The Russian Orthodox church and WCC

There is an ongoing conversation about the relationship between the World Council of Churches and the Russian Orthodox Church. The issue at stake is the standpoint of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill of Moscow, when it concerns the war in Ukraine. The war started already in 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. It exploded with the full-scale invasion that started earlier this year. As far as I have understood, Kirill is giving his blessings to this. The invasion started 24 February and three days thereafter Kirill wrote on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Today we lift up a special prayer for His Beatitude Onuphry, for our Church and for our devout faithful. May the Lord preserve the Russian land. When I say “Russian”, I use the ancient expression from “A Tale of Bygone Years” - “Wherefrom has the Russian land come”, the land which now includes Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and other tribes and peoples. That the Lord may protect the Russian land against external enemies, against internal disorders, that the unity of our Church may strengthen and that by God’s mercy all the temptations, diabolical attacks, provocations may retreat and that our devout people in Ukraine may enjoy peace and tranquillity - these are our prayers today. (My bold text).

Notice how Kirill defines Russia. Both Ukraine and Belarus is part of Russia according to Kirill. He prays for Onuphry, he leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. But Onuphry had already on 24 February appealed to Putin and asked him to immediately end the “fratricidal war”. This is read on the website of the WCC.

The war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy /…/ Such a war has no excuse, neither from God, nor from people.

The acting General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Fr Ioan Sauca, wrote to Kirill on 2 March and asked him to

… intervene and mediate with the authorities to stop this war …

In a letter dated 11 March Kirill answers in summary that the West is to blame:

This tragic conflict has become a part of the large-scale geopolitical strategy aimed, first and foremost, at weakening Russia.

There are a number of voices that suggest that the WCC should be more vocal and even expel the Russian Orthodox Church from the Council. One such voice is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The Tablet cites him:

When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches of any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches do have the right to raise the question.

But there are still those who suggest that the WCC should continue with its diplomacy:

I believe that the WCC needs to bring everyone together, however sharply opposed they may be. The heated debate that is bound to take place is surely much more likely to lead to change than expulsion and isolation will.

This is said by Jonathan Edwards, a former general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, according to Premier Christianity magazine (The UK's leading Christian magazine).

Also, in Sweden there are different views on this. Should the WCC expel the Russian Orthodox Church or not? Yesterday I listened to Professor Cyril Hovorun at the Stockholm Shcool of Theology, who is an orthodox priest. He was very vocal about this and said that the WCC has fallen behind. He described how Pope Francis more actively has raised his voice. This he said, when the ecumenical leadership of both the Christian Council of Sweden and the Swedish Mission Council were gathered in Stockholm for their Annual General Meetings. 

My suggestion is that we could look at how global Christian networks acted during apartheid. The dominant white, reformed church of South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) left the WCC after the Cottesloe consultation in 1960. But with the white Lutheran churches the situation was different. When the Sixth Lutheran World Federation Assembly took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1977 the Assembly resolved that

… the racial separation of the church in Southern Africa constituted a status confessionis or a matter on which there was to be no discussion.

But the white, Lutheran churches were only suspended at the Seventh Assembly in Budapest 1984. Between the two assemblies the those member churches were given a chance to change. But they did not and subsequently they were suspended. I have written about this in an article. The link is here.

In this way the WCC could make a strong resolution against the Russian Orthodox Church later this year but keep a door open for talks. But the time before the Eleventh Assembly in Karlsruhe is short. There needs to be a thorough theological conversation that undergirds such a move. But I guess that there are systematic theologians in a number of member churches who would be willing to work with this. To start with severel orthodox theologians have published extensively on this.

What I found encouraging in the LWF decision from Budapest is the commitment to continue to pray for the suspended churches. Yes, on one crucial point they had left the Christian doctrine, but they were still Christians. This is important. We need to be able to condemn what is evil but still see the other person.