The world of Orthodox Christianity has been anything but boring over the past couple of years. The political-ecclesiastical project of building a new (autocephalous) church in Ukraine and the involvement of other states and local Orthodox churches in that matter was just the most visible of a series of crises and upheavals within different countries in which Orthodoxy has been the dominant and traditional faith. At the moment, both Belarus and Montenegro are facing serious, but potentially transformative, crises.

These two countries are similar to one another in two important respects: In both, Orthodoxy is the traditional faith, and both have been governed by a supreme political figure for nearly three decades. This is where the apparent similarities stop and the differences begin. 

Belarus has been a loyal ally of Russia. Montenegro is a NATO member and a candidate for joining the EU. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why the mainstream media in the West often reports on President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus as the “last dictator of Europe” and the oppressive state apparatus in the country. But little, if anything, can be seen or heard about the Montenegrin leadership, which locals often describe both as autocracy and a mafia-style of rule.

This, of course, should not come as a surprise to anybody who knows something about international politics. Traditionally, the Western centers of economic and political power have preferred to deal with dictatorships or mafia-style systems over functioning democracies—as long as dictators or godfathers are “constructive” and provide “stability,” meaning (to decode the technical language) as long as they obediently follow the economic and political agendas of the hegemon. 

The massive protests in Belarus, and the state violence which came as a response, were triggered by what appears to be the fake results of the recently held presidential elections. The Orthodox Church in Belarus did not have a uniform response. While the church leadership preferred to either stay “neutral” (which, under the circumstances, amounts to silent support) or openly support the government, some bishops and many priests became very vocal in their anti-government position and supported the protests. This is important, as it clearly shows that even in very oppressive and autocratic regimes such as Belarus, a plurality of voices and positions can be found even within such conservative institutions, traditionally loyal to the government.

Lukashenko’s statement that “people are supposed to go to churches to pray” and that “churches are not for politics” is an interesting one. 

In traditional Orthodox contexts, there is very often the idea that church-state relations should be “harmonious” or “symphonic,” mirroring (imagined) medieval prototypes. It is worth remembering, however, that close ties between church and state in the modern period—to the point of a complete absorption of the church by the state (turning it into a “department” of the state, for example)—are much more typical of countries where Protestantism has been the dominant religion than in Orthodox countries. Lukashenko’s statement is interesting insofar as it reveals how power structures, both in the state and in the church, see the role of the church. 

Everytime state power structures are unhappy about the way the church leadership reacts in regard to particular issues, they call the church to stick to the strictly “religious” sphere: attending to prayers and services, not interfering with politics. What is remarkable is that this general attitude, of which Lukashenko’s statement represents the most recent case, is virtually indistinguishable from many “progressive,” pro-Western, pro-EU, or pro-NATO voices across Southern and Eastern European countries, who reject any involvement by the Orthodox Church in politics or in the public sphere. These voices do so under the pretext that there is something inherently retrograde about Orthodoxy, something which is incompatible with “democratic values” (which only repeats a more generally held prejudice, feeding many Western political and academic discourses as well). 

Lukashenko’s remark also points to the opposite situation, also very well known in societies with one dominant religious tradition: Whenever the church supports traditional, national (even nationalistic) narratives or governments, the politicians show their favor to the church and praise it as an important national institution. Is this a paradox? Not really. Power structures will gladly embrace whatever is useful to them to sustain, legitimize, or expand their power, just as they will reject, condemn, and suppress anything that questions or seeks to delegitimize their power. 

The situation in Montenegro is different from the current crisis in Belarus. The turmoil there started last year with the controversial “Law on the Freedom of Religion,” which was perceived as specifically targeting the Orthodox Church in Montenegro and threatening it with the confiscation of church property (for more on this topic, see “Church and State in Montenegro: Between National(istic) and Imperial Policies”). This provoked massive protests that were led by the church and which involved the entire church leadership, its priests, and laypeople. It was reported that even many non-Orthodox and non-Christian citizens of Montenegro joined the protests, to demonstrate against what they perceived to be an injustice and an attempt by the government to discipline the “disloyal” church. The response from the state was harsh (although not as harsh as in Belarus), and the protestors faced physical violence and imprisonment. 

It is against the background of these protests that one should look at the parliamentary elections that took place in Montenegro on August 30, 2020. The massive protests against the new law (interrupted only because of the COVID-19 crisis) turned into a broad anti-government movement, which, for the first time since the breakup of Yugoslavia, challenged the political leadership of the country and its almost absolute hold on power. The church openly called people to vote against the ruling party and its leadership. The result was that the ruling party of President Milo Dukanovic has lost its preeminent position for the first time since 1991. It is very likely that the new government will be formed by opposition parties. What is especially significant is that the anti-government coalition of the opposition parties is made up of both the “pro-church” opposition, with close ties to the leadership of the Orthodox Church in Montenegro, and the “Black on White” coalition led by a young leader who belongs to the Albanian minority community.

The moral of the story: Religion and religious institutions are still, potentially at least, important social and political factors—not always for the better, often for the worse, but sometimes also for the best.

Dr. Davor Džalto is professor in the Department of Eastern Christian Studies at Stockholm School of Theology. His research focuses on the exploration of human freedom and creativity, as metaphysical, political, and aesthetic concepts. His most recent books include Anarchy and the Kingdom of God: From Eschatology to Orthodox Christian Political Theology and Back (forthcoming) and Yugoslavia: Peace, War, and Dissolution (2018, editor).

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

The protests against the re-election of President Lukashenka, which are currently taking place across Belarus, are the most serious challenge that Europe’s so-called last dictator has experienced since assuming office in 1994. They are, however, not the first protests against his leadership and the tactics he and his allies use to keep him in power—similar protests had broken out before, especially after his rigged re-election in 2010, but were violently suppressed and eventually petered out. Back in 2010, the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC) had offered less support to the Lukashenka regime than it had done before, and some members of the clergy and laity had openly endorsed the opposition candidate Vital Rymasheuskii. Given this history, it seems as if there is a positive correlation between the BOC’s support and Lukashenka’s ability to stay in power. Or, to put it differently, the regime is more likely to fall if it is not backed by the country’s largest church with which up to 85% of the population identify.

