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Of course, war may sometimes be inevitable in the pursuit of justice against evil, or necessary in self-defence against corrupt and aggressive nations. But St Basil the Great would take issue with Patriarch Kirill’s blanket absolution. Far from combatants being granted forgiveness for their sins on account of their sacrifice, he taught that those who kill in war must repent for the blood they have shed. ‘It might be advisable to refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that they are not clean-handed’, he wrote in the fourth century. It remains Canon XIII of the Orthodox Church Fathers.
Kirill’s call to violence with the promise of salvation might sound familiar to some western ears. It has something in common with Islamic clerics who encourage their fellow Muslims to become suicide bombers and slaughter the Kuffar – the non-believer – with the promise of martyrdom that will wash away all their sins for the glory of the Ummah (the Muslim world).
It is this very kind of Jihad that the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ is preaching to his disciples. While Moscow is quite secure under his spiritual leadership, all Rus’ is occupied by the heretics and schismatics of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine – the non-believers. The people of Holy Rus’ would benefit eternally, his logic goes, from the choice to sacrifice themselves in pursuit of the restoration of the Russkii mir (the Russian world).
He has preached on this theme before: Putin’s political objective is a national cleansing or purification, which Kirill might call atonement or purgation. He believes the liberties and moral licentiousness of Ukrainians need to be restrained. The spiritual discipline echoes the political oppression: for him, ethnic cleansing is symbiotic with religious cleansing.
President Putin is a faithful disciple of this ideology. Together, the patriarch and the president have purposefully conflated religion and political power to propagate a strong delusion of Christian nationalism. This foundation paved the way for their claim that Orthodox Russian civilisation includes the territories and peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. In the vision they are pushing, the salvation of all Russia depends on the visible unity of the Russkii mir and the restored fellowship of Holy Russia’s peoples under the supreme authority of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’.
It is here that Kirill exposes his greatest sin: ecclesiastical racism, or the idea that jurisdictions and congregations within any given territory should be aligned by ethnicity or nationality. The concept condemned in 1872 at the Holy and Great pan-Orthodox Synod of Constantinople, as ‘contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers.’
The way of Christ is peace and love; healing and reconciling. The Christian’s vocation is one of service and kenosis – the self-emptying of one’s own will and desires in order to be receptive to God’s will and purposes. If Patriarch Kirill believes otherwise, then he transgresses the foundational precepts of the World Council of Churches, and they ought to expel him for his heresy.
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