Orthodoxy Beyond Nationalism - In Light of the Ukraine-Russia Ecclesial Crisis
By: Bishop Stephen Introduction: When Nation and Church Become Entangled The ongoing ecclesial crisis surrounding Ukraine and Russia has exposed one of the greatest temptations facing Orthodox Christianity in the modern world: the temptation to confuse the Kingdom of God with the interests of a nation. The conflict has involved questions of autocephaly, canonical territory, ecclesiastical recognition, historical memory, political power, and national identity. Since the granting of a Tomos of Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, relations between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church have been severely strained. The war that began in 2022 intensified those divisions and transformed a long-standing ecclesiastical dispute into a global Orthodox crisis. Yet beneath the canonical debates lies a deeper spiritual issue. Orthodox Christians must ask whether nationalism has begun to shape ecclesiology rather than ecclesiology shaping national i...