Religious freedom in Ukraine: obstacles and encouraging signs

by Myroslav Marynovych

Following is the text of a presentation delivered at the Catholic University of America in Washington on April 5.

This afternoon I want to discuss the conflict between religious identity and religious freedom. But since the case study for this discussion centers on Ukraine and the Slavic world, first I want to give you some background since you may not be familiar with the context.

Religious landscape in Ukraine

One of Ukraine's main features which forms its religious landscape is that this land is a crossroads for interests of three branches of Christianity; namely Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism. The competition (in the past - confrontation) between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is rather long-standing and burdened by the long history of rivalry for spheres of influence, or the so-called mission territories. The confrontation with Protestantism (at least with its modern waves) is rather new and came to the fore especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union when Ukraine opened itself to the influence of numerous Western, mostly American, Protestant missionaries.

The other feature of the Ukrainian religious context is the parallel existence of several religious historiographies according to which historical changes in religious affiliation are considered either positively or negatively. Let me give you some examples.

What is regarded by Catholic believers as a positive act of reunification with the Holy See, that is the Union of Brest of 1596, is a deplorable act of breaking-off with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and a shameful act of proselytism by the Roman Catholic Church in the opinion of the Orthodox faithful.

In 1930 and 1946, respectively, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was banned and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church by the Stalin regime was forced into what was called "self-liquidation." What is regarded by Russian Orthodox believers as the overcoming of the Uniate and "nationalistic" schism is considered by the Greek Catholic believers not only as brutal violence by the state but also as an act of proselytism by the Moscow Patriarchate which took advantage of state violence to expand its influence and to deny religious freedom.

The legalization of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and revival of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church came in 1988. What is regarded by the faithful of these Churches as a manifestation of their religious rights and a restoration of historical justice is considered by the Moscow Patriarchate as an act of proselytism by the Roman Catholic Church and foreign branches of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

We may conclude, therefore, that, with competing historiographies, it is practically impossible - at least, it was so until now - to have a unified version of the earlier or modern religious history of Ukraine. This fact strongly influences the attitude of Ukrainians towards religious freedom.

Religious freedom and the legal system

We see the results of these historical tensions in the recent development of Ukrainian legislation on religious freedom. The laws adopted soon after independence in 1991 reflect the attempt of the Ukrainian Parliament to incorporate international standards. For example, the 1991 law on "Liberty of Conscience and Religious Organizations in Ukraine" includes a "typical" package of freedoms (Article III, part 1):

Every citizen in Ukraine is guaranteed the right to liberty of conscience. This right includes the liberty to have, adopt or change religion or convictions according to one's choice and liberty to personally or in community with others profess any religion or none, exercise religious worship, openly express and extend one's religious or atheistic convictions.

However, the limitation clause (Article III, part 4) is in fact quite broad and subject to administrative abuse:

Liberty to profess religion or convictions is subject only to those restrictions which are necessary to maintain public order and safety, life, health and morals, as well as rights and liberties of other citizens. Restrictions must be set by law and meet the internal obligations and commitments of Ukraine.

This law includes also the following important clause, Article XXXII, which gives priority to international standards:

If the rules and regulations, set by international agreement in which Ukraine takes part, differ from those of legislation about liberty of conscience and religious organizations of Ukraine, the rules and regulations of international agreement have priority in application.

But this idealistic and model legislation soon met criticism in Ukrainian society. After the protests of the hierarchy of the main churches (sometimes even Protestant leaders), mass media and the population in general, caused by an incursion of foreign religious missionaries, the law was amended. The most important 1993 amendment is that to Article XXIV:

Clergymen, preachers of religion, instructors (teachers), and other representatives of foreign organizations who are foreign citizens temporarily staying in Ukraine may preach religious dogmas, perform religious rites and practice other canonical activities only in those religious organizations on whose invitations they came, and upon an official agreement with the state body which has registered the statute of the corresponding religious organization.

According to author Howard L. Biddulph in his book "Religious Liberty and the Ukrainian State: Nationalism Versus Equal Protection," this amendment "effectively bars entry of all foreign representatives of faiths that do not already exist as legal entities in Ukraine. ... This not only curtails the manifesting of religious beliefs by non-citizens in Ukraine, but also effectively prevents the access of Ukrainians to any totally new faith."

The amendment to Article XVI expands causes for termination of the activity of a religious community into a very extensive list including:

If [a religious community] humiliates national dignity or insults the feelings of citizens on the basis of their religious convictions, or if it causes harm to the health of citizens, licentiousness and other infringements upon personal dignity and rights of citizens under the pretext of performing religious rites and ceremonies.

