Last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine dramatically expanded long-festering divisions in the Orthodox Christian Church.

In a lecture at the Lincoln Center campus on Monday, Oct. 30, Nadieszda Kizenko, Ph.D., will examine this problem from a historical perspective and consider how Orthodox Christianity can move forward.

“What Russia’s attack on Ukraine did was expose the problems in Orthodoxy that had been simmering for a long time,” said Kizenko, a professor of history and director of the religious studies program at the University at Albany.

The tensions between the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian Orthodox Church began in earnest in 2018 when some Ukrainian Orthodox clerics asked for permission to become autocephalous, or independent.

His All Holiness Bartholomew, the archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch, granted the request, but Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, questioned whether he had the authority to approve it. After Kirill backed the Russian government’s invasion in 2022, the two churches became estranged.

In “A Vanishing Point: Unity in Orthodoxy and the Ukraine Crisis,” Kizenko will highlight three structural issues that Orthodox Christianity needs to address: The authority to grant autocephaly; the process that Orthodox Christians rely on to work together, known as conciliarity; and the wisdom of establishing a “state church.”

The Russian Orthodox Church fully embraced the church/state model, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate hasn’t been attached to a single country since the end of World War I, and has therefore been much more international in focus, said Kizenko.

“These are two extremes, and other Orthodox churches fall somewhere in between,” she said.

“But the question for Orthodox Christians is, ‘When we think about the church and the world, is the world a dangerous, secular place that we need to turn our back on and be extremely cautious about? Or do we accept that the world, as it is now, is where God has put us and his church?”

Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., a professor of theology who along with George E. Demacopoulos, Ph.D., co-founded the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, said that Kizenko’s talk will be of interest to anyone concerned with the rise of religious nationalism.

Far-right movements in Europe have latched onto religion in ways that are reminiscent of the way the Russian government has partnered with the Russian Orthodox Church, and he noted that there are also similar movements afoot in the United States.

“People often try to box things in and say ‘This is a religious issue,’ ‘This is an ethnic issue,’ ‘This is a cultural issue.’ I don’t think they realize how those things are intertwined, and what we’re seeing in post-Communist Russia and Ukraine and the Orthodox world in general is how much religion, ethnicity, culture, and politics are all intertwined with each other,” he said.

“Nadieszda can definitely illuminate that history and help us understand why it’s still the case in the present.”

Register for the event here.

But there’s more to the war than just missiles and economic sanctions, said Elizabeth Prodromou, Ph.D, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. To fully understand why Vladimir Putin plunged his country into war, Westerners would do well to look at his connections to the Russian Orthodox Church.

On Nov. 2 at 6 p.m., Prodromou will explore the issue in “Deconstructing Russia’s Ukraine War: Religion, Power, and the Geopolitics of Orthodox Christianity” at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. Her talk, the annual Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture, is presented by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center.

“What I want to do is peel away some of those layers and focus on the other features of the war, namely the importance of Ukraine as a space of contestation for Russia, vis-à-vis not only the hard security interests of the transatlantic alliance of NATO, but also the values that the alliance claims to represent,” said Prodromou, who is also faculty director of the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

“Russia sees Ukraine not only in terms of its territorial importance and its existential security interests but also as a critical religious and cultural space for the protection of and projection of its own values and influence.”

To understand why culture plays as large a role as territory in the war, Prodromou said one need only observe the closeness between Putin and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Unlike the majority of Orthodox Church leaders around the world, Patriarch Kirill has pointedly not criticized the invasion.

“Not only has he refused not to condemn the war, but he has also been supportive of Vladimir Putin’s articulation for the rationale for the war. As a consequence, Patriarch Kirill has been subjected to withering  criticism from other Orthodox Churches worldwide, including Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople,” she said.

“That has produced enormous tension and contestation within the Russian Orthodox church, as well. Not a lot of it is very public, but by virtue of reportage from priests, lay people, and experts in that church, it’s clear there is a grave disagreement within the Moscow Patriarchate about the support for the invasion.”

In her talk, Prodromou said she will explore the relationship the Russian Orthodox church and the Russian government have had going back decades. Although the church was violently suppressed during the Cold War, it initially flourished after the Soviet Union collapsed, having found a supportive partner in the government that followed. Patriarch Kirill’s support of the Ukraine invasion has clouded the picture of the partnership, in ways that Prodromou said echo how bishops in the Roman Catholic Church once allied themselves with autocratic leaders in Central and South America.

“That church/state closeness, in the form of the alliance between Putin and the patriarch, has led to a cynicism among many Russian Orthodox believers,” she said.

“Some speculate whether this is a church-state relationship that has been cemented, or whether it is just a partnership between Putin and Kirill. In a post-Putin and post-Kirill world, what will the relationship between the church and the state look like? That’s hard to predict.”

If there is a positive development to the current situation, it’s that Patriarch Kirill’s endorsement of the war has also thrust Orthodox Christianity in general into a brighter spotlight.

“That has led to a greater inquiry into Orthodox Christianity by scholars, policymakers, and media experts. That’s led to a far more nuanced understanding of the global footprint and the incredible pluralism within Orthodox Christianity” said Prodromou.