With this in mind, it was of vital importance for Lukashenka to keep the BOC on his side in the current climate. Metropolitan Pavel, who headed the church between December 2013 and August 2020, however, seemed to be moving in the opposite direction. Let’s look at these developments in chronological order. The church had been calling for prayers for the Belarusian people during the election campaign, but these seem to have been of a rather neutral nature. Things were still going the regime’s way the day after the polls closed and the protests started as both Pavel and the Russian Patriarch Kirill publicly congratulated Lukashenka on his re-election. 

Soon after, however, the Belarusian hierarch started sending mixed signals during a press conference he had called to comment on the political situation. On the one hand, he intimated that those who are protesting were foreign troublemakers or that they were children who do not understand what they are doing and that they might be receiving financial incentives for their actions. On the other hand, however, he also mentioned that he does not judge either side and called on state representatives to find a solution to the current crisis. While these latter statements might seem rather neutral from a democratic point of view, they might already raise eyebrows in a dictatorship like Belarus.

Two days later, on August 14, the metropolitan had apparently abandoned his view that the protestors might be foreign agents and called them, as well as state security officials, members of the Belarusian Church. He also highlighted that it was Lukashenka’s duty to ensure that the rule of law prevailed and that the security officials did not attack innocent bystanders. Metropolitan Pavel thus put pressure on the president to take responsibility for at least some of the events that have taken place in the aftermath of the election and to contribute to a solution of the crisis. After this day, the metropolitan refrained from commenting further on the political situation, but the BOC’s Holy Synod issued a collective statement which is more supportive of the Lukashenka regime than its top hierarch was. 

There were, however, developments which suggest that the BOC continued to move closer to the protestors not rhetorically, but in practice. On August 15, the church’s official website announced that a group of Minsk-based volunteers was providing support (bringing food, medicine, and other essentials) to those who had been injured and/or freed from the Okrestina and Zhodino prisons. On Sunday, August 16, Archbishop Artemii of Grodno attracted considerable attention because he spoke out very clearly against the Lukashenka regime. This was followed by Metropolitan Pavel visiting patients who had been hospitalized as a result of the violence surrounding the protests, and on August 19, a representative of the BOC’s department in charge of prisons paid a visit to the inmates of the notorious Okrestina prison and gave them all a piece of blessed fruit to commemorate the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. 

These developments evidently crossed a red line, as on August 25, Metropolitan Pavel officially asked the Moscow Patriarchate, which has jurisdiction over the BOC, to be relieved of his duties as head of the Belarusian Church. The Moscow Patriarchate duly complied and moved him to a diocese in southern Russia. It also appointed Veniamin, the bishop of Borisov and Marinogor, as Metropolitan Pavel’s successor in Minsk. The reason officially given for this decision was that the Moscow Patriarchate felt it was urgent time for a person who was born in Belarus to lead the BOC. Bishop Veniamin meets this criterion as his place of birth is in Brest oblast, whereas Pavel was born in Karaganda (Kazakhstan) and is a Russian citizen. Since Bishop Veniamin’s elevation to the Minsk See, prayers for the Belarusian people have continued, but Veniamin has been much less outspoken about the political situation than his predecessor. His main message so far has been to intensify prayer and fasting to solicit God’s help in overcoming the current crisis. 

It is noticeable that the change of hierarch in Minsk has made the BOC much more apolitical and arguably more conservative than it was before August 25, which certainly suits Lukashenka. Given the time of Metropolitan Pavel’s resignation, it is unlikely that he tendered it voluntarily. Serving as head of the BOC is prestigious, and in a time of political uncertainly an experienced leader is of benefit to any church. It is also unlikely that the Moscow Patriarchate actively encouraged Pavel to leave for Russia. This is so because the Russian hierarchy repeatedly thanked him for his service and found him another leadership post. All this suggests that it was Lukashenka who initiated this move and that he was able to impose his will on the Orthodox Church.

Katja Richters is an independent researcher who earned her Ph.D. on church-state relations in the former Soviet Union from the UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies in London. Richters is author of The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia. Her recent work focuses on the Orthodox churches in contemporary Japan and the Philippines.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

Among the protesters on the streets in Belarus there are probably many Orthodox Christians, although few make themselves visible as such. President Lukashenko’s rather aggressive call for the churches to avoid political interference can be read as a sign of the growing importance of the churches’ voice, but also of an increasingly threatening level of confrontation. Earlier on, the Orthodox church appeared to be a pillar of public order the regime could count on. Belarusian Orthodoxy is closely linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 2003, there has been a concordat between the Orthodox Church and the Belarusian state, which guaranteed the legal status of the church and underlined the need for church-state cooperation in areas of social welfare and culture, to the benefit of Belarusian society. It is worth noting that the society in this comparatively brief text remains a completely passive entity, and any allusions to something as a civil society with private initiatives or NGOs remain distant.

Against this background, the Orthodox Church in Belarus has apparently been badly prepared to meet the protests and respond adequately. First reactions from the hierarchs after the election had been as always, with immediate and quasi-automatic congratulation addresses to President Lukashenko from both Metropolitan Pavel and Russian Patriarch Cyril. When protests took larger scale, there came an intentionally tranquilizing admonition from the bishop’s synod to refrain from violence and to enter into dialogue. With its expressive impartiality and even partial adoption of the regime’s rhetoric, such a message under the circumstances could at best be regarded as well-intended but meaningless. It therefore caused major disappointment among the believers. The only exception within the ranks of the hierarchy was Archbishop Artemii of Grodno and Volkovysk, who in his public sermons vigorously condemned the brutality of the regime and called for immediate release of the prisoners. 

That might have seemed as an exception confirming the rule, but actually even among the hierarchs the rule itself has become uncertain. Metropolitan Pavel later reluctantly joined the protests and took part in public prayers for the imprisoned, only to be released from office in Moscow shortly afterwards. His successor, Metropolitan Veniamin of Minsk, brings with him the personal advantage of being an ethnic Belarusian, but he is also known as a clear opponent to granting autocephaly (independence) to the Belarusian Orthodox Church. He is also known as a “non-political” person, from whom we would not expect seemingly dangerous calls for public resistance. 

