The Unholy War Heresies and Theological Errors in the Russian Orthodox Church’s Support for War

Abstract

It is difficult not to see how the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has taken the wrong side when it openly supported the war against Ukraine. But in so doing, ROC invited in some problematic and even heretical teachings. It embraced the heresy of (ethno-)phyletism, it combined ethnic nationalism with civilizational nationalism into a toxic mix, and it also violated its own social teaching that explicitly states that waging aggressive external war is one of the areas “in which the clergy and canonical church structures cannot support the state or cooperate with it.” Moreover, it has promoted and supported a political ideology that downplays the human dignity inherent to every living person. This paper will shortly explore each one of these theological transgressions and will conclude with some warnings that such ideas have a contagious potential that could easily spread to other countries in the region, with emphasis on Romania’s case.

Keywords

• ethno-phyletism
• human rights
• political religion
• ethnic and civilizational nationalism