Misza Czerniak: Crusade of "Traditional Values" - to the Last Ukrainian
Photo: RIA Novosti via AFP: Yana Lapikova
The Russian Church - along with Russia itself - has come to believe so deeply in its mission that the geopolitical interests of the state have been equated in the minds of its leaders with the work of salvation. The price for this is to be paid by others. In 2022, Russia will bill the people of Ukraine.
March 6, 2022. The eleventh day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Russian troops occupied Bucha. According to the liturgical calendar of the Orthodox Church, it is Forgiveness Sunday, immediately after which Lent begins. In the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill is preaching a sermon. Here is its central part:
"For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in Donbass. And in Donbass there is a rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values proposed today by those who claim world power. Today there is a test of loyalty to this power, a kind of pass to this "happy" world, a world of excessive consumption, a world of apparent "freedom." Do you know what this test is? It is very simple and at the same time frightening - it is a gay parade. The requirement to have a gay parade is the test of loyalty to this most powerful world; and we know that if people or countries reject these demands, they do not become part of this world, they become strangers to it.
However, we know what this sin is, which is propagated through the so-called dignity marches. It is a sin that is condemned by God's Word, both in the Old and New Testaments. And God, while condemning sin, does not condemn the sinner. He only calls him to repentance, but in no way makes sin the norm of life (...).
If mankind accepts that sin is not a violation of God's law, if mankind accepts that sin is a variety of human behavior, it will be the end of human civilization. And gay parades are supposed to show that sin is one variety of human behavior. Therefore, in order to get into the club of these countries, you have to have a gay parade. Not to make a political declaration of "we are with you," not to sign some agreement, but to hold a gay parade. We know how people resist these demands and how this resistance is suppressed by force. So it is a matter of forcibly imposing sin, which is condemned by God's law, that is, forcibly imposing on people the negation of God and His truth.
Therefore, what is happening today in the sphere of international relations is not just about politics. It is about something else and much more important than politics. It is about the salvation of mankind, about whether mankind will be on the right or left side of God the Savior, who comes into the world as Judge and Avenger. Many today, because of weakness, stupidity, ignorance, and most often because they don't want to restrain themselves, go there, to the left side. And everything that has to do with justifying the sin condemned in the Bible is today a test of our faithfulness to the Lord, our ability to profess faith in our Savior.
All this I say has more than some theoretical meaning and more than spiritual. There is a real war going on today around this topic. Who is attacking Ukraine today, where the suppression and extermination of the people of Donbass has been going on for eight years? Eight years of suffering, and the whole world is silent - what does that mean? But we know that our brothers and sisters are really suffering; moreover, they may be suffering for their loyalty to the Church. And that's why today, on Forgiveness Sunday, I, on the one hand, as your shepherd, call on everyone to forgive sins and offenses, including where it is very difficult, where people are fighting with each other. But forgiveness without justice is surrender and weakness. Forgiveness must therefore be accompanied by the indispensable right to stand on the side of the light, on the side of God's truth, on the side of God's commandments, on the side of what the light of Christ reveals to us, His Word, His Gospel, His greatest commandments given to the human race.
All of this is to say that we are engaged in a struggle that has meaning not physical, but metaphysical. I know how, unfortunately, Orthodox believers, choosing the path of least resistance in this war, do not reflect on all that we are reflecting on today, but obediently follow the path that the forces in power show them. We don't condemn anyone, we don't invite anyone to the cross, we just say to ourselves: we will be faithful to the word of God, we will be faithful to His law, we will be faithful to the law of love and justice, and if we see this law being broken, we will never put up with those who destroy this law, blurring the line between holiness and sin, and especially those who promote sin as a model or pattern of human behavior."
Regardless of the price
As of March 6, according to official sources, 1,755,972 people had to leave Ukraine due to the invasion, and the number of civilian casualties of the eleven-day assault was already approaching a thousand. But that's not what worries the Patriarch of Moscow. In his view, the real war (and not some “special military operation”) is about values - the real ones and the supposed ones. Let's listen to these words: the shepherd of millions of Orthodox Christians is interested not in human fate, but in values. Yes, the patriarch explains that his concern is for the salvation of souls; but, as often happens within the secure chambers and bunkers of powerful men, his concern is without regard to the price that those embodied souls must pay already in this world. It would seem that Christianity had already dealt with the heresy of depreciating mortal life long ago in its battles with Gnosticism, the latter having clearly prioritized the spiritual over the physical, undermining the meaning of God's incarnation. And yet the temptation the preacher experienced to look above the weeping faces of those listening to him is still very strong: abstract values are a much "more pleasant" and safer matter than pain and suffering, which require active empathy and decency. The incarnate, living God, present among us, is replaced by a concept. The basic definition of idolatry is fulfilled: one worships the effect instead of the cause - the creation instead of the Creator.