“It has moved aside the conventional, essentializing stereotype that all Orthodox Christianity is the same, regardless of local conditions.”

It’s also a good display of the value of “soft power.” In exchange for giving his blessing to the war, she said, Patriarch Kirill has found in Putin an enthusiastic proponent of the social conservatism that he favors.

“There are all these kinds of power in the power toolbox—hard, soft, sharp, smart, and I’ll be exploring these in my lecture,” she said.

“Especially in the 21st century, there’s a whole host of tools of power that can be deployed for influence building and projection of influence, whether by force or other means.”

George Demacopoulos, Ph.D., the co-founding director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, said he expects Prodromou’s talk will be enlightening for anyone who cherishes the value of free religious expression that has not been co-opted by politics.

“For years, Dr. Prodromou has been a champion of the twin causes of religious freedom and human rights, particularly in the Middle East,” he said.

“Few have her comprehensive understanding of the lived experience of religious minorities in fraught political situations.”

“The time is right for a critical reassessment of the healing mystery, the healing power of penance in its fullest sense,” Bishop Findikyan said, addressing a masked audience at the University Church. The sacrament of penance is more than a periodic attempt to “make ourselves right before God,” he said.

“The Armenian Church’s explicit understanding of penance as a return from sorrow resonates with a sort of hopeful expectation that is in very short supply in these COVID times.” 

The annual Economos lecture series has featured a variety of speakers, including archbishops, reverends, and professors. Last year, Fordham welcomed His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America to the Rose Hill campus. Bishop Findikyan is the first Armenian lecturer in the series. 

In his speech “Returning to Normalcy and the Sacrament of Penance,” Bishop Findikyan analyzed the three key parts of this title—normalcy, sacraments, and penance—through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the past 21 months, people across the world have yearned for normalcy, said the bishop. But the pandemic has also given us the opportunity to reconsider what normalcy means.

“No one denies the pain, grief, death, and economic uncertainty, political polarization, and other afflictions that COVID has wrought. Yet … We would do well to question the instinctive assumption that pre-COVID, everything was jolly and that the challenge of our age is to return to that previous condition,” said Bishop Findikyan. 

A large problem with our pre-pandemic lifestyle is “lust for contentment sought apart from God,” said the bishop. He compared this with the biblical story of Adam and Eve, who surrendered to their desire to eat fruit from a forbidden tree. They gained great knowledge, but lost their innocence. 

“The normalcy that many of us desire nowadays is actually the illusion of good food, of delight to the eyes, of desire, and of wisdom. Consciously or unconsciously, I fear that many of us are looking for personal fulfillment apart from God … The pursuit of such a normal is sinful in the fullest, proper sense of the word, and that path is naked,” said Bishop Findikyan. “The only true path toward those blessed ideals is to be found in Jesus Christ, by means of the mystery of penance.” 

We are taught that penance is one of the seven sacraments, said the bishop, but the sacraments are more than a finite number of ceremonies. 

“Our incorporation as the body of Christ occurs in every sacramental encounter, in every liturgical celebration,” said Bishop Findikyan. “And so with every one of those celebrations, those sacraments, when we dedicate ourselves to the Church’s liturgical life, we gradually come to an evermore intimate knowledge of God.” 

The role of sacramental penance in the pandemic is important, said the bishop—and it should be much more than a “periodic” spiritual encounter. 

“Repentance, penance, is that life-giving reconciling action by which we sinners regularly and continuously turn away from grief and come back to God,” said Bishop Findikyan. “Penance should not be an exceptional, occasional intervention, but a continuous journey of realigning one’s thoughts, actions, and commitment to Jesus Christ … It should be as regular and intrinsic to our spiritual lives as breathing is to one’s physical life.” 

Bishop Findikyan described true penance as the “living, throbbing heart of Christian faith and life”—something that is lacking in many parts of American Christianity today. 

“The sacrament of penance itself is the norm and the normal to which we aspire,” said Bishop Findikyan, “and to which we really should return, breath by breath, moment by moment.” 

Bishop Findikyan is the first Armenian Church Primate to have been born in the U.S. The Texas-born bishop once studied chemical engineering, but he followed his spiritual calling to the priesthood and was ordained a priest in 1997. He is now a professor of liturgical studies at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in Armonk, New York. He has lectured worldwide and served as the general editor of the Divine Liturgy pew book, a model for similar books in other churches and jurisdictions. He earned a master’s degree in musicology from the City University of New York and a doctorate degree in liturgy from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

This year, in partnership with the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center has launched a new Postdoctoral Fellowship in Armenian Christian Studies. The recipient of the two-year fellowship will also serve as director of the Zohrab Information Center, housed by the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America Eastern Diocese.

The Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture series has explored how the Orthodox tradition intersects with the American religious experience since its first lecture in 2004. Funding for the lecture is made possible by a landmark endowment from Christ and Anastasia Economos and a generous grant from the Nicholas J. and Anna K. Bouras Foundation, Inc. The lecture series is hosted by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center. 

A full recording of the lecture is below: