History of Christianity in Ukraine

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This article should include material from Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy), Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Patriarch Filaret (Mykhailo Denysenko).

The religious History of Christianity in Ukraine dates to the earliest centuries of the apostolic church when, according to legend, it was preached by St. Andrew in parts of the modern territory of Ukraine.

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Dominant role of Byzantine Christianity established

The acceptance of Byzantine Christianity as a dominant religion in the area, as well as a state religion, was marked by 988 mass Baptism of Kiev by Vladimir I of Kiev, a ruler of Kievan Rus. After the great East-West Schism that soon followed, the territory of Kievan Rus remained with the Byzantine Patriarch's Eastern Orthodoxy. While most of the Christians in Ukraine were and still are Orthodox, since 1598 an Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which claimed varying with time but always a significant membership in western Ukraine, is in full communion with the Catholic see. Still, Eastern Orthodoxy remained a traditional religion in Ukraine and at some points in history was inseparable from most Ukrainians' national self-identity.

The political jurisdiction of Orthodox churches in Ukraine changed several times in its history. Currently, three major Ukrainian Orthodox church bodies coexist, and often compete, in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Of them only the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, autonomous under the Patriarch of Moscow, has a canonical standing (legal recognition) within the worldwide Eastern Orthodox Church organization, and operates in communion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches. However, since the differences within Ukrainian Orthodoxy are purely political rather than doctrinal, this situation may be resolved at some future point with a single Ukrainian Orthodox Church to unite the Orthodox Christians in the nation. Image:Pochaevskaya.jpg

The Protestantism, that had some notable presence in the territory of Ukraine since at least the sixteenth century, was preached for the following centuries mostly by the foreign visitors and settlers. While this situation changed somewhat in the recent decades, the Protestants in today's Ukraine remain a relatively small minority.

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Early history

St. Andrew is thought to have preached on the southern borders of Ukraine, along the Black Sea. Legend has is that he travelled up the Dnieper river and reached the future location of Kiev, where he erected a cross on the site where the Church of St. Andrew currently stands, and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. A representative from Crimea was present at the First Council of Nicaea (325). Around this time, these churches and the inland farther north came under the control of the Goths, some of whom were Christians.

Image:Baptizm of Olga Kirillov.jpg Some of the Slavic population of Kiev and Western Ukraine under the rule of Great Moravia were Christians in the 9th century. Christianity was gradually spreading among the Rus' nobility with Princess Olga (St. Olga) being the first known ruler to have been baptized as Helen. Her baptism in 955 or 957 in Kiev or Constantinople (accounts differ) was a turning point in religious life of Rus' but it was left to her grandson, Vladimir the Great, to make Kievan Rus' a Christian state.

Christianity became dominant in the territory with the mass Baptism of Kiev in the Dnieper river in 988 by St. Vladimir. Following the Great Schism in 1054, the Kievan Rus' that incorporated most of modern Ukraine ended up on the Eastern Orthodox side of the divided Christian world.

Early on, the Orthodox Christian metropolitans had their seat in Pereyaslav, and later in Kiev. The people of Kiev lost their Metropolitan to Vladimir-Suzdal in 1299, but regained a Ukrainian Metropolitan in Halych in 1303. The religious affairs were also ruled in part by a Metropolitan in Navahradak, (present-day Belarus).

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After the Breakup of the Kievan Rus

In the 1400s, the primacy over the Ukrainian church was restored to Kiev, under the title "Metropolitan of Kiev and Halicia". One clause of the Union of Krevo stipulated that Jagiello would disseminate Roman Catholicism among Orthodox subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, of which Ukraine was a part. The opposition from the Ostrogskis and other Orthodox magnates led to this policy being suspended in the early 16th century.

Following the Union of Lublin, the polonization of the Ukrainian church was accelerated. Unlike the Roman Catholic church, the Orthodox church in Ukraine was liable to various taxes and legal obligations. The building of new Orthodox churches was strongly discouraged. The Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden to convert to Orthodoxy, and the marriages between Catholics and Orthodox were frowned upon. Orthodox subjects had been increasingly barred from high offices of state.

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Union of Brest and its aftermath

In order to oppose such restrictions and to reverse cultural polonization of Orthodox bishops, the Ecumenical Patriarch encouraged the activity of the Orthodox urban communities, or bratstva. In 1589 Hedeon Balaban, the bishop of Lvov, asked the Pope to take him under his protection, because he was exasperated by the struggle with urban communities and the Ecumenical Patriarch. He was followed by the bishops of Lutsk, Chelm, and Turov in 1590. In the following years, the bishops of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Przemysl and the Metropolitan of Kiev announced their secession from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In 1595 some of the renegades arrived to Rome and asked the Pope to take them under his jurisdiction.