It needs to be seen whether such an attitude proves sufficient. The public prayers Pavel had joined took place on grassroots initiatives, which mainly came from parishioners and ordinary priests. Orthodox parish priests were among the first to express open protest to the faked election results and the brutality against the protestors that followed. It was also the parish priests who organized help for the imprisoned in Minsk and other cities, calling for public prayers and processions in support of the protest. 

However, a closer look reveals the inner-conflict in which many among the priesthood find themselves. Protests by priests on social media were not shared by many, even after the timely blockade of the internet had been reversed. Readers also questioned whether protest by priests would threaten public order—in a word, whether the protests were too “political” for clerics. Furthermore, there were also many examples of priests and monks openly supporting the regime and condemning the activities of their fellow clergy. A repeated argument with this faction is again that priests are not supposed to deal with politics and that those who supported the protestors would violate the rules of their clerical estate. Even a well-known personality like priest Aliaksandr Shramko, who had been banned from church service due to his public critique on Moscow Patriarch Cyril two years before, expressed his—and generally the church’s—clear support for the protestors in word and deed, but at the same time he felt urged to emphasize that the church does not intend to deal with political business: At the given moment, however, it needs to raise its prophetic voice as testimony for the truth. 

Generally, there is an obvious uncertainty among many protestors about what priests and Orthodox believers are allowed to do in times of political unrest. Where does prophecy end and turn into mere political business? This problem is not exclusively Belarusian. The statements of the Belarusian clerics, bishops, and priests alike betray a certain similarity with the open letter issued in February 2020 by some Russian priests in protest against excessively harsh court sentences for a number of protestors in Moscow. Notably, the 200 signatories call for an adequate and measured application of given laws, as the opposite would undermine trust in the legal system and thus threaten public order. They do not question this legal system as such or ask for any revision. In all such statements, one finds the invocation of biblical sentences but hardly any reference to more abstract concepts such as human rights, although the violation of the latter is obvious in all the cases addressed. 

The issue of church-state relations overlays broader debates on political theology in the Orthodox world. Whereas in large parts of Orthodox Christianity recent years have seen intense discussion about what might be called an “Orthodox political theology,” such attempts have always met extreme skepticism within Russian Orthodoxy. “Political Orthodoxy” within the Russian, or perhaps more generally in the post-Soviet sphere, is established as a rather negative term, usually applied first and foremost to fundamentalists and right-wing radicals. In a slightly broader sense, since the Ukrainian crisis, the term has acquired the meaning of faith distorted and blinded by alien ideological causes such as nationalism and liberalism. Such distorted faith would no longer be a means to peace and conflict de-escalation, as Orthodoxy in particular was supposed to be. Rather, it would be a fire accelerator driving people into violence and ultimately war. The Belarusian clerics are also shaped by this discourse, which explains why they are sometimes eager to avoid any corresponding suspicion.

The assessment of a suitable position of Orthodox theology towards politics and political ideologies is part of a general movement in Orthodoxy to come to a coherent social concept, which would form both an appropriate response to modern developments and serve as a match to Roman Catholic and Protestant forerunners. The Russian Orthodox Church offered a pioneering document in 2000, The Basis of the Social Concept, followed in 2008 by a document clarifying its attitude towards “dignity, freedom and human rights.” The documents have attracted criticism and provoked discussion with their inherent emphasis on stability and public morality, uniform vision of society, and ambivalent relation to human rights. In recent years, other social documents within the Orthodox world appeared as alternatives, such as those published in connection with the Pan-Orthodox Council on Crete in 2016 or the recent document by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. These documents have different accents—with unconditional support for human rights, approval of freedom as not only a spiritual but also a civil and political category, and positive attitudes toward civil society.

For members of the Russian Orthodox church, both clerics and laypeople, the Basis of the Social Concept can be regarded as having widely shaped the discourse on political Orthodoxy since 2000. Its chapters on church and politics propagate far-reaching loyalty to the state and only allow resistance in the case of extreme contradiction between state action and church tradition. The possibilities for independent initiatives and the emergence of NGOs, the defense of abstract concepts like human rights that might on occasion go beyond the limits of Orthodox tradition, or active, even moderate, participation in political processes are rather limited. In this sense, there is no real tension between the Basis of the Social Concept and the reality of Belarus in recent decades, as it was shaped, among others factors, by the 2003 concordat.

The concept therefore offers little theoretical assistance to priests and believers like those in Belarus, who are faced with a dilemma. The dilemma is that a sentence like “The church does not deal with politics” in itself can be a political statement, which would allow for a variety of interpretations. The interpretation of Father Aleksandr Shramko is certainly different from that of President Lukashenko. The sentence can mean a conscious distance from political processes in general, resulting in meaningless impartiality. Spoken into the sphere of a political conflict, it can mean a lot of further things: The question is, in short, whether it addresses the Orthodox as believers on the path to salvation or as citizens of a political entity and members of society. Usually it is both and much more, and that makes it difficult to avoid the following step of specification. Human rights, in the end, are also “beyond politics.” In the current social concepts of the Russian church, there is little answer to many Orthodox inner-conflicts. In a sense, the Orthodox in Belarus are now facing the same dilemmas as the Orthodox in Russia and elsewhere. Optimism might call it a challenge.

Alfons Bruening is senior lecturer in Eastern Christianity at the Institute for Eastern Christian Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He also holds the Orthodoxy and Peace Studies in Europe Chair by special appointment at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

Even before the eruption of the crisis following the August 2020 presidential elections with the mass protests against the long-time President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, it was no secret that Belarus was perhaps the strongest ally of post-Soviet Russia and Putin’s regime. The same holds true for the predominant Orthodox churches in both countries, given that the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC) is an exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate. This particular situation lies at the very core of the discussion about the role of Orthodoxy in the above protests. Does the Orthodox Church have the potential or the interest to resist political regimes, especially totalitarian and authoritarian ones like the Lukashenko regime? Is the Orthodox Church a factor that can foster a concomitant democratization process?

