How the Russian Orthodox Church Preserves International Sympathies for Russia’s War Against Ukraine

Regina Elsner is a professor of Eastern Churches and Ecumenical Theology at the Catholic-Theological Faculty at the University of Münster.

For the Christian world, religious legitimation of military aggression has become increasingly untenable, particularly after German Protestant and Catholic representatives stood on the side of Hitler’s warfare. Decades of theological engagement, reconciliation, and ecumenical dialogue followed the World Council of Church’s 1948 assertion that “war is contrary to the will of God,” and churches have since published countless documents  positioning themselves as the vanguards of justice, peace, and preservation of God’s creation.

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A Moralist International Under Arms? Russia’s Role in the Global Culture Wars, Prior to and During Its War With Ukraine

Kristina Stoeckl is a full professor of sociology at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome.

In the decade preceding Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, from roughly 2012 until 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian politicians, state diplomats, and civil society organizations financed by Kremlin- or church-affiliated entrepreneurs worked in unison to create the image of Russia as the defender of “traditional values” in Europe and in the world.

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Religious Conservatism in War-Time “Culture Wars”: Does the Same Stance on Values Represent an Elective Affinity with the Geopolitical Agenda of the Russian Federation?

Alar Kilp is a lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Tartu.

When Churches in Central and Eastern European countries take conservative positions (either alone or jointly in the form of all-Church councils) on “culture wars”[1] values relative to family and reproductive issues as well as sexual and gender identity, the overlap with “traditional values” promoted and weaponized by the Kremlin—which includes both Russia’s political leadership and the Patriarchate of Moscow—is often obvious.

In Russia, the promotion of traditional values has an “elective affinity” relationship, where conservative positions promoted by a religious actor (the Russian Orthodox Church) and the geopolitical agenda of the Russian Federation can intuitively and coherently be associated with each other in the way Max Weber used the term elective affinity (Wahlverwandtschaft) for the perceived associations between economic behavior and religious doctrine.

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