In the Union of Brest of 1596, a part of the Ukrainian Church was accepted under the jurisdiction of the Roman Pope, becoming a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). While the new church gained many faithful among the Ukrainians in Galicia and Volhynia, the majority of Ukrainians in the rest of the land remained within Eastern Orthodoxy with the church affairs ruled by then from Kiev under the metropolitan Petro Mohyla. The eastward spread of the Union of Brest led to violent clashes, e.g., assassination of the Uniate archbishop Kuncewicz by the Orthodox mob in Polotsk in 1623.

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Khmelnytskyi Uprising

Template:Main The unpopularity of the unia was particularly strong in the southern steppes where Cossacks lived. Most of them valuing their traditions saw the unia as an attempt to bring them into Poland, and on the contrary became more attached to the Orthodox Church. Eventually this tension boiled into a massive Cossack uprising which targeted amongst many others Catholic and Uniate clergy. Also prominent became the metropolitan Petro Mohyla who did much to restore the Orthodox domination of Ukraine, including taking off them the Cathedral of Saint Sophia.

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Rule of the Empires

Template:Main Template:Sect-stub In 1686, 40 years after Mohyla's death, the Orthodox Church of Kiev and all Rus' was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarchate of Moscow, established a century prior to that. This led to the Ukrainian domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, which continued well into the 18th century, Feofan Prokopovich and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend.

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Territories gained from partitions

In the late 17th century the Polish Republic crumbled and was partitioned by its neighbours. The Russian Empire, having gained quite a lot of lands of Ruthenian origin (Podolia, Volhynia and modern Belarus). By that time, the uniate influence was so great that the majority of the ruthenian population was uniate. Although a revertion of uniates to Orthodoxy began, particularly in the ethnical Ukrainian lands of Podolia and Volhynia where the legacy of Cossacks was so strong the Russian Imperial authorities did not immediately push this to confiscate the property of those who chose not to return. Nevertheless the first Russophilic tendencies demonstrated themselves at that time, which originated in face of the Uniate Bishop Joseph Semashko. Believing that the Uniate Church's role as an interim bridge between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is over now that the ruler of the lands is an Orthodox Monarch, he began actively gaining support from other priests and clergy for the eventual return of Uniates to Orthodoxy. However the ruling synod, controlled by the still strong Polish influence refused this. It was only in 1831, after the Uniate synod's support for the ill-fated November Uprising, that led to the removal of all Clergy who supported it, as well as the Polish influence on the Uniate church, could Semashko's attempts gain any momentum. Immediately a second wave of revertion began, including the famous Pochayiv Lavra in Volhynia in 1833, finally culminating in the synod of Polotsk where the Uniate church was re-integrated into Orthodoxy and all of its propery reincorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church.

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Austrian Galicia and World War I

The only Ruthenian territory that was still outside the Russian Empire was the Kingdom Of Galicia (constituting the modern Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and parts of Ternopil oblasts) which was awarded to Austro-Hungarian Empire there the picture was similar upon the eve of partition (Ruthenian population was peasent and Uniate Catholic, whilst anyone with an influential role in society was Polish and later Austrian and Latin Catholic) for the next century this hardly changed.

Nevertheless Russophilia of the Galician Ruthenians was particularly strong during the mid-19th century, which alarmed the Austrian authorities, as during that time a massive power struggle evolved over the rule of the Balkan Slavs as the crumbling authority of the Ottaman Empire withdrew. The Austrian authorities went great lengths to keep the uniate church free of Russophilic tendencies and eventually this erupted in the First World War when, seeing how quite a number of them reverted to Orthodoxy upon the initial success of the Russian advance in 1914, responded with an all-out massacre in a place called Talergoff, where several thousand people were shot and killed.

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Twentieth Century

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Soviet Union

After the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian Empire and transformed it into the Soviet Union. To them religion had no place in the socialist state. A ruthless campaign was unleashed that in Ukrainian SSR (one of the founding republics of the USSR) alone as early as December 1918 the first execution of the head of the Ukrainian Exarchate Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych took place. This was only the start which culminated in mass closing and destruction of churches that stood since the days of the Kievan Rus and executions of clergy and followers.