No doubt, these are complex questions to answer here thoroughly. In fact, they have bothered numerous scholars and policymakers in post-communist times, considering Samuel P. Huntington’s notorious geopolitical theory about the “clash of civilizations,” in which the democratization chances in predominantly Orthodox societies were depicted rather unfavorably. All this relates to the role of religions in fostering or inhibiting specific political developments. If we compare the relations of the various Christian churches to political power across time, we can locate significant differences. In general, Roman Catholicism and mainstream Protestant churches are considered as significant sources of multiple resistance towards political regimes. On the contrary, Orthodox churches as institutions are not commonly regarded as potential factors that would resist political power. 

Recent history with regard to communism seems to validate this assumption. For example, engagement by the Catholic Church in Poland and the Evangelical Church in the German Democratic Republic has been considered as having led to the collapse of the respective communist regimes. However, the official Russian Orthodox Church has never been considered as such a factor in the Soviet Union. This difference mostly relates to the fact that Western Christian churches historically showed a greater autonomy from state control, while Eastern Orthodox churches were more prone to support and legitimize political power. In many cases, this resulted in their instrumentalization for various goals, for which they also paid a high price. 

This close church-state relationship owes much to the tradition of Byzantine symphonia and its transformations across time. Thus, in the Balkans under the Ottomans there were various Orthodox legitimations of this foreign rule in an attempt to prevent any revolt against it. Furthermore, the term “Sergianism” is notorious as reflecting the voluntary submission of the Russian Orthodox Church to the atheist regime of the early Soviet Union. To avoid any misunderstanding, here we are talking about general attitudes observed in Orthodox cultures at the institutional level. However, there were church hierarchs, clerics, monks, and lay actors who individually objected to political power for various reasons and sometimes successfully, even if at a high cost. Hence, there is often a gap between the church hierarchy and the ordinary Orthodox believers, even if the church tries to maintain a “popular profile.”

All this can be observed in the present crisis, when the BOC’s official stance was clearly supportive of the political status quo. It called for peace and non-violence, but refrained to explicitly criticize the Lukashenko regime, which, in turn, praised its submissiveness to state interests and its lack of political intervention. Interestingly enough, the Moscow Patriarchate under Patriarch Kirill also supported the Lukashenko regime. Its move to replace the Russian-born Metropolitan Pavel with the Belarusian-born Veniamin as head of the BOC in late August probably aimed at increasing the church’s popularity among the Belarusian Orthodox believers due to their mounting critique of the official church. 

On the contrary, the Catholic Church in Belarus under Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, although much smaller in size than the BOC, was far more critical of the political injustice and showed far greater solidarity with the protesting people. It also played a cardinal role in organizing “ecumenical protests” of various churches and denominations including Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants in Minsk and in other cities, which were met with disapproval by the BOC.

These differences cannot be understood without looking at the long historical background of Orthodox and Western Christian churches in their attitudes towards state authority and especially in their potential to resist an oppressive regime and support democratization. In general, the Orthodox churches show more loyalty to the state and try to preserve its stability, while protests are often attributed to external enemies within a conspiracy scenario. In this context, the Orthodox churches are usually ready to pass over in silence state violations of basic human rights, which may cause heated reactions on the part of their adherents at the grassroots level. 

Truth be told, the traditional Orthodox position of basically and sometimes unconditionally supporting state authority seems to have changed in recent decades. In the Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church (2000), the possibility of peaceful church resistance to specific political decisions is in theory allowed. In another context, this was the case with the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014, but this was most probably due to the greater diversity within Ukrainian Orthodoxy, a significant part of which was decisively against the Moscow Patriarchate. Finally, in the 2020 document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, civil disobedience or even rebellion are mentioned as potential reactions to political decisions jeopardizing Orthodox Christian principles. 

The remaining question is how this social ethos can be translated into concrete action. In any event, all this is again far away from the Western Christian tradition of resisting political power and preserving church autonomy. This is also evident by comparing the stance of the Catholic Church in Belarus in 2020 with that of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine in 2014 during the respective protests. Without idealizing Western Christianity, which has its own negative share in political developments across history (the case of “clerical fascism,” for example), Orthodox churches have generally been more passive in their societal engagement and have put more emphasis on forms of “spiritual resistance” and on the “inner freedom” of the church and the believers, which can never surrender to political control. No doubt, these are valuable tools in the current secularized environment, and the Orthodox always like to remind other Christians of this often-neglected potential. However, ordinary Orthodox believers seem to demand at the same time a more active societal engagement of their church on numerous levels including the condemnation of political fraud, violence, and injustice, as in the Belarus case. This is a challenge that Orthodox churches will have to address more persuasively in the future, especially in order to avoid rendering the gap between the church leadership and the faithful people even bigger.

Vasilios N. Makrides is professor of religious studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Erfurt, Germany. His expertise is in Orthodox Christianity.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

The crisis overwhelming Belarus after the August 2020 presidential elections is no longer of political but of humanitarian character, and it has already impacted all segments of the Belarusian population. Even the churches, which tried to stay away from politics over years, were affected by the situation of total deprivation of fundamental civil rights by the state power machine.

The Catholic Church, as well as some individuals of the Orthodox Church’s clergy and laity, actively supported the protesters, calling for truth and non-violence and providing help for victims. The Orthodox Bishop of Grodna Artemij (Kischenko) has condemned the actions of the ruling regime in precise and harsh words: “We say that laws are being violated. Our people have turned into animals and torment their own brothers […] We say: Stop! You are acting against the Gospel! You have raised your hand against Christ, and you will not be forgiven! And your cause will not last!” But the church authorities distanced themselves from his statement and claimed to consider it as his private opinion. 

The official position of the church was declared in an ambivalent address of the Belarusian Synod. On the one hand it adapts Lukashenko’s main thesis, accusing protesters of devastating the country by using church jargon: “And God forbid that sinful passions enslave us and turn us into a cruel and blind crowd that is ready to destroy our father house.” On the other hand, the church timidly asks for (not demand as prophets did!) justice: “We believe and hope that the government, which is rightfully called upon to respect and protect its people, will stop the violence, hear the voices of the offended and innocent victims of confrontation, and that those who have shown brutality and cruelty would be legally charged and condemned.”

