Orthodoxy in Dialogue has shown unflinching support for the ongoing project of Ukraine’s political and ecclesiastical liberation from centuries of oppression at the hands of Tsarist-Soviet-Putinist Russia. We have been especially supportive of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv even when we have not always agreed with them. The grant of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was the right thing to do by every metric, despite some of the worrisome Phanariot ecclesiology that underlay it.

The following article at Bellingcat has been brought to our attention by two of our readers independently of each other. We share it with a heavy heart in the interests of honesty and transparency.

Ukraine-haters will see this report as “proof” that Ukrainians and their Church are all right-wing nationalist extremists. Yet this hardly congrues with the fact that this predominantly Orthodox country handed nearly 75% of its vote to a Jewish presidential candidate and just hosted the nation’s largest and most peaceful LGBTQ festival in the history of Kyiv Pride. Ukrainian democracy continues in its birth pangs, but shows promise of a bright future. Bellingcat makes clear that the right-wing extremism reported below does not enjoy popular support in Ukraine. 

The tragic fact of the matter is that the Orthodox Church everywhere attracts right-wing, nationalist, extremist elements whose diabolical ideologies bear no resemblance whatever to the Gospel or to Orthodox spirituality. This is no less true in Russia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, etc., and even in American Orthodoxy, than it is in Ukraine.

While in Russia the Kremlin and Patriarchate are so completely in bed with each other (see Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy) that it seems humanly impossible to pry them from their adulterous embrace, in Ukraine Metropolitan Epiphanius, the hierarchy, and the clergy of the OCU simply must preach—in season and out of season—that there is no place in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Christ for unrepented nationalist extremism.

Caption:

Epiphanius on LGBT: We Cannot Call Sin Good

Photo hosted by Tradition and Order (Традиція і Порядок) – reportedly one of Ukraine’s most violent far-right groups

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Calls to “Fight” LGBT People by Ukrainian Cleric Emblematic of Church’s Proximity to Far Right

by Bellingcat Anti-Equality Monitoring

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Father Joseph Birthisel (L) as a deacon

Father Joseph Birthisel of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, who resides in Virginia Beach VA (check the ACROD clergy directory for further details), runs the Byzantine, TX blog under the pseudonym “Josephus Flavius.” When you click “View my complete profile,” you get no information at all that you might expect a “complete profile” to contain.

Earlier today Father Birthisel posted his Protodeacon Theodore Feldman Boldly Spouts Nonsense at Byzantine, TX in response to the latter’s LGBTQ+ in Our Churches at Orthodoxy in Dialogue. The main takeaway is that, as Father John Parker at St. Tikhon’s Seminary has stated, Orthodox clergymen and lay theologians who wish to explore questions of sexual and gender diversity in human nature—and the bishops who let them get away with it—are better off drowned. Birthisel writes:

When will [the Holy Synod of the OCA] respond so that there is no question that a clergyman cannot use his great influence on the people and lead them astray in this way? If millstones around the neck [for the purpose of drowning] are the lot of such authors, what of episcopal inaction when hierarchs know full well what their clergy are getting up to?

Dear Father Birthisel: Nonsense you may think that Father Feldman has written, and a dumpster fire Orthodoxy in Dialogue may very well be, but a). we don’t hide like cowards behind pseudonyms, and b). we have never called for the murder of anyone—by drowning or otherwise. Read More

This article appeared as an op-ed on June 25, 2019 at the Kyiv Post.

Our Tradition Is Freedom! Kyiv Pride 2019. Equality March, June 23.

Here in Toronto it’s seven hours earlier than in Ukraine. Throughout the day of Kyiv Pride’s Equality March on Sunday, June 23, it gave me a sense of quiet joy to peruse the media reports and the photo updates of my many LGBTQ friends in Ukraine as these passed in steady succession through my Facebook news feed.

My readers will recall that I had appealed both to President Zelensky (here) and to Metropolitan Epiphanius (here and here) to join political and spiritual forces—in ways that maintain the separation of church and state necessary to a 21^st-century Western democracy—to forge a new Ukraine where all citizens feel free and safe to thrive according to their own lights, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

This made it all the more gratifying to read of Zelensky’s remarks in support of Kyiv Pride, the robust police protection at the March, the relative absence of confrontations compared to prior years, the largest turnout in Kyiv Pride’s history, the participation of several celebrities and government officials from Ukraine and abroad (including Canadian ambassador, Roman Waschuk), and—perhaps most astonishing of all—the presence of over thirty LGBTQ members of the Ukrainian armed forces. Read More

As part of Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s commitment to publish a diversity of views we encourage our readers to consider writing a letter to the editors. Our Letters page is our fifth most popular “article” of all time—which means that it gets lots and lots of views.

Check the Letters page for brief guidelines and the almost three dozen letters published to date. You’ll see that we don’t shy away from letters that are highly critical of us. Read More