Awareness of this conceit was the reason for the publication on March 15, nine days later, of a declaration by hundreds of Orthodox theologians from around the world against the so-called Russkiy mir (ambiguously “Russian world” or “Russian peace”) ideology. The declaration’s authors called this narrative a heresy, anticipating its widespread recognition as such with the help of church synodal tools. However, despite the fact that I found it very necessary at the time and also signed it myself, the declaration was based on a mental shortcut and simplification, since it points exclusively to Russian ultra-fundamentalism and imperialism as the guilty party. In fact, however, the problem of this false teaching, substituting “values” for Christ, is much broader, and the blame definitely lies with the entire Christian world, or at least with those who have watched this aberration in the narrative of the Russian Church unfold over the years, and not only did nothing about it, but even rejoiced that someone was "daring" to exercise and define the Christian mission in the modern world in this way. For Patriarch Kirill, after all, the topic of true ("traditional") values has been a key element of his theology for many years.
"Values" are meaningless
Although the concept of "value" itself was introduced into philosophy as far back as the Stoics, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Lotze and the neo-Kantian Baden School are responsible for its development. Its "traditional" variety, on the other hand, appears in English sources in the 1960s and gains worldwide recognition in the last decade of the 20th century, when the American culture wars spread to other regions of the world. Individual uses of the term in Russian media can still be found in the 1990s, but it appears in full glory in Russian discourse beginning in this century. Politicians, columnists and spiritual leaders use it, claiming that Russian values are unique, almost eternal ("On this the world stands!"), shaping the mentality and "cultural matrix" and therefore unparalleled in other nations.
The problem is that the concept has no exact, precise definition. Moreover, precisely because of that it acts as a chameleon slogan or even a simulacrum or myth. If a concept is consciously left as an open "container," it inevitably becomes a propaganda tool: for someone has the power to insert into this "container" the meanings they need at a given moment and for a specific purpose. Through the mere reference to tradition and the past, such a "container owner" legitimizes their narrative in the eyes of a large part of society. And yet the slogan itself sounds serious and resembles a scientific or legal term. Therefore, few dare to ask whether indeed this "something", which at any given time underlies the concept of "values", has existed since the "dawn of time" and whether it actually has any value. The manipulative nature of this notion is reveaied by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who explains in his work "Invented Tradition" that the bond of such invented traditions with the past is most often a fiction: they are a creation of the past under the challenges of a new situation. As an example of created tradition in Russia, the day of Saint Princes Peter and Fevronia, celebrated en masse in the church-society space since the late 2000s as patron saints of the family, is accepted as legitimate, even though Peter and Fevronia had no children, ended their lives as monks, and their feast always falls during Lent when the sacrament of marriage is not celebrated.
Just as artificial, even absurd, are the attempts to reconstruct traditional "values." To use the words of art restorers, one might ask: "Which era are we going to restore?" Referring to "traditional Russian values," some speak of attachment to the state as an institution, and others of communitarianism and sobriety. Some talk about the need for a strong hand, and others about the love of freedom and rebellion. Both versions of the fulfillment of this "container" sound equally plausible and organic—it all depends on who is using the concept of "values." When Russian MPs also use “traditional values” to justify the restrictions being imposed on freedom of speech, the only question that remains is which censorship they have in mind, tsarist or Soviet?
Instead of proposing a positive program, such "neoconservatives" lament how broken the current world is and how good it was in the past. A "once upon a time!" mentality, which contradicts the Christian belief that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), is characterized by an attachment to hierarchical structures and the neglect of individual interests in favor of power, groups and momentous slogans. While this image may seem like a tempting utopia, the beneficiaries of a world so constructed are the few—those who hold power. In turn, history proves time and again that maintaining such a state of affairs ends in failure, as it falls short of ensuring true development and satisfaction of society. Nonetheless, populist politicians around the world, from Russia to the US ("Make America Great Again" is also a reference to the past), from Hungary to Brazil, invoke “traditional values,” rallying supporters under the banners of their favorite myths and convenient concepts.