The church refuses to call things by their proper names once again and considers this position as peaceful and non-partisan. Such blanket and intentionally blurred statements make it totally impossible to figure out whom the church addresses when she calls for repentance and reconciliation. By doing so, the church takes a very comfortable position, one that allows it to always take the side of the winner at the end. So, for example, Patriarchal Exarch of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, Bishop Veniamin (Tupeko), who was newly appointed on August 25, described the situation in Belarus: “The last mournful events in our Fatherland result from the fact that our hearts bowed in an unkind direction and the light of Christ could not shine in this dark time when the sin of iniquity has manifested.”

What does church doctrine on the Orthodox social concept say about human rights? Despite the considerable amounts of church documents proclaiming respect for human dignity, the priests are not very enthusiastic about referring to them in their pastoral work. Most of the advice that priests give regarding life situations are reduced to calls for prayer and humility—humility towards circumstances, bosses, etc. They also teach isolation from the outside world and how to pray—“the hardest work, but the most efficient,” according to Bishop Veniamin. Of course, this is an empty statement, because it is absolutely impossible to verify the results of such work in the actual situation in Belarus. Prayer—that is just what Alexander Lukashenko prescribed the churches in his speech in Grodna.

One priest of the Belarus Orthodox Church ironically described on Facebook three noble maxims of a proper priest in current situation: I see nothing, I hear nothing, and I do not say anything to anyone. This institution turned out to be incapable of performing the tasks that it had entrusted to itself. Over the past 20 years, the church concluded several cooperation agreements with governmental authorities, including the penitentiary system, but in this critical moment she was incapable of mediation. The reason might be the unsubstantial character of all these agreements, which were just a piece of paper without any underlying intention for implementation. Moreover, despite her presence in all of the security forces, the Orthodox Church overlooked the fact that in recent years Lukashenko’s regime has trained at least several hundred special force fighters capable of the disgusting torture acts. Merely one Belarusian priest, Aleh Shulhin, who pastored these units in the past, had the courage to condemn them publicly, probably because he now lives in the United States. “Guys, what are you doing now? Be worthy soldiers of Christ, and do not be the executors of the orders of the one who wants to stay in power, trampling his own and your conscience, the laws of the state and the rights of citizens!”

The Orthodox Church claimed to be an important actor in public life, but she pulled back and allegedly plunged into prayer as the country was rocked by the protests. The official Orthodox Church turned out to be paralyzed by the fear of losing her status, the privileges granted to her by the state, or even just a prestigious place of work for some of her representatives. So, she refused to hear the appeals of her believers for support and a clear position. This model of church-state relations seems to be borrowed from top brass of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow.

Patriarch Kirill, head of the Moscow Patriarchate, was one of the first to congratulate Lukashenko on his “election victory,” ignoring the fact that this proclaimed victory caused unprecedented mass protests in the country. The patriarch remained unimpressed by the strikes and a wave of dismissals. He just declared his concern about the situation of public confrontation in Belarus. On August 30, in his birthday greetings, Patriarch Kirill praised Lukashenko for his “support of socially significant initiatives of the Orthodox Church” and expressed “hopes for the development of the church’s cooperation with state authorities.” The patriarch prefers neither to see nor to hear hundreds of thousands of people on the streets and the exclamations of Orthodox believers calling for truth, respect, and non-violence. Obviously, he is over his flock and speaks the language of the political establishment familiar to him. 

In the face of the Belarusian humanitarian crisis, the majority of Orthodox clergy is choosing silent prayer, meaning non-involvement and self-preservation. In such a way, they are respectively betraying their Christian confession, refusing to come out as real peacemakers and witnesses of truth. This might result in the further loss of the Orthodox Church’s moral authority in the Belarusian society for the foreseeable future.

Alena Alshanskaya is a postdoc research fellow at the Department of East European History at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Her research focuses on the history, legal culture, and contemporary politics of the Russian Orthodox Church in relation to Belarus and the European Union. She is the author of Der Europa-Diskurs der Russischen Orthodoxen Kirche (1996–2011).

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

The protests in Belarus are remarkable in several respects. Their duration, social breadth, creativity, female activity, and non-violence arouse international admiration, but also deep concern. Among others, the role of the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC) deserves special attention as it reveals characteristic patterns of the social position of Orthodoxy in post-Soviet states.

The Belarusian Orthodox Church is part of the Moscow Patriarchate and thus subject to the same ecclesial and social-ethical concepts. With regard to sociopolitical protest, this means a separation of church and state with a fundamental church loyalty to current government leaders, ambivalent acceptance of democracy and human rights, and the refusal of political protests as potentially dangerous to state stability and unity. Whenever there have been anti-government protests in the past 30 years, Russian and Belarusian churches have always stood firmly on the side of the government. Protests have been criticized as un-Christian, and external foreign actors have been accused of undermining the social consensus. State violence and government-sponsored violations of civil and political rights usually have been rationalized or ignored.

During the last decades, in Russia and Ukraine, and now in Belarus, the emphatically neutral attitude of church leadership in the situation of conflict has led to growing dissent among the faithful. Why is the church silent on obvious fraud, violence, and repression by the state? Why does it hide behind general phrases that do not hold anyone responsible? Why does it actively distance itself from statements of its own priests, bishops, and believers who, out of a Christian motivation, publicly condemn injustice? Why does it not support other communities that are oppressed by the state?

Similar to Ukraine, a central argument of the leadership to stay neutral was that the faithful are on both sides of the conflict. Accordingly, the leadership of the BOC underlines that “the church is always with the people” (Церковь всегда с народом), which means: with all parts of the people, including those who do wrong. 

From this statement, a certain self-image of the church can be observed. According to this self-understanding, “the people” is on one side, and the church as a pastoral, accompanying institution on the other. In this self-understanding, the church can only speak into the conscience of each individual, and injustice can only be evaluated in the context of individual sin. However, this concept has two momentous gaps: the faithful, who are both “the people” and “the church,” and structures of injustice that go beyond individual sinfulness. 

