This volume explores the churches of Ukraine and their involvement in the recent movement for social justice and dignity within the country. In November of 2013, citizens of Ukraine gathered on Kyiv's central square (Maidan) to protest against a government that had reneged on its promise to sign a trade agreement with Europe. The Euromaidan protest included members of various Christian churches in Ukraine, who stood together and demanded government accountability and closer ties with Europe. In response, state forces massacred over one hundred unarmed civilians. The atrocity precipitated a rapid sequence of events: the president fled the country, a provisional government was put in place, and Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine. An examination of Ukrainian churches’ involvement in this protest and the fall-out that it inspired opens up other questions and discussions about the churches’ identity and role in the country’s culture and its social and political history. Volume contributors examine Ukrainian churches’ historical development and singularity; their quest for autonomy; their active involvement in identity formation; their interpretations of the war and its causes; and the paths they have charted toward peace and unity.

"...a thoughtful and objective treatise for understanding the ecclesiastical crisis that has been created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate's granting autocephaly to schismatic groups in Ukraine." - +TIMOTHEOS, Metropolitan of Bostra (Patriarchate of Jerusalem) "We pray to the Almighty God and the Most-Holy Theotokos that this division ends quickly and Church order will reign again. We are pleased that writings such as this work by Metropolitan Nikiforos are working towards this correction." +LONGIN, Bishop of New Gracanica and Midwestern America (Church of Serbia) "This lively analysis presents the situation of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine in an accessible way to both theologians, the faithful, and all people interested in the topic of the unity of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine." +ABEL, Archbishop of Lublin and Chelm (Church of Poland) "This is a serious study of a crisis in the life of our Orthodox Church worldwide that deserves to be widely read as we seek to understand the underlying issues more clearly and find a conciliar solution that brings both unity and peace." +JURAJ, Archbishop of Michalovce and Košice (Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia) This is essential reading for all Orthodox believers to better understand what the Ukrainian crisis means for the future of their Church. It will also assist others to see beyond the characterization of the crisis as a political event in the context of relations between Russia and the West. It makes clear that at its heart this is an ecclesiological dispute calling out for a conciliar solution. In the autumn of 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church broke communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople following the latter Synod's announcement of their intention to create an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). In December of that year a formal council was convened in Kiev and this new ecclesial body was created from two Ukrainian groups previously considered schismatic by all of the Orthodox churches worldwide. All of this transpired without any attempt by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to seek a consensus of all the Orthodox churches before embarking this course of action. More than two years later the newly created OCU remains unrecognised by the overwhelming majority of the world's Orthodox believers notwithstanding that it has in that time been been recognised as Orthodox by the Patriarchate of Alexandria and the Churches of Cyprus and Greece. But even this recognition has not been without significant dissenting voices. Among these is the Abbot of the renowned Kykkos monastery in Cyprus, Metropolitan Nikiforos. In this pithy text he eloquently explains why the actions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have created a schism in the Orthodox Church worldwide and how in turn they reflect the promotion of a new ecclesiology that distorts the traditional understanding of the Orthodox Church as headed only by Christ Himself. He is clear that the only road to healing and unending schism is a return to a form of inter-Orthodox relations which respects both conciliarity and hierarchy. In doing this he stresses his utmost respect for the historical place of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the hope that it will turn back from the path it is currently on to resume its rightful place in the plurality of the Orthodox Church.

This book investigates how the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine has affected the religious situation in these countries. It considers threats to and violations of religious freedom, including those arising in annexed Crimea and in the eastern part of Ukraine, where fighting between Ukrainian government forces and separatist paramilitary groups backed and controlled by Russia is still going on, as well as in Russia and Ukraine more generally. It also assesses the impact of the conflict on church-state relations and national religion policy in each country and explores the role religion has played in the military conflict and the ideology surrounding it, focusing especially on the role of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches, as well as on the consequences for inter-church relations and dialogue.

The bitter separation of Ukraine's Orthodox churches is a microcosm of its societal strife. From 1917 onward, church leaders failed to agree on the church's mission in the twentieth century. The core issues of dispute were establishing independence from the Russian church and adopting Ukrainian as the language of worship. Decades of polemical exchanges and public statements by leaders of the separated churches contributed to the formation of their distinct identities and sharpened the friction amongst their respective supporters. In The Orthodox Church in Ukraine, Nicholas Denysenko provides a balanced and comprehensive analysis of this history from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research, Denysenko's study examines the dynamics of church and state that complicate attempts to restore an authentic Ukrainian religious identity in the contemporary Orthodox churches. An enhanced understanding of these separate identities and how they were forged could prove to be an important tool for resolving contemporary religious differences and revising ecclesial policies. This important study will be of interest to historians of the church, specialists of former Soviet countries, and general readers interested in the history of the Orthodox Church.

