Valparaiso University Professor’s New Book Covers Ukraine, Russia, and the role of the Orthodox Community
More than a year after the initial invasion, we are still hearing almost daily news about the situation in Ukraine. While media outlets cover the bombings, battles, and the impact on major cities, the religious aspect — namely the turmoil in the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches — has received much less attention. Nicholas Denysenko, Ph.D., Emil & Elfriede Jochum Chair and Professor of Theology at Valparaiso University has recently published “The Church’s Unholy War: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Orthodoxy” to educate people on this important aspect of the conflict.
“Events in the last few years have indicated some escalation in the somewhat small and rather remote world of global Orthodoxy,” Professor Denysenko says. “The reason for that is that there had long been a movement for a canonically, lawfully independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”
In 1917, while officially under the Russian Orthodox Church, a number of groups in Ukraine began to establish new group structures, resulting in a handful of independent church structures that went unrecognized as legitimate by the larger Orthodox community. The struggle to create an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church continued until 2018 when, under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, a new system was founded with the Patriarchate of Constantinople — widely recognized as the most authoritative church in global Orthodoxy.
“It was difficult, it was messy, and in some senses it’s incomplete, but they did create the kind of church structure that many of the world’s organizations recognize as completely legitimate,” Professor Denysenko says.
The official founding of a separate faith community drew immediate response from Vladmir Putin and other officials in Russia, who claimed the action needed to be taken to protect those faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church from potential Ukrainian reprisal.
“I’m definitely not claiming that it’s the event that catalyzed the Russian invasion of Ukraine — I think that was a much larger, multifaceted process — but it was one of many factors that irritated Putin and his associates,” says Professor Denysenko.
In addition to the history of the situation within Orthodoxy, the book looks at the response of global and religious leaders, a response that Professor Denysenko believes should have been stronger.
“Many of them have not acted responsibly, in my opinion,” Professor Denysenko says. “And I know I’m not in their position, I have the cushy confines of academic freedom. But even with the Pope, I feel more could have been done to be forceful. Some would say ‘well, the Pope said that the [Russian] Patriarch is Putin’s altar boy,’ but that’s just a snide comment.”
Professor Denysenko’s previous work had covered the struggle to create a Ukrainian Orthodox Church from 1917 to 2016. With the official founding of the church two years later, the world-stalling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the full-scale conflict that followed, the time was ripe for a new book that illuminated the current state of the Orthodox world and its relationship with the situation.
Attempting to create a complete analysis of what was happening in the Orthodox world, however, came with some difficulties. In addition to recovering from a severe illness during the project, Professor Denysenko had to contend with a rapidly-changing situation that’s shown no signs of slowing down.
“Once the book went to press, Ukraine’s most holy shrine, which had been which the government had leased to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Moscow, was zeroed in on by the government to expose and eliminate Russian collaborators,” Professor Denysenko says. “They decided to put maximum pressure on the church by suddenly terminating the lease.”
A greater challenge for Professor Denysenko than keeping up with the news was giving an objective account of the events unfolding while confronting challenging and emotionally-charged information.
“It’s really easy to get caught up in the emotional side of things, and I try hard to be dispassionate and objective. There’s also a real temptation as an adherent of Orthodoxy to take sides or be silent,” Professor Denysenko says. “The reckoning is to seek the truth, put it out there, and grin and bear whatever comes at you.”
Despite the challenges, Professor Denysenko remains dedicated to spreading awareness and education regarding the realities of the invasion — realities that may not show up enough in American media.
“This war has been going on for well over a year, we’re hearing news about counter-offenses,” he says. “We don’t hear enough news about parents who have to bury their children. Ukrainian parents, Russian parents, we don’t hear enough about lives that are lost.”
Ultimately, Professor Denysenko believes that his book can give western readers a hard look at a nightmarish situation.
“I think the most important thing in all of this is the truth, and what I’m trying to do with this book is really bring the truth out, and even when we really don’t like it, to look at it and allow it to tell us something about what people elsewhere in the world are experiencing,” Professor Denysenko says.
“The Church’s Unholy War: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and Orthodoxy” is available on Amazon here. For more on Professor Denysenko and his work, click here.