According to the same scholar, "none of these grounds are described in careful legal language. Such an exceedingly detailed, yet vaguely worded, amendment would seem to provide almost endless possibilities for administrative officials to bring charges," according to Mr. Biddulph, based on their own personal prejudices.

Even in spite of such an amendment, the law is considered by many clergy, officials and believers to be too liberal. The hierarchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church subordinated to the Moscow Partiarchate openly favors the Russian law on religious organizations, that is known for its discriminative nature, and wants it to be adopted in Ukraine. It is not so easy, however, in multi-religious and multi-confessional Ukraine. There are many religious and secular groups which are reluctant to, or openly oppose this idea.

So far, it is known that there exists a new draft of the law which is to be submitted to the Ukrainian Parliament for approval. The text, though not published yet, is still being discussed at the Council of the Churches which is a body initiated by the president of Ukraine.

Religious freedom: new trends

It is generally accepted that religious rights, are at the very center of the concept of human rights. This conception holds for countries of the former Soviet block. It was religious freedom that first weakened the Communist bastions. Therefore, it might be foreseen that some reluctance to espouse the idea of human rights, down to rejecting it in whole, will have a rather strong religious component as well. Samuel Huntington and John Witte, Jr., in retracing the correlation between democratization and religion, found three waves of democratization in human history which had been anticipated and accompanied by three waves of Christian democratic impulses. Nevertheless, only two branches of Western Christianity - the Protestant and the Roman Catholic - were involved in that process.

The third part of world Christianity - Eastern Orthodoxy - kept aloof. It is interesting to retrace the consequences of the third, "Catholic," wave illustrating them by the example of Orthodoxy in the former Soviet Union.

The third wave touched on the former Soviet Union. "New democracies" emerged in some parts of the former Soviet Union, arousing hope that human rights would spread into hitherto impenetrable territories. A few years later in some places, however, democracy had to retreat. It can be said with high probability that the major cause for this retreat was the "silence" of Orthodoxy. The wave of democratization, according to John Witte's conception, was not accompanied by an Orthodox democratic impulse. The revival of the Church had anticipated, but not accompanied, the democratization. The Orthodox Church (and the Greek-Catholic Church as an Eastern Church) was not ready for democracy, a fact which became especially visible in Ukraine where the religious dimensions of the primary claim for freedom were very strong. At least four reasons for the Church's reluctance to support the human rights movement may be mentioned here.

First, the drive of religious people towards democracy seemed to be non-democratic in nature. Again, it was an attempt to reestablish the Church with the help of human rights. However, when democracy had extended to rival churches the same right to exist, sympathy for democracy partly evaporated and a need of some "confessional patriots" to defend the Church from human rights appeared.

Second, acceptance of democracy meant modernization of the Church. However, it was exactly this old Church, victimized by the Communists, that appeared to have an ultimate value for elderly people. To change this Church meant to sacrifice it again.

Third, it was this old Church that seemed to have won the battle with communism. How is it possible to modernize the victor just in order to "please the Western world" whose churches have lost their battle with secularism?

Fourth, Orthodoxy was not theologically ready for democracy. Mainstream Protestant theology, with its key idea of freedom of choice, has sacrificed its feeling of being the sole repository of truth in favor of religious pluralism and, later, of religious tolerance. Post-Conciliar Roman Catholic theology, with its core idea of legal and institutional order, has sacrificed the same feeling in favor of human rights as an indispensable condition of social order. Will Orthodox theology, with its central task to preserve religious tradition, be the third?

The mainstream Protestant and the Roman Catholic Churches have accepted the idea of religious freedom. As a result, Orthodoxy is facing two strong modernized forms of Christianity, yet it is now incapable of making changes (or, at least, of making them easily) in its ultimate value - tradition. It creates a considerable "developmental gap" between them, placing strong pressure to modernize onto Orthodoxy, which is rather archaic. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries, therefore, appear to have more competitive capacity in comparison with indigenous Orthodoxy. No wonder that isolationist tendencies prevail in Orthodoxy. In such a situation, religious freedom and human rights, with their strong capability to break up boundaries, are often seen as acting in favor of "foreign" churches, thereby leaving the indigenous tradition unprotected.

The present reluctance of Orthodoxy to adopt the idea of human rights will likely not last long. Orthodox Churches are in the process of a search for their own reply to the challenge of human rights and modernity. It looks as though Huntington' s list of waves of democratization will grow.