The equation of the church with its leadership is an established hubris of church leadership worldwide, but also a misjudgment by (scientific) observers. The religious dimension of the protests in Belarus impressively shows how people with and because of their religious identity as Orthodox believers—as church—support the protests against electoral fraud and violence because they are directly affected by these social grievances. It is not a fictitious people apart from the church, which feels somehow hit. It is the church itself through its faithful, who are betrayed, tortured by the police, falsely accused, or pressured at work. Otherwise, one would have to expect a schizophrenic split between the church identity and the social identity of the faithful, connected at most in prayer. The formulation “the church is with the people” is treacherous in this respect, because it reveals this distance of the church leadership from the people, not least from its own believers.

The second void in the statements of the church leadership is the awareness of structural injustice. The call “to all” to end violence is meant to apply to politicians, police, special forces, as well as to the people who protest. As much as this makes sense as a pastoral examination of conscience for each individual believer (from the president to the farmer), it fails to recognize that state violence is to be judged with different measures than individual violence. State injustice, violence, and oppression have completely different effects on the individual people of the state and are subject to a different ethical evaluation than the wrongdoing of an individual sinner. The claim to be “with the people” therefore means that the church leadership misjudges these structural dimensions of injustice and thus also legitimizes them ethically.

Historically, the formula “the church is with the people” has proven its worth as a survival strategy learned under Soviet repression. It ensured the church leadership a living space, through the generosity granted by the state, to support the representatives of the people. Under the conditions of democratic civil societies, however, this formula loses its magic. The “people” is a plurality of persons, identities, and structures, which require a differentiated approach and to which the church must always relate in a new and differentiated way. Moreover, this plurality is nothing external, but is the church itself. The clear words of the archbishop of Grodno are “people” and “church,” as well as the faithful who, without waiting for the blessing of the church leadership, take part in ecumenical prayer for peace; or the priests who, because of their Orthodox faith, stand up against electoral fraud or offer help to tortured people in front of the prisons. Yet, the prison staff torturing people and the police commander giving the order to shoot at demonstrators may be also “the people” and even “the church.” Who is the church with? 

The protests in Belarus pose once again a challenge to post-Soviet Orthodoxy to rethink its relationship to those in power and to a diverse society, in short: to develop theological social ethics. The formula “the church is with the people” disguises the fact that “the church” and “the people” do not exist in this monolithic sense. The church leadership runs the risk of irretrievably finding itself at the side of dictators if it nevertheless sticks to this formula. Meanwhile, the people may experience that they do not need the leadership to be the church.

Regina Elsner is a Catholic theologian and postdoc research fellow at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on post-Soviet Orthodoxy and the dynamics of socioethical discourse in Eastern European Orthodox churches.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

The protests in Belarus taking place in the aftermath of the presidential election have taken a dark turn with reports of brutality and torture used by riot police. Religious leaders are playing an important role in responding to the civil unrest. While some faith leaders are demonstrating their public solidarity with the protestors, there is immense pressure on the Belarusian Orthodox Church (BOC, an exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate) to advocate for the protection of fundamental human rights in the midst of a series of political injustices.

It is tempting to draw a parallel between the role of the Orthodox Church in the Belarus crisis and the Ukrainian Maidan (Revolution of Dignity) originating in 2013, but there are significant differences. Orthodox Ukrainians initiated a movement for an autocephalous (independent) church, completely free from Russian control, as early as 1917. The autocephalous movement returned to Ukraine at the end of the Soviet period and played an important role in expressing public support for Ukrainian sovereignty. Clergy and laity of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and autocephalist churches demonstrated their solidarity with the protestors at the height of the Maidan. Russia’s response to the Maidan—the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas—hastened the creation of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that has the support of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and recognition from two of the world’s Orthodox churches.

The BOC has not followed the path of church independence pursued by Ukrainians. It is helpful to compare the responses of the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) to political movements in Belarus and Ukraine to illuminate the differences and similarities between the two situations. 

In 1990, the MP elevated the canonical (legal) statute of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine from an exarchate to a church with broad autonomy in its self-governance. The MP initiated this change to stop the migration of clergy and parishes from the MP to the resurgent autocephalous movement that had returned in 1989, and also to give the appearance of non-interference from Moscow. 

The BOC continues to be an exarchate of the MP. On August 25, the BOC’s leader, Metropolitan Paul, tendered his resignation. The MP elected and appointed Bishop Veniamin, a native of Belarus, as the new head of the BOC. This appointment is strategic, similar to the MP’s actions taken in 1966. At that time, the MP appointed Filaret (Denysenko), a native of Ukraine, as the new metropolitan of Kyiv. Filaret’s appointment occurred as the MP attempted to assert control over former Greek Catholics in West Ukraine, who were forced to become Orthodox during the Council of L’viv in 1946 orchestrated by Stalin and his henchmen. The MP appointed Filaret to grant the appearance that Ukrainians were governing their own church. The MP’s appointment of Bishop Veniamin lends the appearance of Russian non-interference in BOC affairs, as it did with the appointment of Filaret in 1966 and the granting of autonomy to his church. 

These moves represent the MP’s attempt to keep the large Belarusian and Ukrainian contingents within the official fold of the church. Church spokespeople rationalize such moves as preserving the multinational character of the church and holding nationalism and xenophobia at bay. It is clear, however, that politics are also involved, to retain Belarus and Ukraine as Russian outposts in Eastern Europe. It is no secret that Russia uses its branches in the Orthodox churches in Belarus and Ukraine as fifth columns to maintain the unity of the so-called Russkii Mir (Russian world). 

Two options are available to both the MP and the newly elected Bishop Veniamin. They can sustain the status quo by issuing statements that call for peace and promote nonviolence without explicit criticism of Lukashenko. There is a strong chance that state force will restore order, and minimal disruption to the life of the church will be the immediate reward. 

The second choice is more risky. Church leaders can demonstrate their solidarity with the protestors by defending their human rights and implicating Lukashenko. While the apparatuses of state and church would certainly penalize them for this course, they could gain the trust of the people.

The MP’s “Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights” calls for defending human rights when there is “concern for a just and economic and social order of society.” The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s recent social ethics teaching, For the Life of the World, states that the Orthodox Church can “lend its voice to the call to protect and advance human rights everywhere,” including violations of people’s civil rights and justice. A decision to defend the civil rights of protestors would therefore be anchored in the teaching tradition of the Orthodox Church. 

