Number DOI: http://doi.org/10.33209/2519-4348-2707-9627-2024-12-153

VB. – № 12, 2024. – P. 47-70

Summary

The article argues that political issues are an important component of contemporary Orthodox theology. The political or public theology of Kirill Govorun, chosen for analytical consideration, is still a fairly new theological discipline for Orthodoxy. It analyzes the interaction between the political and the religious, in particular the relationship between church, state, society, and nation, and explores the role of Orthodoxy in contemporary political ideologies. One of the tasks of this theology is to criticize political ideologies such as nationalism, anti-Semitism, and fundamentalism, which Kirill Govorun considers heretical. He views these ideologies as distortions or modifications of theologies. He also explores the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the war against Ukraine, analyzing its ideological foundations as quasi-theologies and quasi-political religions. The main object of his criticism is the ideology of the “Russian world”, which has gone through stages from attempts to spread democracy to becoming a political religion of war. He considers the “Russian world” to be both a quasi-theology and a political ideology, which is a symbiosis of the religious and the political. Although outwardly it is formulated as a theological doctrine, its deeper essence remains secular and even anti-religious. The main goal of the Russian World ideology is to justify the military invasion of Ukraine. This ideology is being formulated before our eyes, and its paradox is that Russians do not realize its artificial ephemerality. The Ukrainian theologian explains this through the image-metaphor of a “pinhole camera,” when people look at the world from a dark room and see only a distorted image, not noticing the reality outside this narrative. If you are in the sphere of the Russian world, you perceive all its contradictions as obvious and necessary; in order to identify these contradictions, you need to go beyond the narrative, which is possible only for people who do not fall under its magical influence. In view of this, it becomes obvious that the study of public theology should be disseminated and continued, and it would be interesting to analyze its understanding among other contemporary Orthodox theologians in Ukraine.

Key words: Orthodoxy, political theology, Ukrainian theology, ideology, “Russian world,” war.

References:

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