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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Of course, many Christians in the US celebrated Easter last Sunday. For those in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it's coming up this Sunday. That most celebratory of Christian holidays has a level of tension this year, as we've already said, especially in the Russian Orthodox Church, which has many followers in Ukraine. The leader or patriarch of the Russian Church is very much aligned with Vladimir Putin and his pronouncements of support have led to almost 300 Russian Orthodox priests and deacons signing a letter calling for peace and over 300 Ukrainian Orthodox priests to petition the Eastern Orthodox leadership for Kirill's ouster, that leader of the Russian Church who's aligned with Putin.

To talk about the role religion has played in this conflict and to take your calls if we have Eastern Orthodox listeners right now, I'm joined by Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post Foreign Affairs columnist and author of their Today's WorldView newsletter, where he has written a column titled The Christian Nationalism Behind Putin's War. Hi, Ishaan, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ishaan Tharoor: Brian, it's great to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you are a member of an Eastern Orthodox or especially Russian Orthodox affiliated congregation caught up in this geopolitical struggle and you want to share your thoughts about the holiday or the conflict or what action you or your congregation is taking in response to the war, our phones are open explicitly for you right now at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Ishaan, for people who haven't seen or heard this story yet, how supportive of the invasion of Ukraine has the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church been? He's known as Patriarch Kirill. Am I saying the name right?

Ishaan Tharoor: I believe so. I'm not a Russian speaker myself, but I think that sounds about right. Patriarch Kirill, you should really look at him as an extension of the Putin regime. Of course, during the Soviet era, the church was suppressed in many ways. Now, as Russia has emerged as this kind of revanchist power on the world stage, the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow, under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill has functioned in many ways as an extension of the Putin regime. It has operated hand and glove with Putin ideologically.

The major event that triggered a lot of the conversations around this was a sermon that Patriarch Kirill delivered at the beginning of the Orthodox Lent on March 6th, where he described the war effort in Ukraine, in metaphysical terms, as this project of salvation for ethnic Russians. He endorsed it wholeheartedly. He even framed it as part of this much larger struggle against liberal values, against LGBT rights, against his whole suite of concerns that have been articulated over time by the Russian Orthodox Church in ways that are very striking. You can map along the rightward turn of certain religious communities in America as well onto this.

That have been also very striking the sense that you see a very clear opposition between the Russian Orthodox Church and, say, the rhetoric coming out of the Vatican with Pope Francis or even the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, the other really powerful center of Orthodox Christianity in what's now Turkey. There's a really interesting set of pillars that have been constructed and tensions that emerge and that they map on to the geopolitical tensions of the Ukraine conflict as well.

Brian Lehrer: Patriarch Kirill is known for promoting what he calls Russian World based on the story of the founding of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 10th Century in Kyiv, I'm seeing. What does he mean by Russian World?

Ishaan Tharoor: This is a narrative of the Russkiy Mir, Russian World. This is the guiding ideology of the Putin project right now. Patriarch Kirill is seen as somebody who has really propagated it quite intensely. Now, this founding origin of Russian Orthodox Christianity goes back to the 10th Century when this warrior prince of the Kievan Rus' was in Crimea converted to Orthodox Christianity, married a Byzantine princess.

That is the founding story of Orthodox Christianity and what's now Russia, but also Ukraine, also Belarus. For people like Putin, for people like Patriarch Kirill, this is a moment that founds not just the Russian nation but indicates how what is now Ukraine, what is now Belarus are really just part of the same founding story. The rhetoric that Patriarch Kirill has used as not only do they share a founding moment but they share a historical destiny.

Brian Lehrer: Putin uses that religious narrative and religious history to back himself up when he says Ukraine doesn't exist as a separate nation?

Ishaan Tharoor: Yes, to indicate that Ukraine is essentially a part of the same Russian World project as the rest of the Russian Republics. You looked at the 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Sochi, there's a whole tableau of this moment of conversion in Crimea. This is something that they've been signaling for some time. Of course, you had ecumenical blessings for the Crimean invasion, you had Patriarch Kirill and his lieutenants blessing the Russian invasion of Syria. There's always been at least in the last decade and a half, a very clear synergy between the political aspirations and projects of the Kremlin, and the more philosophical ideological positioning of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Debbie in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi, Debbie, thanks for calling in.