The uncertain future outcome of standing with the people is a likely source of fear for the church. The MP miscalculated Ukrainian resistance to Russian domination and lost the loyalty of at least half of Ukraine’s Orthodox believers in the process. A second miscalculation in Belarus seems unlikely, especially in the absence of a strong movement for church independence. 

The great risk to church leaders responsible for Belarus, however, is to misunderstand the significance of trust by the people. The protestors have already demonstrated their resilience in the face of brutal state force. A movement for an autocephalous BOC seems impossible, but the Ukrainian case shows that there are now multiple models of autocephaly in the Orthodox world. If national statehood and independence symbolized Orthodox autocephaly in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the OCU shows that liberation from an aggressive foreign tyrant is a legitimate reason for autocephaly in the twenty-first century. 

The strategy of sustaining the status quo at all costs, including defending human rights, might be successful for Belarusian Orthodox Church and state officials in the short term. Losing the trust of the public could cost them dearly in the long run. Bishop Veniamin instructed the people to pray and fast for divine assistance in his inaugural appeal. It is likely that church leaders will need to go beyond spiritual appeals and take stronger action to help resolve this crisis.

Nicholas Denysenko serves as Emil and Elfriede Jochum Professor and Chair at Valparaiso University. Denysenko is a graduate of the University of Minnesota (B.S. in Business, 1994), St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (M.Div., 2000), and The Catholic University of America (Ph.D., 2008). His most recent books are The People’s Faith: The Liturgy of the Faithful in Orthodoxy (2018) and The Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A Century of Separation (2018).

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

The protests and discontent of Belarusians over the falsification of the results of the presidential election have seriously stirred up Eastern Europe.

Belarus—which was considered a reserve of the Soviets and the Soviet Union, where the chief virtues were stability and the absence of sudden movements—today does not disappear from the pages of the world press. In this article, we will examine the religious dimension of the protest, the positions of various churches, and the interfaith situation in Belarus.

​Religious Landscape in Belarus

The confessional background of Belarus differs from that of Ukraine, although they have some similar and related features. First, our neighbors in Belarus are more atheistic than we are in Ukraine. Belarus has a strong nostalgia for the USSR, and this is reflected in the religious sector. The process of de-secularization and spiritual rebirth in the 1990s was developing much slower and reached a lesser scale than in Ukraine, Russia, or Moldova. From the few opinion polls that are rarely conducted in Belarus, we have learnt that about 60% of citizens consider themselves believers. At the same time, the share of those who belong to one of the faiths is almost 95%. In other words, some people do not believe in God but consider themselves to belong to one of the churches. This means that confessional affiliation indicates not so much spirituality or religiosity as cultural and/or political identity.

The main religious groups in Belarus are Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and Baptists. According to the number of registered communities, the interface balance is as follows: Orthodox–1567 (49%); Pentecostals–512 (16%); Roman Catholics–479 (15%); Baptists–286 (9%); Adventists–73 (2%); and Charismatics–55 (2%). There are also other religious minorities, including old believers, Greek Catholics, Lutherans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, and Sunni Muslims. 

According to sociological surveys, most recently conducted in 2010 to 2012, Orthodox affiants made up 81 to 83% of the population and Catholic affiants 10 to 12%, with other religions ranging from 1.5 to 6%. As we can see, the number of Orthodox people in the opinion poll exceeds their share in the religious infrastructure. The proportion of Catholics is more or less the same. At the same time, the Protestant sector is almost invisible in social surveys, although in total it covers nearly a third of all registered religious communities in Belarus. Therefore, we can conclude that Catholics are more conscientious believers, and their confessional identity reflects religious behavior. Orthodox people do not identify themselves by belonging to the Belarusian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (BOC-MP) but rather indicate a cultural aspect, belonging to the East Slavic group of Orthodox peoples. This represents a kind of “cultural Orthodoxy” inherent in the post-Soviet space. 

In addition to religious diversity, there are also trends toward regional peculiarities. For example, the degree of religious infrastructure in the eastern Mogilyov and Gomel regions is lower than the western ones, Brest and Grodno. This situation is similar to that in Ukraine, where the industrial East is much more secular than the agricultural West. Besides, Belarus itself is a very urbanized country, which also partly explains the lower level of religiosity. The western part of modern Belarus—which is Grodno, most of the Brest, north of Minsk, and west of Vitebsk regions—was part of the second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before WWII. These aspects also affected the religious composition of the population and the number of parishes.

​Religious Responses to the Protests

Belarusian Catholics have adopted the most active and entirely consistent position. A week before the election, they announced the campaign “A Catholic Never Frames Up.” After the election, when the first clashes took place, society was addressed by chairman of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus, Archbishop-Metropolitan Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz. In particular, he called for negotiations and said: “Let your hands, created for peaceful labor and fraternal greetings, not raise weapons or stones.”

Bishop of Vitebsk Oleg Butkevich spoke much more openly. He said: “These regular elections caused a crisis in our society, which led to an aggravation of the election campaign and yet to an incorrect vote count… Systems based on blood have never been strong in history, and justice has always returned what had been done to those who violated all human (not to mention God’s) norms!” Also, Catholic priests in the city of Zhodino took to the streets along with the protesters.

The position of the Orthodox Church was different. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Metropolitan Pavel, head of the BOC-MP, “cordially congratulated” Lukashenka on his election victory on August 10. Orthodox Belarusians were outraged by the behavior of their church leadership. Part of the clergy and faithful, as well as Catholics, made an initiative group against fraud. The priest that was providing pastoral guidance to riot police appealed to them not to fulfill criminal orders.

On August 13, the first multi-confessional procession was held. Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants attended. The first two groups carried icons, and the last two carried Bibles.

The BOC-MP publicly disavowed the procession, causing outrage of its faithful, who wrote an open letter to Metropolitan Pavel. The next day, he joined them and also called on the authorities to do everything possible to stop the bloodshed. 

​An Outside Perspective

The confessional situation in Belarus is somewhat similar to Ukraine, with a secularized East and more religious West. Belarus has its own Galicia in the form of the Grodno region, where the majority of people are Catholics. There are also regions with a large proportion of Protestants. Ukraine and Belarus were together in the Orthodox Metropolia of Kyiv, and both accepted the Union of Brest. And the emergence of Stundists occurred in the Ukrainian-Belarusian border of Volyn and Polesia.

