties include the Patriarch of Constantinople (for papism, or neo-papism); the Patriarch of Moscow (for subordinating the Church to the state); Uniates, schismatics, and nationalists in Ukraine; and the Pope, the West, and secularists in general.

Primacy, the role of ethnicity, church-state relations, and secularism in the Church are all serious issues warranting academic and pastoral attention. They are not, however, solely responsible for the current divisions in the Church. In fact, these popular theories are unhelpful because they conceal a much more complicated cause. Our divisions tend to start with events outside the church—specifically, with ruptures in geopolitics. Borders shift; languages migrate; alliances are made and broken. Church leaders must adjust quickly to these new realities, and misunderstandings often arise in this context. Once the Church recognizes this pattern, however, it can initiate a process of lasting reconciliation and restoration of trust. Our liturgical tradition already gives us the resources.

Geopolitics have spurred church divisions for many centuries. Two of the most decisive examples in the Orthodox world are the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917. First, consider the events of the 15th century. At the Council of Florence, during the late 1430s, Constantinople advocated reuniting with the Church in Rome—in part because the Byzantine Empire, and the city of Constantinople itself, were under imminent threat from the Ottomans, and the Greeks needed Rome’s military assistance. After the rejection by the Russian Orthodox Church of the Florentine union, Moscow declared autocephaly in 1448. Constantinople did not recognize this autocephaly until it granted Moscow patriarchal status in 1589. The events surrounding these changes contributed significantly to the erosion of trust between the leaders of the Churches. Russian historians immediately began developing the narrative of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” a myth dependent upon Constantinople’s violation of trust within the Orthodox commonwealth. Moscow’s relations with Constantinople were often tense, particularly during the Ecumenical Patriarch’s journey to Russia in 1589, when his hosts treated him gruffly, gave him subpar accommodations, and appointed imperial officials, instead of church leaders to negotiate with him. It was meant to remind him of the Russian Church’s strong position in the reconfiguration of the global Orthodox communion in the post-Byzantine era. The collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917 also caused friction among Church leaders and led to a loss of trust. Before the political revolution in February of that year, bishops, theologians, and pastors in imperial Russia had been preparing for an all-Church council. They planned to discuss a broad set of reforms, including the translation of liturgical texts into modern Russian and Ukrainian, to permit the people to comprehend and participate in the Church’s liturgy. The proposed reforms were evangelical in nature, a response to the Church’s struggle to reach people in an era of modernization. When the Tsarist regime collapsed, the possibility for Ukrainian autocephaly surfaced, especially with Ukraine poised to become an independent national republic in the pattern of the modern, post-imperial nation-state. Some Church leaders in Ukraine pursued both objectives: autocephaly and modern Ukrainian language for the liturgy.

In 1917, supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly persuaded Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow to bless the convocation of an all-Ukrainian council to determine the fate of the Ukrainian Church. Surprisingly, the 1918 Council adopted autonomy instead of autocephaly, meaning Kyiv had more control over its internal affairs but remained under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. It also voted against introducing modern Ukrainian to the liturgy.

Pro-autocephaly advocates accused the leaders of removing delegates who they knew would not support their agenda. Supporters of autocephaly, unable to resolve their differences with the ruling bishops, decided to establish Ukrainian-language parishes in Kyiv, and ultimately established an autocephalous Church during a council in Kyiv in October of 1921, despite multiple warnings from the Patriarchal Synod in Ukraine to cancel the council. The documents from the October 1921 council are saturated with complaints against the presiding bishops and claims that the event had been hijacked. Ukrainian autocephalists described themselves as orphans abandoned by the ruling bishops and forced to determine their own fate. In other words, the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy and faithful who took autocephaly despite the resistance of their bishops did so because they no longer trusted their leaders.