Debbie: Hi, thank you for taking my call. It's holy week for the Eastern Orthodox people. I'm worried a little bit about a schism within the Orthodox Church, within the various segments, I guess, of the Orthodox Church because our Patriarch Bartholomew recognized the Ukrainian Orthodox Church about four years ago. He was targeted by the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of that. Now with the current situation, there might be a worst schism within Orthodoxy. It's worrying. The bottom line is that it's not about the religion, it's that people are losing their lives. Whatever happens church-wise happens, but at the end of the day, this is a war, and it's brutal and it's horrible. We just pray for the Ukrainian people, no matter what religion we are. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Debbie, if I can ask, if you're still there, is their a theological basis for the potential schism or is it just support Russia versus support Ukraine?

Debbie: No, it's political. As we all know, church and politics do mix, unfortunately. I believe it is totally political.

Brian Lehrer: I've never known this side in this country.

[laughs]

Debbie: Never, right? It exists everywhere, unfortunately. I do believe it's totally political, it has nothing to do with God or Jesus or anything else. It's just sad. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Alexander in Stoneybrook, you're on WNYC. Hello, Alexander.

Alexander: Hi, Brian. Thanks a lot for taking my call. My parents are actually in Ukraine right now. They're about to celebrate Easter. They're refugees and they're currently in Lviv. It's really striking that the blessing to attack other members of the Orthodox religion was given by the Russian Orthodox Church. There's an interesting angle to that is that Christianity came to Ukrainian first and after it was spread out and eventually ended up in region which is right now Russia.

At the same time, what Putin is trying to do, he's trying to appropriate that religion, because he's building the statue of St Volodimir who brought the Christianity to Ukraine and trying to say, well, Putin is Volodimir and he is Volodimir rich, and he is doubly blessed, and he is spreading Christianity to the outskirts of Russia. It's really hypocrisy in many ways. It's really sad that it's other Orthodox Christians are suffering because of the blessing of the Patriarch Kirill.

Brian Lehrer: Alexander, thank you for raising your voice. I hope your parents in Ukraine and anyone else you know are okay. Stick one more in the set. Gregory in Glen Ridge, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gregory.

Gregory: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I've enjoyed listening to how the different listeners are talking about how in Ukraine and also in the United States in Ukrainian populations, we have Ukrainian orthodoxy. Roughly 30ish years ago when Ukraine became independent, I was at a point in my life where my grandparents who were still alive at the time, raised me in the Russian Orthodox Church, but they made the decision because of political reasons from that time, to join a Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

As the previous caller said, we've only been acknowledged as a legitimate church quite recently. There's a sense of nationalism in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church where there's a direct link to the people of Ukraine, and not only what they're going through now but what they've gone through historically, with I hate to say the word, genocide in that context, where they were starving the people of Ukraine. I'm very proud that the Ukrainian Orthodox individuals here in the United States, even prior to this have been supporting Ukraine in every way that you can imagine between food and sending articles of clothing, hosting families, going to visit, doing community service when they visit. It's really amazing to see.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that story. I appreciate your call. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. It's two minutes to 11:00 and a few more minutes with Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist and author of their Today's WorldView newsletter where he's written a column titled The Christian Nationalism behind Putin's War. Ishaan, what were you thinking as you listened to that set of Eastern Orthodox callers? Anything in particular to any one of them?

Ishaan Tharoor: No. They're all such interesting and informed comments. My heart goes out to those whose families are commemorating this Holy Week in such adverse and terrifying circumstances, I'm sure. The politics behind the schism is quite interesting, and the schism accelerated in 2014. In some ways, this is a very slow rolling schism that stretches back centuries. In other ways, it's a much more recent manifestation. If you look at Ukraine right now, I would say they're roughly around 11,000 to 12,000 parishes that still look to the Russian Orthodox Church, the patriarchy in Moscow.

Now I think they're close to 7,000 that have had been independent and since 2018, as that caller said, when the Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul in Constantinople gave the stamp of legitimacy to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, there are 7,000 parishes that are now formally independent or part of the Ukrainian separate tradition. The animosity between Bartholomew and Kirill has been one of the subplots to what we're seeing right now.