Who deserves the rights?
Kirill and his entourage are responsible for establishing the concept of “traditional values” in the narrative of the Russian Orthodox Church even before he assumed the patriarchal throne in 2009. Expanding on his ideas delivered in 2006 at a conference in Strasbourg, Kirill promoted the approval at the 2008 Council of Bishops of the ROC of the "Fundamentals of the ROC's Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights." This document ties human rights to the morality of individuals: the more sinful a person's behavior (which supposedly "obscures" God's likeness in him), the less respectable his rights are. This "logical fiat" contradicts both the very theory of human rights as indispensable and the hitherto accepted Christian understanding that human dignity derives from being created in the image and likeness of God and is not capable of being undermined by acts. The ROC document separates the former from the latter and thus makes rights dependent on the notion of sin—a notion that a secular, humanist twenty-first century state that respects the basic and indispensable rights of even the worst offenders need not and should not use.
Moreover, the ROC sees itself as the "owner" and interpreter of the concept of “sin.” By claiming God himself as the source of its authority, the ROC makes this authority sacred and at the same time unverifiable to those who do not share the views of the Church. It is a concept based on the claim that human rights cannot stand above moral values: individual rights should not conflict with the values of the homeland, the community, the family. A similar shift in emphasis from the individual to the group again raises the question of who defines the values of these larger entities - that is, who owns the "container." Experience shows that the interests of the nation are defined by the majority mostly at the expense of the minority, those on the margins, the exceptions. As Kristina Stoeckl, Kseniya Medvedeva and Aaron Rhodes point out in their research, this understanding of the rights of nations as superior to the rights of individuals, which is part of the narrative of "traditional values," has been lobbied hard by the Russian Federation in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council since 2009 with quite a bit of interest from countries that also care about maintaining a controllable "traditional" order (China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Libya, and others). In 2014, "defense of the family" was added to the arsenal of slogans used in this campaign, which only underscores the polemical and antagonistic nature of this narrative.
In May 2011, the World Russian National Council—a body created by the Moscow Patriarchate in the 1990s with the support of the Russian government as a platform for spreading socio-religious concepts in symphonic cooperation between church and state—adopted the declaration "Fundamental Values as the Basis of National Identity." The document contains a list of sixteen points, most of which are not controversial (faith, justice, unity, peace, freedom, dignity, solidarity, human well-being, family, national culture and so on). We don't know exactly why these very values were chosen (and others, such as hospitality, freedom of religion or lack thereof, or concern for the environment, were not), but even if one assumes that there was a most noble motivation behind it, it didn't end up being a positively worded program. In his speech summarizing the Council's deliberations, Patriarch Kirill declared that the problem of modern society is a "value vacuum" that cannot be filled with materialistic values. And he added: "People will not give their lives, will not restrict themselves in the name of those goals that are now often declared as the main goals of human life. I have said previously that no one would go to war to increase the GDP." (These words sound especially terrible after February 24, 2022.) Kirill’s closest associate at the time, Metropolitan Hilarion, entitled his keynote address at the so-called Christmas Readings (an annual major conference held by the ROC) in January 2013, "Traditional Values Challenge the Secular Worldview," and included a long "litany" enumerating the "immoral" values of the West and non-Orthodox faiths, which at the same time, according to Hilarion, reject the very notion of value.
The Moralist International
Unfortunately, "values" are immediately transformed into a tool of civilizational warfare; opponents are accused of not sharing the only correct axiological system and disrupting the foundations of civilization. Such a de-legitimization of the opponent’s honor, faith and values is a fruitful manipulation insofar as it draws the disputant into a logical fallacy of proving a negative. The demonization of the rotten, debauched, individualistic, consumption-centered, abstract West is proving to be a very effective method not only for maintaining discipline within the ecclesiastical community, but also, in the hands of state authorities, an incredibly powerful instrument for uniting society, and even a group of allies on the international stage, against external enemies.