Also prior to the Bolsheviks victory, Ukraine was controlled by several short-lived yet indepedent governemnts. These events lead stimulated Ukrainian nationalism. One of the suggestions that some of the states put up was a creation of an independent and autocephalous Orthodox Church. The Bolshevik authorities who in the wake of the break up of the Russian Empire, viewed Russian Orthodox church as counterrevolutionary and pro-White saw this as a perfect opportunity to reduce the influence of patriarch Tikhon of Moscow whose position towards the revolution was strongly critical. Hence in 1921 a Sobor announced a new Autocephaly, and created the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) in Kiev with Metropolitan Wasyl Lypkivskyj ordained as a head of the UAOC.

Although no precise data is known of just how much followers this church gained, it is certain that many of the Orthodox clergy willfully joined the still uncanonical church to avoid persecution that awaited them should they remain inside the Russian Orthodox Church. However even that did not save most, by the late 1920s the Soviet government changed its religious policy and the UAOC fared no better than the Russian Orthodox church, and ulike the latter was firmly terminated by the start of 1930s. On the eve of the Second World War only 3% of the pre-revolutionary parishes on the territory of Ukraine remained open to the public, often hidden in deep rural areas.

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Second Polish Republic

The treaty Peace of Riga in 1921 following the Polish-Bolshevik War gave the newly created Polish Republic quite a lot of ethnically Ukrainian (and Belarusian) land. This included Polessia and Volhynia, areas with almost exclussively Orthodox population amongst the Rural peasents. As well as the former Austrian province of Galicia with its Uniate population.

The Polish authorities viewed the Orthodox Church as a leftover of Russian rule and Russification. Like in the Bolshevik Russia hundred of Chuches and Cathedrals were destroyed in big cities such as Warsaw and Lublin. However when matters reached the eastern territories the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. However in parctice this often failed, and numberous churches were confiscated and handed over to Catholic and Uniate followers.

One of the biggest challenges to the Orthodox clergy was the ecclestical link to whom it should submit. Like most Russian Orthodox communities that found themselves outside the USSR, and thus outside any possible ecclestical control from the persecuted Russian Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople agreed to take over Moscow's role and in 1923 the Polish Orthodox Church was formed (albeit the fact that almost 90% of its clergy or believers were non-Polish people).

During this time the clergy of the Uniate Church in Galicia also began to see this time as an opportunity to regain the territory that was taken off them by the Synod of Polotsk in 1839 in the former Russian territories. However since the Orthodox believers saw the Uniates as also Catholic, and thus their expansion as a form of Polonization, most opposed this.

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Czechoslovakia

When in 1918 the country of Czechoslovakia was formed, the nation included several minorities. In particular in the easternmost end of the country lived a Ruthenian and Uniate population. These people over the whole interwar period had reverted to Orthodoxy in very large numbers. This was caused by a number of factors, first of all the people there were never Polonised or forced into Unia as it was done elsewhere, but like Galician Ruthenians, shared the strong Russophilian sentiment, but were not subject to harsh de-Russophiliation inflicted in the latter half of the 19th century. Also the Carpathian Ukraine (as it was called) became a point for several Russian bishops emmigrating from the Bolshevik regime. The decline of the unia's influence is still felt in Transcarpathia which unlike other provinces of western Ukraine is predominantely Orthodox and follows the UOC(MP).

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Second World War

In September 1939 the Red Army walked across Polish borders and annexed the territory into Soviet Ukraine and Belarus. During the Polish Rule, the Orthodox people in Eastern Poland who were subject to strong repression and discrimination. Since the Ukrainians were in large, discontent with Polish rule most of the Orthodox clergy actually welcomed the Red Army.

With the addition of the ethnical Ukrainian territory of Volhynia to the USSR, this created several issued. Having avoided the Bolshevik repression the Orthodox church of this rural region outnumbered the rest of the Ukrainian SSR by nearly a thousand Churches and Clergy as well as many cloisters including the Pochayiv Lavra. This caused nearly a million Orthodox pilgrims, out of fear of persecution and that these western parishes would share the fate of others in the USSR, took the chance to visit them. The Soviet authorities although confiscating some of the public property did not show the repressions of the post-revolutionary period that many feared and no executions or physical destruction took place.

On October 8, 1942 Archbishop Nikanor and Bishop Mstyslav (later a Patriarch) of the UAOC and Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church concluded an Act of Union, uniting the two national churches at the Pochaev Lavra. Later German occupation authorities and pro-Russian hierarchs of the Autonomous Church convinced Metropolitan Oleksiy to remove his signature. Metropolitan Oleksiy was murdered in Volhynia on May 7, 1943 by the nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which saw this as treason.

