Shrewd politicians “don’t do God,” but perhaps wise diplomats should. Certainly, that is what the state of Anglo-Russian relations suggests. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s chaotic visit to his Russian counterpart in December could hardly be counted a resounding success. Official state-to-state connections between London and Moscow are in tatters, as icy as during parts of the Cold War. But when it comes to communication between the countries’ religious leaders, a definite rapprochement is underway.
Patriarch Kirill made his first visit to Britain as head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2016, when he came to celebrate the 300th anniversary of a Russian church in London. Things went well. Kirill was granted an audience with the Queen. Skilfully, he asked to see her as the head of one church visiting the head of another: the monarch is technically at the helm of the Church of England. She was, apparently, also eager to see him and they had a half-hour meeting at Buckingham Palace. Moscow must have been delighted.
Then, in late 2017, came the return visit. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made a ground-breaking journey to Moscow for talks with Kirill, a trip I made with him. Its ostensible rationale was to underline the anguish of both churches concerning Christians in the Middle East, where hundreds of thousands have fled attacks and killings by Islamist extremists. It duly produced a call for world leaders to end the “mass killings, the barbaric destruction of churches, the desecration of holy sites and the mass expulsion of millions of people from their homes.” But it also did diplomatic work—acknowledging, indirectly, that Russia now plays a serious political and military role in the region, and that Russian Orthodoxy is the faith to which many Middle Eastern Christians are most closely aligned.
When Welby visited Russia, there was even the thought that he might call on Vladimir Putin. But the Russian president was not available: at the time he was meeting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, whom he has propped up with devastating effect since 2015, and then holding a summit with the presidents of Turkey and Iran to discuss Syria’s future.
Instead, the Archbishop was taken to the Martha and Mary nunnery in central Moscow, originally founded by Grand Duchess Elizabeth. She did much for orphans and the destitute, before being murdered after the 1917 revolution and later declared a saint. The Grand Duchess was not only the sister of the last tsar’s wife, but also Queen Victoria’s granddaughter—and she is thus a reminder of the deep links that have, through history, often transcended the ecclesiastical divisions of Christendom.
Schisms and wealth
Diplomacy always has its challenges, not least when it involves bridging ecclesiastical divides. The rupture between eastern and western Christianity is nearly 1,000 years old, having been formalised with the Great Schism of 1054. That makes it almost twice as old as the Catholic-Protestant division in the west. Although the origins of the 11th-century schism (should communion bread be leavened or not?) today seem peculiar, a millennium of institutional separation has entrenched differences of outlook.From the beginning—as indicated in its name—Christianity’s “Orthodox” wing inclines to continuity with the practice and doctrine of the earliest days of the Church. By contrast with the Church of England, the Russian Orthodox Church remains reliably conservative. It was fashioned by a Tsarist state in a society that in many respects long remained feudal. It was never reconciled, as the English Church was, to personal liberty and scientific progress. To devout Russians, these Enlightenment ideas are equivalent to radical French secularism, which they saw—and still see—as a slippery path to state atheism and communism.
And yet for all the differences, these two Christian churches retain spiritual connections. Indeed, the good works of Grand Duchess Elizabeth are commemorated in Westminster Abbey, where she is among prominent Christian martyrs whose names are engraved on a plaque.
You get the sense there is rarely the need to push the plate around, C of E-style, in order to get the roof fixed. Just five years after the Soviet collapse and the return of Church property confiscated by the communists, the patriarchate had collected a vast sum of money to rebuild a lavishly embellished replica of the main cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow. The 19th-century original, built to commemorate Russia’s victory over Napoleon, was destroyed on Stalin’s orders in 1931. The new building, consecrated in 1997, rising 103 metres, is the tallest Orthodox church in Russia.
A compact between Russian Church and Russian state underpins this renaissance. Putin has actively encouraged the Church to play a visible role in Russian public life. Patriarch Kirill is present at all important state occasions. Putin is photographed attending services in Moscow or around the country at Christmas and Easter. For his part, the Patriarch all but gave the Church’s official blessing to Putin’s re-election in 2012, and Kirill is on record as calling his rule a “miracle of God.”
For Putin, the Church is an essential part of his attempt to inculcate patriotic pride in Russia’s history and achievements. Indeed, at a meeting with foreign correspondents in Moscow some years ago, I asked the Russian president what role he saw for the Church in filling the void left by the collapse of Communism and in offering a framework of values to young Russians. “It is absolutely essential,” he said. “Religion plays a key role in upholding our society’s values, especially our Russian Orthodox Church—and also, of course, the Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish faith leaders,” he added hastily, very much as an afterthought.
For all the Church of England’s “establishment” in the British constitution, church and state are much cosier in Russia than in the UK. The Russian government has helped considerably in the rebuilding of the many churches left derelict or turned into barns or farm stores in communist times. Grants, labelled as funds for the preservation of historic monuments, have brought back a profusion of gleaming cupolas in city centres. Almost every village can now boast a freshly painted church.
Whether or not there is a quid pro quo, the Orthodox hierarchy can be relied on to uphold the Russian government’s main policies at home and abroad—no matter how controversial they may be to western observers. This is, perhaps, most obviously so in the Orthodox Church’s embrace of Moscow’s conservative social agenda on issues such as homosexuality, the role of women and individual liberty. But it is evident, too, in the strong political support it has offered Putin over his annexation of Crimea, and its broader context of the bitter quarrel with the west and the Ukrainians about who should hold sway in their country.
This part of the world is thorny territory for the patriarchate. Kiev was the place where the Russian Slavs originally adopted Christianity in 988AD. Ukraine is today religiously split, with much of the west being so-called “Eastern-rite Catholics,” who acknowledge the supremacy of Pope Francis even while following Orthodox rites. But there are also a substantial number of Russian Orthodox churches in the country. Since the fighting broke out between the pro-western Ukrainian government and pro-Moscow separatists in 2014, some of these churches have broken away to set up a separate Ukrainian Orthodox church.
This renegade church is not yet recognised by the 14 others in the global Orthodox community, and the Moscow patriarchate has filed lawsuits in Ukraine to stop the transfer of buildings, land, assets and congregations away from its control. So far, even when the patriarchate has won its cases, the judgment has not been enforced by the Ukrainian authorities.
During his visit, Welby unwittingly found himself caught in the quarrel. At the opening of the talks, held during a magnificent banquet laid on for the Anglican delegation, the Russian press and television cameras were allowed into the Danilovsky monastery, headquarters of the patriarchate, to record the meeting. Kirill took the chance to launch a vitriolic attack on the Ukrainians, accusing them of behaving like street mobs and bandits in trying to steal churches from the Moscow patriarchate, denouncing “young hotheads” behaving like thieves. “We never saw anything like this, even in Soviet times,” he said, as he moved to rally Orthodox believers around the world behind Moscow. Publicly, Welby diplomatically accepted the written account of the Ukrainian situation which Kirill pushed across the table to him, and promised to study the document. Privately, he might have wondered what he’d got himself into.
The virtue of steadfastness
In some ways, relations were more straightforward in Soviet days. Back then, the British knew about the restrictions imposed on Russian Christians, and knew that Church leaders were obliged in international meetings to give speeches supporting the Soviet line. The British tried to quietly cultivate links that would give the Russian Church more room to manoeuvre at home and abroad. For their part, the Orthodox hierarchy in the Soviet Union saw the Anglicans as potentially useful allies in their bitter rivalry with Rome. That struggle became much fiercer in the pontificate of John Paul II, who was seen by Moscow—not without reason—as the embodiment of Polish nationalism and instinctively suspicious of Russia. Relations with the Roman Catholic Church were cool, and the Pope was always rebuffed in his attempt to pay a papal visit to Russia.Since the fall of Communism, the Church of England has discreetly tried to nurture warmer relations with the Russian church, largely at the initiative of Richard Chartres, who as Bishop of London developed a scholarly interest in Orthodoxy and often attended Orthodox celebrations overseas.
But rapprochement has not been straightforward. For the Orthodox Church drew one big lesson from its repression under the communists: that only an unbending refusal to modify its beliefs and tenets would guarantee its survival, even though this had meant the sacrifice of many lives. Priests were arrested and killed in huge numbers. Indeed, pious Russians drew the same lesson from much older history. They remain much taken with the tale of a split in the mid-17th century, when many adherents refused to accept the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon, and a violent struggle ensued when the Old Believers fled into the wastes of Siberia to continue their adherence to the old ways. Steadfastness could almost qualify as an additional cardinal virtue.