These two examples—the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople and the all-Ukrainian council following the resignation of the Tsar—illustrate how the breaking of trust begins in the Church. In both situations, Church leaders were forced to adjust to changes in the geopolitical order within which the Church lived. Because they were in wartime situations, Church leaders had to act quickly and decisively, having neither the time nor the freedom to deliberate at length. Later, the decisions were reversed: Constantinople eventually withdrew from the Florentine union with Rome, and the Ukrainians finally received autocephaly in 2019. But bitterness remains. For the Church in Russia, Constantinople remains suspect because it tried to lead Orthodoxy into union with Rome nearly seven centuries ago. For the Ukrainian autocephalists, bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate could not be trusted because they dismissed requests for using modern Ukrainian and restoring native customs to the liturgy. For the Ukrainians who wished to remain in the Moscow Patriarchate, the autocephalists were not trustworthy because their agenda seemed to intersect with the ideologies of nationalist parties and leaders. In these instances, distrust became traditional. Stories about the supposed betrayals were passed down through the generations, fostering the notion that anyone from the ‘other’ community was not trustworthy. The same pattern holds in many other parts of the Church. Current leaders have inherited the suspicion that shadowed their predecessors, even when they are historically and genetically removed.

This phenomenon resembles the absence of trust in adult authority figures by abused children, or in partners of spouses abused in a previous relationship. The only path to creating trust with the new prospective partner or authority figure is through learning to differentiate the new person from the abuser.

In the Church, the way to rebuild trust is to learn a new way of perceiving, seeing, and engaging with the people who belong to the community of dubious trust. Here we can turn to the Church’s liturgical tradition for resources—beginning with the Rite of Mutual Forgiveness appointed to Forgiveness Vespers at the beginning of Lent. This celebration ritualizes acknowledgement of one’s own sin, asking forgiveness for that sin, and asking for forgiveness from the other. In a relationship of broken trust, this Rite enables both parties to begin the healing process by inviting them to encounter one another. However, reconciliation is a process that cannot depend on a single ritual. It must include several more encounters in which the alienated parties attempt to establish a new pattern of trust. Such encounters are akin to couples’ therapy, in which both parties are called to the hard work of confronting their fears, anxieties, and misperceptions; of naming the injustices committed and repenting of them; and of adopting new behaviors that are transparent and helpful.

All actions required by a process of honesty and openness make the parties participating in reconciliation vulnerable, because it demands honesty in the presence of the other whom one does not trust. For decades, if not centuries, the Orthodox Churches have allowed fear to dissuade them from engaging in the hard work that reconciliation demands. Disputes are not resolved by withdrawal into mutual exclusion and a refusal to dialogue. This only perpetuates a distortion of the other on the basis of historical memory. Just as Forgiveness Vespers introduces participants into a process of repentance that continues for the entire season and is marked by a series of daily ritual practices, so too must the Orthodox Churches commit to a long process of reconciliation, painful as it may be.

Let us conclude this reflection by identifying the most crucial step to be taken by the Orthodox Churches after the initial exchanging of mutual forgiveness: a commitment to revising our shared ethic of historical memory. In the current crisis afflicting the Church, the memory of past injustices sows the seeds of discord in the Body of Christ, just as a virus sickens people who involuntarily share it with one another. The flaw in our shared ethic of historical memory is the commitment to sustaining negative perceptions of the representatives of other communities with whom we have disagreed. The examples presented earlier in this essay expose this flaw. In the current situation, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is not only blamed for his actual decisions and actions, but he also bears the entire history of the Ecumenical throne, just as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is tied to the legacies of his predecessors, many of whom lived in the Soviet era. Some Orthodox have dismissed Metropolitan Epifaniy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as illegitimate because of his history in the Kyivan Patriarchate, labeling him as a nationalist schismatic because he is perceived to be the servant of the former metropolitan of Kyiv, Filaret.

These perceptions are flawed because the cases presented against the alleged perpetrators are shaped predominantly by the entire histories of the Churches they happen to govern. Each leader should be responsible for his own actions, not those of his predecessors. We cannot simply fuse the negative narratives associated with the communities producing these figures with the people themselves. The only road to rebuilding trust is to meet and encounter people as they truly are.

Rebuilding trust and reconciling is possible through the outpouring of God’s grace, but it requires courage, commitment, and adopting a new way of thinking on our part. This process requires strenuous effort and we will want to abandon it. But seeing it through can help us to arrive at the peace in our midst promised us by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Dr . Nicholas Denysenko is the Emil & Elfrieda Jochum University Chair and associate professor of theology at Valparaiso University. He is a deacon in the Diocese of the Midwest.