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Post War Situations

The Russian Orthodox Church regained its general monopoly in the Ukrainian SSR after World War II following another shift in the official Soviet attitude towards Christian churches. As a result many started to accuse it of being a puppet of the Communist Party. After the suspicious death of Patriarch Tikhon, the UAOC and UGCC sought to avoid the transfer under the Moscow Patriarchy; something that Moscow tolerated until after World War II. At the state organized 1948 synod in Lviv (Lvov), some UGCC clergy were coerced into proclaiming the annulment of the 1596 Union of Brest thereby breaking the canonical ties with Rome and transferring under the Moscow Patriarchy. This move's acceptance was mixed. With many clergy members and lay believers turning to ROC, some adamantly refused. As a result of this the Patriarchate of Moscow could now legally lay claim to any Orthodox church property that was within the territory of its uncontested jurisdiction, which it did. Some believers refused to accept liquidation of their churches and for nearly 40 years the UAOC and UGCC existed in Western Ukraine underground lead by the clergy members under the threat of prosecution by the Soviet state. Much of the UGCC and UAOC clergy not willing to serve in ROC emigrated to Germany, the United States, or Canada

The warm post-war attitude towards the Orthodox Church came to an end with Nikita Khruschev's "Thaw" programme, which included closing the recently opened Kiev's Caves Lavra. However in the west-Ukrainian dioceses, which were the largest in the USSR, the Soviet attitude was "softest". In fact in the western city of Lviv (Lvov), only one church was closed. The Moscow patriarchy also relaxed its canons on the clergy, especially those from the former-uniate territories, allowing them, for example to shave beards (a very uncommon Orthodox practice) and conduct liturgy in Ukrainian instead of Slavonic.

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Late Soviet period

In 1988 with the millennium anniversary of the baptism of Rus, there was yet another shift in the Soviet attitude towards religion, coinciding with the Perestroika and Glasnost programmes, the USSR apologized for all repressions towards religion and promised to return all property to the rightful owners. Although what began as a peaceful return of many closed church buildings (of course to the then ROC's Ukrainian Exarchate) in the central, eastern and southern Ukraine (as well as in other parts of the USSR), in the former-uniate areas of western Ukraine it was a different story. As UGCC survived in diaspora and in the underground they took their chance and were immediately revived in Ukraine, where in the wake of general liberalization of the Soviet policies in the late-1980s which also prompted the activization of Ukrainian national political movement. The Russian church became viewed by some as an attribute of Soviet occupation, and bitter, often violent clashes over church buildings followed with the ROC slowly losing its parishes to the UGCC.

The UAOC also did not wait long and quickly followed suit. Sometimes possessors of Church buildings changes several times within days. All Soviet attempts to pacify the almost-warring church parties were unsuccessful, especially after the UGCC's demand that all property that was held prior to 1939 would be returned (even though some it was Orthodox before the Unia came).

It is now believed that the only real event which enabled to contain the schism in the former-uniate territory was the ROC's reaction of raising its Ukrainian Exarchate to the status of an autonomous church, which took place in 1990, and up until the break up of the USSR (late 1991) there was an uneasy peace in western Ukraine. However after the nation became independent, the question of an independent and autocephalous Orthodox Church arose once again and another schism was approaching.

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Post-Soviet period

What historians now see as the reason for the following events was the decision of the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine Filaret to achieve total autocephalocy (independence) of his metropolitan see with or without the approval of the motherchurch required by the canon law. These events followed Filaret's own unsuccesful attempt to gain a seat of the Moscow Patriarch to himself (1990) and the Ukrainian independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union (August, 1991). In November 1991 at a working he headed Metropolitan Filaret requested the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephalous status. Patriarch Filaret also gained support of Leonid Kravchuk the then President of Ukraine, who believed that a new independent government should have its own independent church. Knowing of the unpopularity of the UAOC outside Galicia and with their strong freindship ties. Nevertheless Filaret managed to organise a covert communion with the UAOC in case Moscow refused

The skeptical hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church called for a full Synodical council in March-April of 1992 where this issue would have been discussed, upon arrival most of the clergy of the UOC who initially supported Filaret, openely criticised this move and immediately the votes turned against him. In the end the council voted for Filaret to retire from his position which was confirmed by a swore.

