Anniversary of War - A Complex Situation
As we mark the passing of a whole year since the ‘special operation’ began from Russia into Ukraine I am struck with how complex the situation is.
These things have not changed in thousands of years, as it is recorded in 2 Sam 11:1 (MSG): “When that time of year came around again, the anniversary of the Ammonite aggression, David dispatched Joab and his fighting men of Israel in full force to destroy the Ammonites for good. They laid siege to Rabbah, but David stayed in Jerusalem.”
Whilst both sides in the Ukraine/Russia conflict are talking about re-arming for the push into a spring offensive, and some versions of this passage in 2 Samuel talk about it as ‘the time of the year when kings go out to war’, we should remember, that it is rarely the kings who go out to war, but we all love the motivation of an anniversary.
Many of us might struggle with the concepts of ‘destroying a nation’, ethnic cleansing and the general loss of life on both sides that comes with any conflict; we might struggle with it even more when the language of religion is used to justify it and perhaps even more when it is the language of our own faith, or a version of it we struggle to understand. Yet Jesus also says, “... he who is not against us is on our side [even if they don’t follow us]” Mark 9v40.
The use of religion to justify war, whether it’s for national self-defence or pro-active aggression against an ideology projected onto and/or represented by a people group, is as old as the hills. In the current situation in Ukraine we are seeing it played out in real time.
Some of this conflict has a history in national and religious identity that goes back over a thousand years, and some of the splits that occurred back in the earlier church years are being used to stoke division and appeal to ‘purity’ and ‘true belonging’ even now.
Some of it is actively promoted as founded in the convergence of religious and national identity and belonging. The rift that has been stoked by Putin between some of the Orthodox churches, directly influences the current conflict. This rift between Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches might seem only relevant to power plays at a distance from our shores, but there are consequences throughout the world as many Orthodox diaspora/ex-pat communities in London, Paris, Berlin, New York and elsewhere who used to worship happily with and alongside each other for decades are now no longer allowed to speak to each other or be seen in the same room as each other.
The collateral effects on families who have married within Orthodoxy, but across national identities, is very challenging, perhaps Jesus’s words from Luke 12 v52-53 are being fulfilled in unexpected ways: “For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”
Over the last few years, as the tensions were building, a number of meetings between the denominations in the UK have been held, and we have been kept up to date on some of the deep-seated challenges that the churches both there and here are facing:
Simplistically, Kiev was the original seat of the ruler Russ, who became a Christian and is seen by Putin and many in the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Church as the father of both entities, an Abrahamic-style talisman used to justify the existence of a pure Russian nationalism and a distinct Russian Christianity. Yet, as Kiev is the capital of a nation that has gained independence from the USSR/Russian Federation, it has its own allegiance to its own history as a seat of high Christian position, a sort of second Rome if you’ll allow me the image. So the Ukrainian Orthodox church was ejected from the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate and has sought belonging under the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. The Russian Patriarchate see this Patriarchate as Western rather than Russian and has broken ties with other Orthodox Churches who recognise Constantinople. It may seem petty, but the issues are deep, and have their appeal in concepts of the ‘true church’, ‘the kingdom of God on earth’ and righteousness, purity and holiness, ultimately about whether salvation and baptism are recognised. This has consequences for being allowed to take communion, being married, having marriages recognised, and more with issues around funerals and last rites in a time of conflict being very pertinent.
So, the need to control Kiev is from one side part of an attempt to reunite these two parts of the Russian identity, history, socio-religious belonging and international status and yet, in the face of so much that happened through the 20th Century, the control of the city by the Ukrainian government and their people is equally talismanic of their struggle for their own national identity, history and socio-religious place in the world. When Ukraine is accused of being a place that harbours neo-Nazi groups, the pull on highly emotional and evocative and provocative themes is clear for all to see.
It is an appeal to ideologies and events in 20th Century Europe and Russia and could arguably be seen as an iron bar across the ancient religio-historic terminals of both nations and peoples, shorting out concepts of belonging, place, identity and purpose in the world.This is only exacerbated by the destruction towns, cities and regions where people used to feel at home. Even to return, they would not be returning to what they know as home.
A few of the challenges to authority, power, and order in society would include: the collapse of the Tsarist regime (with which the British and many European monarchies had deep ties), the catastrophic loss of life in both the first and second world wars, the rise of Communism and its atheistic mantras, in which the Russian and other Orthodox Churches have both survived and continued throughout to witness to Christ in their specific traditions under colossal pressure and persecution, the effects on religious diversity in the life of nations with antisemitism built on polemics from the Crusades rife throughout Europe and Russia, with expulsions, pogroms, holocaust and other ethnic/religious ‘cleansing’ by various politically motivated groups across Europe and the USSR still fresh in many minds and experiences; with the rise of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, Perestroika and Glasnost, the rise of oligarchic wealth and both authoritarian and democratic regimes in the wake of the breakdown of the USSR, some nations finding independence, democracy and identity free of previous forms of political coercion, with other challenges across central Europe on the borders of and within former Soviet countries around Muslim, Christian and Jewish identity and co-existence.
It was a busy century there, and yet we all now live with nationalist and patriotic tropes in our own lives, whether it’s the fun of three lions on a shirt, the Saltyre and bagpipes at Murrayfield, the green and white or black, yellow and red of competing flags in the Africa Nations Cup or even the more haunting concepts of what it is to be Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, or Caribbean, where major global religions are used to promote whether you are a ‘true’ part of the nation in which you were born. A conflict such as that in Ukraine acts as a prism revealing the fault-lines in our own concepts of who we are. In such times, our belonging in God matters.
How can we handle all this? Prayerfully is the simplistic answer, one in which we must cope with the competing tensions of being inspired to reject evil, but to believe that our fight is not against flesh and blood, to pray for those in authority in our nations, even if we were not involved in or in agreement with their election. Religious purity is a massive theme in society these days, whether or not we believe in a national church for a Judaeo-Christian liberal democracy, republic or monarchy, our concepts of what the national religion should or shouldn’t be will cloud many a discussion on the merits or demerits of any particular course of action.
As you join in with any events, prayer meetings or other ways to mark the anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine let us all be mindful of the phrase from the CiC Ordination Pledge, which every minister ordained by CiC says:
“I will by the grace of God protect the interest of God’s work worldwide.”
Ultimately, the interest of God’s work is to love the people in the world, to give them hope and peace. As Ministers in CiC we all commit to doing this with Compassion, Integrity and Co-operation.
So, let’s ask God to help us know what He, rather than national governments, expects of us. Let’s believe for an outpouring of God’s Spirit, that power to change the human heart to one that loves other people, inspires us all to purity of living before the God who loves and which grafts us all into Him, that we might be His family, co-existing under Him the one true Father of us all.
Trevor Howard
Executive Vice-Chair of the Board