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I did not say you’re flat out wrong, I said “not exactly”. What you call “religious oppression”, I see as “administrative jostling”. Sure, the choice of which patriarch to mention at mass can be a huge issue, I’m from the Balkans, I know exactly how ugly it can get, but even that is “church politics”, not “religious persecution”. This is a political, not a dogmatic issue. It’s not sunnis persecuting shias, it’s not catholics vs protestants. The pope vs antipope analogy is actually a good one. Like I said, this is an internal matter of a single denomination. It’s a power struggle, not a theological debate. Which is why I don’t see that as religious persecution, there is nothing “religious” about the struggle, they’re not debating the natures of Christ, the Filioque or predestination or whether the twelfth Imam is the Mehdi. It’s about who gets to be the boss of this or that church building.
Is the state meddling with religious affairs? Sure. Should it not be in a perfect world? Sure. But this is how church and state intertwine in our neck of the woods. Same thing happened between the Ottomans and Greece 200 years ago, between Greece and Bulgaria 100 years ago, between Serbia and Macedonia more recently, and so on and so forth. This is how nationalism and Orthodoxy have been intertwined since the collapse of the two empires that used to control them in the past, the Ottomans in the south and the Russian Empire in the north. In this context, the Ukrainian state is countering the meddling of the Russian state that has already completely weaponized the Russian church. The Russian church has been functioning as the long arm of the Russian state for a while now. This is not some group of believers being persecuted for wearing the wrong type of hat or crossing themselves with two fingers as opposed to three, it’s competing nationalisms. Reducing all this context to “religious persecution” is kinda ridiculous.
This is precisely the kind of mess that will be healed with pan-orthodox synods once the wars are over. Has happened before, will happen again.
PS.
having anything at all to do with Russia now justifies literally everything
You’re ascribing to me a russophobia that I just don’t have. I’m not “justifying literally everything”, I’m giving context to a religious power struggle.
I did not say you’re flat out wrong, I said “not exactly”. What you call “religious oppression”, I see as “administrative jostling”. Sure, the choice of which patriarch to mention at mass can be a huge issue, I’m from the Balkans, I know exactly how ugly it can get, but even that is “church politics”, not “religious persecution”. This is a political, not a dogmatic issue. It’s not sunnis persecuting shias, it’s not catholics vs protestants. The pope vs antipope analogy is actually a good one. Like I said, this is an internal matter of a single denomination. It’s a power struggle, not a theological debate. Which is why I don’t see that as religious persecution, there is nothing “religious” about the struggle, they’re not debating the natures of Christ, the Filioque or predestination or whether the twelfth Imam is the Mehdi. It’s about who gets to be the boss of this or that church building.
Is the state meddling with religious affairs? Sure. Should it not be in a perfect world? Sure. But this is how church and state intertwine in our neck of the woods. Same thing happened between the Ottomans and Greece 200 years ago, between Greece and Bulgaria 100 years ago, between Serbia and Macedonia more recently, and so on and so forth. This is how nationalism and Orthodoxy have been intertwined since the collapse of the two empires that used to control them in the past, the Ottomans in the south and the Russian Empire in the north. In this context, the Ukrainian state is countering the meddling of the Russian state that has already completely weaponized the Russian church. The Russian church has been functioning as the long arm of the Russian state for a while now. This is not some group of believers being persecuted for wearing the wrong type of hat or crossing themselves with two fingers as opposed to three, it’s competing nationalisms. Reducing all this context to “religious persecution” is kinda ridiculous.
This is precisely the kind of mess that will be healed with pan-orthodox synods once the wars are over. Has happened before, will happen again.
PS.
You’re ascribing to me a russophobia that I just don’t have. I’m not “justifying literally everything”, I’m giving context to a religious power struggle.
PPS. I’m not downvoting you.