Modern worship leaders are restless. They have inherited a model of leadership that equates leading worship with being a rock star. But leading worship is more than a performance, it's about shaping souls and making disciples. Every worship leader is really a pastor. The Worship Pastor is a practical and biblical introduction to this essential pastoral role. Filled with engaging, illustrative stories it is organized to address questions of theory and practice, striving to balance conversational accessibility with informed instruction. Part One presents a series of evocative "vignettes"--intriguing and descriptive titles and metaphors of who a Worship Pastor is and what he or she does. It shows the Worship Pastor as Church-Lover, Disciple Maker, Corporate Mystic, and Doxological Philosopher. Part Two covers specific roles related to ministry within the worship service itself--the Worship Pastor as Theological Dietician, Caregiver, Mortician, Emotional Shepherd, War General, Prophetic Guardian, Missional Historian, and Liturgical Architect. Part Three looks at ministry beyond the worship service--the Worship Pastor as Visionary Teacher, Evangelist, Artist Chaplain, and Team Leader. While some worship leaders are eager to embrace their pastoral role, many are lost and confused or lack the resources of time or money to figure out what this role looks like. Pastor Zac Hicks gives us a clear guide to leading worship, one that takes the pastoral call seriously.

Recent events in Ukraine and Russia and the subsequent incorporation of Crimea into the Russian state, with the support of some circles of inhabitants of the peninsula, have shown that the desire of people to belong to the Western part of Europe should not automatically be assumed. Discussing different perceptions of the Ukrainian-Russian war in neighbouring countries, this book offers an analysis of the conflicts and issues connected with the shifting of the border regions of Russia and Ukraine to show how ’material’ and ’psychological’ borders are never completely stable ideas. The contributors – historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists from across Europe – use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to explore the different national and transnational perceptions of a possible future role for Russia.

How did religion contribute to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Heated disputes and alienation among Orthodox Christians in Ukraine and Russia contributed to Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book examines attempts from the early twentieth century to the present day to liberate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russian control. It explores the causes of bitter alienation, Russia’s use of soft power to maintain control, the development of hate speech used to discriminate against independent-minded Ukrainians, and the transition from soft to hard power from 2014 to the present.

The book argues that religion is a system of significant meanings that have an impact on other systems and spheres of social life, including cultural memory. The editors call for a postsecular turn in memory studies which would provide a more reflective and meaningful approach to the constant interplay between the religious and the secular. This opens up new perspectives on the intersection of memory and religion and helps memory scholars become more aware of the religious roots of the language they are using in their studies of memory. By drawing on examples from different parts of the world, the contributors to this volume explain how the interactions between the religious and the secular produce new memory forms and content in the heterogenous societies of the present-day world. These analyzed cases demonstrate that religion has a significant impact on cultural memory, family memory and the contemporary politics of history in secularized societies. At the same time, politics, grassroots movements and different secular agents and processes have so much influence on the formation of memory by religious actors that even religious, ecclesiastic and confessional memories are affected by the secular. This volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, religious studies and history.

Dispatches on nationalism and religion As an insider to church politics and a scholar of contemporary Orthodoxy, Cyril Hovorun outlines forms of political orthodoxy in Orthodox churches, past and present. Hovorun draws a big picture of religion being politicized and even weaponized. While Political Orthodoxies assesses phenomena such as nationalism and anti-Semitism, both widely associated with Eastern Christianity, Hovorun focuses on the theological underpinnings of the culture wars waged in eastern and southern Europe. The issues in these wars include monarchy and democracy, Orientalism and Occidentalism, canonical territory, and autocephaly. Wrought with peril, Orthodox culture wars have proven to turn toward bloody conflict, such as in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Accordingly, this book explains the aggressive behavior of Russia toward its neighbors and the West from a religious standpoint. The spiritual revival of Orthodoxy after the collapse of Communism made the Orthodox church in Russia, among other things, an influential political protagonist, which in some cases goes ahead of the Kremlin. Following his identification and analysis, Hovorun suggests ways to bring political Orthodoxy back to the apostolic and patristic track.

What are the reasons behind, and trajectories of, the rapid cultural changes in Ukraine since 2013? This volume highlights: the role of the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian-Ukrainian war in the formation of Ukrainian civil society; the forms of warfare waged by Moscow against Kyiv, including information and religious wars; Ukrainian and Russian identities and cultural realignment; sources of destabilization in Ukraine and beyond; memory politics and Russian foreign policies; the Kremlin’s geopolitical goals in its 'near abroad'; and factors determining Ukraine’s future and survival in a state of war. The studies included in this collection illuminate the growing gap between the political and social systems of Ukraine and Russia. The anthology illustrates how the Ukrainian revolution of 2013–2014, Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have altered the post-Cold War political landscape and, with it, the regional and global power and security dynamics.