An attempt at prognosis

According to the present turn of minds, a confessional pluralism is the most important guarantor of religious freedom and, at the same time, a serious concern of the faithful (mostly Orthodox) which consider such a pluralism a consequence of a discord among traditional Orthodox believers and a weakness of the state. The confessional pluralism is a reason for dissatisfaction of both state officials and the hierarchy of the main Orthodox churches but none of them can change the situation. Thus, the future of Christianity in Ukraine mostly depends on the development of a tolerant, non-destructive and pluralistic model of religious identity. If it fails, the attempts to re-unite existing Eastern churches into one "strong Orthodoxy" may lead to curtailment of religious freedom already achieved. I would like to express, however, my personal cautious optimism. It should be noticed that till now, in spite of numerous political and national reasons, nobody succeeded in the unification of Ukrainian Orthodoxy mostly because tolerance is not assumed as a basis for such a unification.

The status of Christianity in Ukraine strongly depends on the influence of Moscow, Rome and partly Constantinople, as well as Western, mostly American, centers of Protestantism. This makes Ukrainian Christianity especially vulnerable. Until now, Ukraine was a field of rivalry of those Christian centers and, consequently, a "stumbling block of ecumenism." For too long Ukrainian representatives of the world confessions were obliged to manifest loyalty to their church centers rather than manifest Christian love in relations between themselves within Ukraine. It is a responsibility of these centers also, side by side with that of Ukrainian Christians, to transform the land into a field of tolerance, reconciliation and the building-up of confidence.

The Christian experience of the Slavonic East, artificially hidden for such a long time, seems to be unincorporated by the modern world. The isolationistic attitude of Eastern Christians is, to a considerable extent, a reaction to the conviction of the Western missionaries in the early 1990s that a post-communist space is a blank page which is fated to be filled by Western churches. The situation was burdened by an obvious rivalry between Western missionaries themselves. The logic of competition was too strong to notice a spiritual and cultural trauma endured by the people, in general. I am afraid the logic of protection, in its turn, will be too strong to reckon with a principle of religious freedom.

The problem of correlation between the religious freedom of individuals and religious identities of communities, being still unsolved, is becoming increasingly important. Religious freedom is protected (at least, theoretically) by the international standards of human rights. In other words, religious freedom is a subject of legal regulation. A right of a certain religious community to preserve its tradition is considerably less protected. Anyway, an obligation not to traumatize a certain historical tradition is only a moral obligation of other communities. The difference between legal and moral obligations, however, is too subtle in our imperfect world.

Taking into account that some Western missionaries fell short of their Christian obligations, an impression has been developed in the mass conscience of Slavs that religious freedom is more profitable for the Western churches and is invented in order to suppress Slavonic Christianity spiritually and culturally. Western mentality is prone to neglect such a reaction perceiving a lack of education in it. Of course, lack of education is a problem. Nevertheless, it is rather dangerous when a question of protection of religious traditions is raised and advocated only by local traditionalists and isolationists. Then it appears that the West is becoming an advocate of an uncontrolled "free market of religions" while the East is moving in the opposite direction and advocating the protection of its religious identity even at the expense of religious freedom.

It is clear, however, that both extremes in the debate of religious freedom vs. religious identity are incorrect. In a society which is properly balanced, religious freedom is a precondition for the free exercise of its identity, and, respectfully, confidence in one's identity makes freedom an indispensable attribute of religious life. The present tension is, therefore, a challenge not only for the East to respect religious freedom unconditionally but also for the West to find an adequate protection of the manifestations of a human spirit which become too vulnerable under the circumstances of an uncontrolled free market of religions and confessions.

Speaking about ways of implementation of the principle of religious freedom in Ukraine, national history, cultural peculiarities and ethno-psychology should be taken into consideration. As Harold Berman writes in his book, "Religious Rights in Russia at a Time of Tumultuous Transition: A History Theory": "Religious human rights, like all human rights, must find their source and sanction simultaneously in morality, history, and politics." This aim cannot be achieved by a single judicial act. It will be a long process of development, the first signs of which are quite visible in Ukraine nowadays.

At present, certain Orthodox leaders and Orthodox-oriented members of the Ukrainian Parliament are trying to find legal formulas to recognize the predominantly Orthodox (Eastern) nature of Christianity in Ukraine. So far, such formulas have been seen as instruments in interchurch struggle for influence and, consequently, may lead to a certain kind of discrimination. It is the homework of Ukrainians, for the future decades, to find a golden mean between appreciation of Ukrainian history and religious tradition, on the one hand, and safeguarding the internationally accepted standards of religious freedom and human rights, on the other.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 2, 2002, No. 22, Vol. LXX

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