Upon returning to Kiev Filaret carried out his reserve option he revealed that the promise was given under pressure and he is not resigning. The Ukrainian President also gave him his utmost support as did the nationalist Paramilitaries supported him in retaining his rank. In May of 1992 at a Hierarchical Council meeting in the eastern city of Kharkiv (which lacked the nationalist sentiment as real fear for the clergy's security in Kiev arose) the majority of the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church voted to suspend Filaret from his clerical functioning. At the same time they elected a new leader Metropolitan Volodymyr (Viktor Sabodan) a Patriarchal Exarch to Western Europe.

With only three bishops remaining at his support Filaret initiated the unification with the UAOC, and in June 1992 a new Church was created the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy (UOC-KP) with 94-year-old Patriarch Mstyslav as a leader. While chosen as his assistant, Filaret was de-facto ruling the Church. A few of the Autocephalous bishops and clergy who opposed such situation refused to join the new Church and following the death of Mstyslav a year later the church was once again ripped through a schism and most of the UAOC parishes were regained when the churches re-separated in July 1993.

Most of the fate of control of church buildings was decided by the church parishes, but when most refused to follow Filaret, paramilitaries, especially in Volyn and Rivne Oblasts where there was strong nationalist sympathy amongst the new regional authorities, carried out raids bringing property under their control.

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Modern Times

  • The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), which re-established itself in Ukraine after independence from the Soviet Union, having survived in the diaspora after Soviet government suppression following its birth during the brief period in the aftermath of Bolshevik Revolution when Communists tolerated and at times even encouraged Ukrainian nationalism in the 1920s.
  • Additionally, a Roman Catholic church and various protestant churches currently hold a very small but growing membership in Ukraine.

The current divided and fluid situation traces its roots to the close connection between Orthodox church and the state in Tsarist Russia after the transfer of the Kiev Metropolitan see from the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Moscow in 1686. Some clerics and church historians, particularly in Ukraine, do not consider this transfer legitimate and claim it was implemented via the ecclesiastic crime of bribery by the Russian Church, itself elevated to patriarchal status a hundred years prior to the transfer, but eventually accepted under pressure from the Turkish Sultan. This development, they claim, resulted in a forced policy of Russification of Ukrainian Christianity. Gradually Russophile Orthodox clergy during the 18th and 19th centuries became dominant in Ukraine. Despite the fact that the transfer was and still is occasionally questioned in Ukraine, it gained a de-facto recognition and acceptance in the Eastern Orthodox communion by 300+ years of Ukrainian Orthodoxy remaining in the see of the Patriarch of Moscow.

The UOC-MP, which operates in communion with the other Eastern Orthodox churches still owns the majority of Orthodox church buildings in Ukraine and is predominant in eastern and southern Ukraine. The UOC-KP has its communities scattered across Ukraine outnumbering those of the UOC-MP in western part of the country. The UGCC and the UAOC, on the other hand, have most of their communities in the western provinces (oblasts} of Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. The UOC-KP and especially the UAOC and UGCC have strong support in the Ukrainian diaspora.

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Diaspora churches

Ukrainian churches beyond the boundaries of Ukraine have been important because of state control and suppression of religious practices in the Soviet Union.

See also:

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Protestantism in Ukraine

In the 16th century small groups of Anabaptists appeared in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, but the influence of the Reformation in Ukraine remained marginal until the three centuries later.

Protestantism arrived to Ukraine together with German immigrants in the 18th century, who were initially granted religious freedom by the Russian Imperial authorities, unlike the native population. One of earliest Protestant groups in Ukraine were Studists (the name originated from the German Stunde, "hour") German Evangelical sect that spread from German villages in Bessarabia and Ekaterinoslav province to the neighbouring Ukrainian population. Protestantism in Ukraine rapidly grew during the liberal reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s. However, towards the end of the century authorities started to restrict Protestant proselytism of the Orthodox Christians, especially by the Studistis, routinely preventing prayer meetings and other activities. At the same time Baptists, another major Protestant group that was growing in Ukraine, were treated less harshly due to their powerful international connections.

In the early 20th century, Volyn became the main centre of the spread of Protestantism in Ukraine. During the Soviet period Protestantism, together with Orthodox Christianity, was persecuted in Ukraine, but the 1980s marked the start of another major expansion of Protestant proselytism in Ukraine.

Today largest Protestant groups in Ukraine include Baptists (All-Ukrainian Union of the Association of Evangelical Baptists), Pentecostals (All-Ukrainian Union of Christians of the Evangelical Faith-Pentecostals) and Seventh-day Adventists (Ukrainian Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists). Of note is Hillsong church in Kiev. Despite the rapid growth and aggressive missionary activities, even today Protestants in Ukraine remain a small minority in a largely Orthodox Christian country.

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References

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External links

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