Can a state create a church

Normally one would think a state can not create a church, but in the Ukraine this year the country may see the formation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP) headed by a self-proclaimed leader named Patriach Filaret Denisenko becoming to be accepted by the
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) who is been asked as first among equals (primus inter pares) primarily for historic reasons (because Constantinople, before its takeover by Turks in 1453, was the centre of Orthodox Christianity) to accept this new church.

Russian Patriarch Kirill, speaking in Moscow at the celebrations of the 1030^th anniversary of Vladimir’s baptism of Rus, warned against attempts by secular authorities in Ukraine to interfere with church affairs or to split the historic church.

Orthodox faithful inside Ukraine, both ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians, see the plans of Poroshenko’s government and Denisenko as an illegal assault on their tradition and religious heritage. In addition, some deputies in the Ukrainian Rada (Parliament) have warned that there could be “bloody consequences” if the properties of the UOC-MP are confiscated and its members forced to join a new church.

According to the historical record, the Baptism of Kievan Rus by Vladimir had the support and participation of the Greek Church in Constantinople, then the official church of the Eastern Roman Empire, later known as Byzantium. The first Orthodox bishops and metropolitans (equivalent to Western archbishops) in Russia were Greeks from Constantinople who got their “apostolic succession” from Christ’s disciples. 

Poroshenko: More moves against Moscow.

The petition to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to approve the invention of a new “united” Ukrainian church that eliminates the UOC-MP would violate this sacred apostolic succession, says the Moscow Patriarchate. The UOC-MP has also protested that neither Poroshenko nor the Rada are empowered to ask Bartholomew to change the church’s organization in Ukraine.

“The strength of the Russian Orthodox Church and its Ukrainian sister UOC-MP lies in the apostolic succession, which the current Ukrainian government can neither provide nor imitate,”

 the Russian Orthodox Church’s spokesman said.

 “The state cannot `create’ a church, nor should it aspire to do it. But this is exactly what the Ukrainian authorities are trying to do, urging the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to merge with Denisenko’s entity and asking from the ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople an autocephalous status for this new `united’ Ukrainian church of their own invention.”

“This initiative is an abuse of power, an interference of state into church affairs,”

 UOC-MP’s the spokesman said. 

The UOC-MP has remained the only public organization in Ukraine which still legally has the word “Moscow” in its name, and for millions of Ukrainian citizens, ethnic Russians or not, any kind of legal linkage to Russia is still valued.

 > Preceding:

Ukraine Poroshenko-Denisenko plan to form independent Orthodox church in Ukraine

Ukraine Poroshenko-Denisenko plan to form independent Orthodox church in Ukraine

In the Ukraine we may find Patriach Filaret (born Denisenko) a former cleric of the Moscow Patriarchate, who left the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) in 1992 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had lost an ecclesiastical election and tried to form his own church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and therefor he became excommunicated. His church is not recognized by any of the other members of the international community of Orthodox churches. 

Now the Poroshenko government, formed in the beginning of the civil war that followed the U.S.-backed 2014 bloody coup in the “Euromaidan” uprising, is favouring the split-off of the traditional church by the anti-Moscow church known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP)

They have called on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul to remove the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate and recognize a new, single independent Orthodox church in Ukraine, severing all ties to Moscow.

The single church in the Poroshenko-Denisenko plan would carry the UOC-KP name with the authority, according to Denisenko, to seize all churches, temples, chapels, monasteries and other properties belonging to the UOC-MP. 

It would mean dispossessing the historic UOC-MP, which has direct “apostolic” continuity with the 1030-year-old original Kievan church and Christianity in the Eastern Roman empire, once brought there by Christ’s own disciples. UOC-MP said they would not pray in church together with the excommunicated Denisenko.