Brian Lehrer: Are there Russian Orthodox aligned churches in other countries, including this one? Are churches outside the region divided?

Ishaan Tharoor: I would assume so. I think there you have a whole spread of them in the post-Soviet world, in the Baltic States, and elsewhere, but you find in many of these places that the priests and those who are preaching and delivering sermons are not echoing the words of Kirill. I think what he has said has been shocking to many, perhaps not to a majority in Russia, or even in some of the Russian Orthodox churches in Ukraine, but certainly it has set up a bomb and has really underscored the politicization of the Russian Orthodox Church in its current manifestation.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more call. Mike in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mike.

Mike: Hello, Brian. It's nice to talk to you. I offer a little bit of a different perspective on things. I am from both nationalities, Russian and Ukrainian. Growing up in a home with those sorts of divisions, it occurred to me or it was obvious to me and my siblings, that the Ukrainian side of our family was always much more open and integrated into American life and the Russian side was always much more conservative and much less apt to embrace change, whereas the Ukrainian side really was more Western, to use it another analogy. All of this doesn't really surprise me at all. I think many people who have shared my experience of that dual nationality would have experienced very much a similar type of thing.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find any culture war aspect to this division? We touched on before and we'll talk about it a little more before we run out of time, the anti-LGBTQ test in the Russian Orthodox Church, less so maybe in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Are you experiencing anything like that?

Mike: Absolutely. While neither tradition has really embraced the LGBTQ movement, certainly my experience is that there is much less rejection and much less homophobia on the Ukrainian side than on the Russian side, certainly.

Brian Lehrer: Mike, thank you very much. To touch on this a little bit more deeply, Ishaan, you quoted a sermon that Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, gave in March soon after the invasion began, in which he said, "Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order, a pass to that happy world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false freedom. Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple, and at the same time, terrible. It is the gay pride parade." Oh, my goodness, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church said that.

Ishaan Tharoor: It's incredible, but it is in keeping with their rhetoric and their ideology that they've been propagating for quite some time now, which is unlike the direction with which Pope Francis is leading the Vatican, and even the direction with which Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul is directing his church, which is toward a more friendly, you could say more liberal approach to matters, opposed to nationalism, in favor of climate action, a much more integrated open-minded approach to religion. The Russian Orthodox Church under Kirill is this real font of illiberal, frankly, right-wing nationalistic ideology.

In many ways, if you listen to their pronouncements, they could be said by someone like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a much more secular context. They see themselves as this oppositional flank in the religious community that is standing a fort these trends. One of Patriarch Kirill's lieutenants once said that they're opposed to both secularization and rationalization. They really see themselves fighting the tide of the modern world in some way. That does dovetail with Putin's own revenge of history political project. He refuses to accept the end of the Cold War, he refuses to accept Russia's borders as they are.

Frankly, this is appealing not just to certain people in Russia, but also to a whole wing of Western politics, whether it's here or in parts of Europe, whether it's sympathy to these the liberal visions of the world, whether it's sympathy to those who would stand up to the EU and NATO and so forth. It is part of a culture war, it is part of a global culture war, or at least a Western culture war, and it's really quite fascinating how it's tracking on to a hard conflict where people are dying at this time.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, we know that US conservative evangelicals have supported Putin over that issue, but are divided over given the brutality of the attack. Franklin Graham, for example, that very conservative evangelical leader has said he doesn't support the invasion despite his affinity for Putin's religious stance. I'm just curious if you think even though you're a foreign affairs columnist if this split is likely to affect Republican politics here viz-a-viz the war.

Ishaan Tharoor: I think it's awkward for a lot of people here. It's awkward for a lot of people on the far right in Europe. Marine Le Pen who's running for election in Sunday in France has been saddled with her taint and her association with Putin, but at the same time, we've seen that the tug of domestic politics, the animosities of domestic culture wars, usually went out over these awkward foreign entanglements.

Brian Lehrer: Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist and author of their Today's WorldView newsletter, always great to have you on. Good conversation. Thank you very much.

Ishaan Tharoor: Always great to be with you, Brian.

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