Why is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war?

The JERUSALEM POST

Opinion by Scott Kenworthy: Church-state history gives a clue

By THE CONVERSATION/REUTERS

Published: MARCH 22, 2022

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, conducts a service on Orthodox Christmas at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, Russia January 6, 2018.
(photo credit: MAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS)

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has defended Russia’s actions and blamed the conflict on the West.

Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.

The reality is much more complicated. The relationship between Russian church and state has undergone profound historical transformations, not least in the past century – a focus of my work as a scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy. The church’s current support for the Kremlin is not inevitable or predestined, but a deliberate decision that needs to be understood.

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