Tangle of church and state roils Ukraine’s Orthodox parishes

Boris Kovalchuk arrived in this small agricultural village, about 30 miles from Kiev, straight out of the Kiev Spiritual Academy 19 years ago. Since then, he has ministered to the needs of local Orthodox believers as the local priest, maintaining a spiritual tradition that has held sway on this land for centuries.

But that tradition was thrown into disarray just a few months ago, with the creation of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in Kiev.

The new church, created on the basis of a charter granted by the patriarch in Constantinople and heavily backed by President Petro Poroshenko, is meant to reduce the influence of the traditional Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which owes spiritual allegiance to the patriarch in Moscow (UOC-MP). It’s an issue that is often discussed in the language of geopolitics and national aspirations, exacerbated over the past five years by Ukraine’s conflict with Russia.

But there are no Russians here in Pylypovychi, just a Ukrainian community of around 1,500 people that’s become emotionally divided over a question few here had ever thought about before, but has pitted neighbor against neighbor. Should the village’s little onion-domed church – its first since the Bolsheviks destroyed the previous one in 1932 – retain its traditional spiritual affiliation, or should it shift to

‘Without an independent church, the state can’t survive’The handmaiden of the stateCongregation vs. community‘There are no Russians here’