At a time when western churches have been mired in quarrels over sexual mores, literal or liberal interpretations of the Bible, and the ordination of women, the Russian Church has thus stood firm against moral modernisation. During the trip, Kirill brought the contrast—and the resulting tension—to a head. He conceded to Welby that the Russian Church had not been free in Soviet times to criticise the government. But, he asked pointedly, weren’t the western churches now equally forced to bow to the forces of secularism, materialism and liberalism?
What makes this especially fraught for Welby is that some in the Orthodox Church are keen to align with conservatives in the diverse and turbulent Anglican Communion, of which he is the titular head—especially on the fraught questions of abortion and same-sex marriage. These include Metropolitan Hilarion, who is responsible for the Orthodox Church’s relations with other churches, and has vigorously opposed the ordination of women and especially the consecration of women bishops. He knows the divisions within the western churches well, speaking immaculate English and having completed a PhD at Oxford.
Trouble for Lambeth Palace
Closer alignment between the Russian Orthodox Church and parts of the Anglican Communion can only spell trouble for Lambeth Palace. The Communion is a spiritual union, with few institutional expressions. It encompasses some ultra-conservative African churches, as well as many decidedly liberal believers in the US Episcopal Church, and it is always a job to hold it together, even without any meddling from outside.Even within the Church of England itself, of course, there are many tricky divisions to manage. In a lecture to Russian trainee priests at a Moscow seminary, Welby explained in careful diplomatic language its awkward stance on same-sex marriage. It was, he said, a change that his church had not accepted. But he noted that in Britain today around 70 per cent of voters accept same-sex marriage. It was an issue, he suggested, that would remain controversial within the CoE for some time to come.
The church’s laboured position could not be easily conveyed even by the crisply articulate Welby. Nonetheless, he was able to obtain from Kirill a declaration that, while the Russian Orthodox Church could never condone “sin,” it agreed that gay people should not be subject to harassment or bullying. That was an important point for Lambeth Palace, which had been pressed by MPs and lobbyists to raise what the west sees as Russian homophobia.
Despite such tensions, both sides are eager to work together to make Christianity more central to their societies. And the Anglican Communion, Welby insisted, could still be a worthwhile ally. Figures may show very low church attendance in Britain, but in much of Africa Anglican attendances are strong and growing. Even in Britain itself, he saw something of a revival. The church has “planted” 1,300 new churches in city centres, he said, and it hopes to do the same again. It has a thriving charismatic group of believers, many of them of Caribbean or African origin.
One area where the Russians are keen to follow the Anglican example is in social and youth work. The Church of England has a long tradition in education. One in every four primary pupils in Britain is educated in a C of E primary school. The Anglican Church around the world devotes considerable resources to education, including in countries such as Pakistan, where 2.5m Christians—1.6 per cent of the population—now suffer considerable discrimination, but where the church still runs some of the best schools, attended by thousands of Muslim pupils.
Traditionally, the Orthodox Church has not been much engaged in such fields. Under the communists, the state pushed “scientific atheism” teaching; Church involvement in schooling or youth provision were off-limits. Today, with a different and faith-friendly regime in Moscow, the Church is beginning to reach out, albeit slowly, into education, youth work and provision for the poor. That Martha and Mary nunnery which Welby visited had been used as a cinema in Communist times, but has now been magnificently restored. It is again devoted to helping the vulnerable, and runs a nursery school for children with Down’s syndrome. They are taught and nursed by the nuns so that they can eventually be adopted—and most of them are. Welby was moved and impressed.
Wiser Orthodox heads will also want to learn how the C of E lost its grip on English society. At a parochial level, the Orthodox Church commands considerable respect for the pastoral work of its clergy. Its senior hierarchy, however, is less popular: there have been accusations of corruption. A recent poll suggests that while almost all ethnic Russians identify as Orthodox, they often do so as a marker of cultural identity. Far fewer are active Church members—much like, perhaps, the typical Englishman or woman in the mid-20th century, who was not especially religious but would nonetheless, when asked, identify as C of E.
Today’s Russian state, like its citizens, regards the Church principally as a guardian of Russian identity. It has disdain for other sects and Protestant denominations, especially those from the west, that have taken to proselytising vigorously in Russia. Since spring 2017, Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, have been outlawed as an “extremist” cult. Whatever Welby privately thought about this, he didn’t go to Moscow to proselytise, but to strengthen connections with another branch of Christianity. Despite the obvious difficulties, the visit went well and the Anglican delegation thought that Kirill had been warm, welcoming and surprisingly open.
When it comes to healing schisms, perhaps religious leaders have something to teach their political counterparts.