At various times, under the guise of defending the "traditional values of Christian civilization," there have been fights against the LGBT+ community, against feminists, against supporters of women's reproductive rights, against the Istanbul Convention and opponents of domestic violence, against believers of other faiths ("cults"), and even undermining the humanitarian approach of European countries to refugees from non-European countries, which feels particularly astonishing and dangerous in the reality of multinational Russia. This teeth-gnashing list is common to many populist regimes. And unfortunately, it is on the basis of a list of common enemies rather than common positive values that Russia and the ROC have been building for years and are building, according to the definition of Kristina Stoeckl and other researchers at the University of Innsbruck, a "moralistic internationalism."
The list of examples analyzed in this publication is extensive and very depressing. The ROC has used all its international contacts—overt and otherwise—to promote its vision of the world and its role as its moral leader. In addition to the World Russian National Council, the topic has been addressed by the International Social Foundation for the Unity of Orthodox Nations, the European Council of Religious Leaders and other bodies, among others. The ties between the Russian Church (and the oligarchs who support it, most notably Konstantin Malofeyev) and fundamentalist groups around the world were (and are) created under the cover of positively formulated values. Their basic glue, however, is a fierce struggle against organizations and movements that envision and shape the future of society in a different way, clinging to a classical (or, ironically, traditional?) understanding of human rights. In Europe, for instance, it is worth mentioning the contacts with Russia of the World Congress of Families or one of the main participants in the so-called Agenda Europe, the Ordo Iuris think tank. Is it merely happenstance that the financial troubles that befell it at the end of 2022 coincided with the interruption of financial flows between Russia and Europe as a result of sanctions imposed on Russia?
Deluded by domes and platitudes
Unfortunately, in an effort to maintain friendly relations with the supposedly largest Orthodox Church in the world, many Christian communities and world leaders have acquiesced to the self-promotion of the ROC as almost the last defender of Christian family traditional values. With regret, we must admit that the voices of those crying in the wilderness, who for years begged others not to succumb to the charm of "golden domes" and beautiful platitudes coming from Russia, have been drowned out in the noise of the rattling sabres of the gathering world ideological army led by Russia and its Church. Research shows that the sound of coins raining down also played a role in this "symphony." Sensing over the years cowardly silence, acquiescence, or even support from the world (whether in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, the World Council of Churches or other relationships), the ROC, along with Russia itself, has come to believe so deeply in its unique mission and its legitimacy that the geopolitical interests of the Russian state have been identified in the minds of its leaders with the work of salvation. As usual, the price of this endeavor is to be borne by others: in 2022 Russia sent the bill to the people of Ukraine, cynically explaining through the mouths of Kirill and other spymasters that it was doing it for their own good and salvation.
Another level of cynicism was achieved through a decision, already made during the war, in November 2022, by President Putin, who approved the "Fundamentals of State Policy for Preserving and Strengthening Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values." This document again very arbitrarily enumerates “proper” values, “foreign” values and threats to the “true ones.” Among the threats are listed very broadly extremist organizations, terrorist organizations, certain media outlets, the US and other hostile foreign states, corporations and NGOs, and "certain organizations and individuals" operating within Russia. (In doing so, I fear that the lack of direct mention of Ukraine is not so much an omission as a sign of perennial Russian imperialism and paternalism, according to which Ukraine is not a subject—friendly or otherwise —but an object of influence by enemies and concern by Russia.)
A state that is at war can approve such a programmatic document only as a tool to justify its actions. According to Russia, this is a war of values, and Russia is itself a kind of "warrior of light." Paradoxically, I think we have to admit Russia is partially right: this is a war of values. It is a clash between visions of the world, where on one side a unipolar world is proposed, giving place to only one, mercilessly imposed set of "values," and on the other is left the hope for coexistence and diversity. It is also a conflict between two visions of the Church: according to one, the Church chooses to serve an idol of "values" instead of God; according to the other, the Church has a chance to actually promote Christian values if it remains faithful to Christ and does not succumb to the temptation of power, influence, big numbers and caring only for the 99 sheep, abandoning the one lost.
The original, unabridged text of this essay in Polish can be found here.
Misza Czerniak is an Orthodox activist, theologian, musician, and translator. In 2016, he wrote the “Open Letter of Orthodox LGBT persons” to the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. Since 2022, Misza is one of the Co-Presidents of European Forum of the LGBT Christian Groups.