There are important differences, though. For example, Ukraine has the experience of democracy, a lively native language, a large population of those who do not miss the Soviet Union, and a socially active Greek Catholic Church, as well as influential Orthodox churches. Ukraine has behind it two big revolutions and a lot of smaller “maidans,” and we also, unfortunately, have the annexation of territories and a war with a neighboring nuclear power.

Belarusians are only at the beginning of their long and thorny path. What is happening now in the religious sphere is reminiscent of “The Winter That Changed Us,” the Euromaidan Protests. As Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun aptly notes: Belarusians have outgrown their own churches. That is why they get angry when the hierarchs do not meet their expectations, but they are pleased when they receive support. Hence, they organize interfaith solidarity processions from below, without waiting for a blessing from above. They are only at the beginning and have to go their own way. They are to learn it the hard way.

Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from an article of the same title originally published by the Religious Information Service of Ukraine on August 18, 2020.

Dmytro Horyevoy is a religious journalist and project manager at the Ukrainian Catholic University. He contributes to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Current Time, and Belsat TV. Horyevoy is also co-founder and chief editor of Cerkvarium, a religious website, and director of the Religious Security Centre, a Ukrainian NGO. 

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

In Russia, there is a widely spread superstition that August brings national-scale catastrophes. The mass protests in Belarus against Alyaksandr Lukashenka are seen as such a catastrophe for the regime of Vladimir Putin. Even though Mr. Lukashenka struggled to preserve some independence for his country from Russia, Belarus under his rule represented the model of a Neo-Soviet colony that Russia has tried to impose on its neighbors since Putin’s presidency began. Belarus under Mr. Lukashenka preserved many symbols and most of the ethos of the Soviet era.

The key feature of the Soviet ethos is paternalism, which means that the regime offers its subjects basic social welfare in exchange for complete obedience. The Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014 (also known as the Maidan), for example, was a revolt against this sort of paternalism. What is going on now in Belarus looks more like a revolution that started within the paternalistic framework. There are good signs, however, that eventually the Belarusian revolution will turn against paternalism as such.

This is not going to be easy. For the many years that he has been in power (since 1994), Mr. Lukashenka offered the Belarusians a social contract: their complete obedience in exchange for paternalistic basic welfare and an illusion of stability. Now this social contract is broken. Most Belarusians believe that it was Lukashenka who broke it by the way he treated them in the last days. Several Belarusians were killed by the regime and thousands tortured with unprecedented cruelty. Lukashenka, in his turn, believes that the Belarusians broke the contract by not obediently accepting the results of the elections, which he does not even pretend to present as fair.

It seems, however, that the paternalistic contract was broken earlier. One of Lukashenka’s serious mistakes that made many Belarusians think he was unable to fulfill the contract was his demonstrative ignorance of COVID-19. He publicly mocked those who took the pandemic seriously and forced people into the situations wherein they could easily contract the coronavirus. For example, on May 9, he gathered crowds for the Victory Parade in Minsk. Even Mr. Putin decided not to have such a parade in Moscow and was irritated by Mr. Lukashenka’s initiative. In the meantime, the health system in Belarus was suffocated by the high numbers of COVID-19 patients, and the state did not seem to care. People had to take care of themselves and the suffering coronavirus patients—pretty much outside the social contract they believed they had with Lukashenka. It seems that COVID-19, or rather ignoring it, has challenged dictators on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is very tempting to compare the Belarusian protests with the Ukrainian Maidan. Belarusians do not like such comparisons—for various reasons. Many have been brainwashed by the official Russian and Belarusian propagandas, which concurred in condemning the Maidan. Others do not like to stay in the shadow of the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. There are indeed many similarities and dissimilarities between the two revolutions, which it is now not a good time to analyze. There is, however, a parallel, which is worthy exploring: between the attitudes of the churches.

The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2014 and now made the same mistake of publicly supporting the unpopular dictators. Such support stems from the policy of Patriarch Kirill, which he always had even before he became the Patriarch, to focus on political elites and ignore masses. This policy repaid him with some popularity among those in power but created a chasm between him and the ordinary flocks, first in Ukraine and now in Belarus. The same chasm between the lay and hierarchy is widening in Russia.

Following in the steps of the Patriarch, the church leadership in Belarus demonstrated the same blindness to the masses’ demands. For example, the statement by the synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate on August 15 only vaguely condemned violence, without identifying the perpetrators, and, more importantly, kept complete silence on the reasons of the mass unrest. Only a couple of hierarchical voices were raised against the injustice of Lukashenka’s regime, with the loudest and most eloquent one by the Archbishop of Grodno and Volkovysk Artemy. Much more outspoken appears to be the Catholic Church in Belarus. Its Metropolitan Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, together with other Catholic bishops, has clearly identified and condemned the perpetrators of violence and injustice. Catholic hierarchs openly supported the people who rose against the regime. The standpoint of the Catholic Church in Belarus is very similar to the standpoint of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine in 2014.

There is another similarity between Ukraine and Belarus that I cannot skip: the ecumenical character of the protests. Like the Maidan in Ukraine was an ecumenical event, where people of different confessions and even religions stood next to each other and prayed together, so lay people and some clergy from different Christian denominations came together in Belarus in the same religious processions. On August 18, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz led an ecumenical prayer in Minsk, with the participation of representatives from various churches and religious groups, including an Orthodox priest. The Belarusian protests, thus, although they pursue political goals, clearly feature a religious agenda. They are not secular like most political protests in the West. In this, they are similar to the Ukrainian Maidan, which inspired even a specific “Ukrainian public theology.” I hope a “Belarusian public theology” will emerge as a reflection on what is happening in the country now.

​Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on August 20, 2020 by Public Orthodoxy, a publication of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University.

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun is professor of ecclesiology, international relations, and ecumenism at Sankt Ignatius Theological Academy and the Stockholm School of Theology. Ordained in the Orthodox Church, Hovorun previously served as acting director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His main fields of expertise are early Christian traditions, ecclesiology, and public theology.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs