THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND THE CRISIS OF ECCLESIOLOGY: From Russkii Mir to a “Suffering Ecclesiology”

Ioannis Lotsios

Abstract

The contemporary crisis within Eastern Orthodoxy cannot be adequately understood merely as an institutional dispute between ecclesiastical jurisdictions, nor can it be reduced to the questions of Ukraine, autocephaly, or canonical territory. Beneath these controversies lies a more fundamental ecclesiological question concerning the relationship between the Church, nation, culture, history, territory, and political power. This article examines the contemporary Russian Orthodox ecclesiological paradigm through the concept of Russkii Mir, or the “Russian World,” arguing that the significance of this concept extends beyond political ideology into the theological construction of ecclesial identity. The article maintains that when historical memory, cultural affinity, national identity, and geopolitical space are transformed into ecclesiological categories, the catholicity and synodality of the Church are placed under considerable strain. Particular attention is given to the Ukrainian ecclesiastical question, the concept of canonical territory, the relationship between ecclesiastical and geopolitical geography, and the broader phenomenon of Orthodox religious nationalism. The study engages both critical scholarship associated with the Volos Academy for Theological Studies and official ecclesiastical documents issued by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It argues that the disagreement between Moscow and Constantinople should not be interpreted solely as a conflict of jurisdictions but as a confrontation between competing ecclesiological conceptions of territory, authority, and catholicity. The article proposes the notion of a “suffering ecclesiology” as an analytical category for describing an ecclesial reality that remains sacramentally and institutionally alive while experiencing a profound tension between catholic ecclesial identity and national-civilizational self-understanding. The argument is not that the Russian Orthodox Church has ceased to be Orthodox, nor that Russian believers should be identified with political ideology. Rather, the claim is that certain contemporary forms of Russian ecclesiological self-presentation exhibit symptoms of an ecclesiological pathology that calls for theological discernment, renewed synodality, and ultimately healing.

Keywords

Russian Orthodox Church; Russkii Mir; Russian World; ecclesiology; Orthodox Christianity; religious nationalism; ethnophyletism; canonical territory; Ukraine; autocephaly; ecclesiastical diplomacy; geopolitics; synodality; catholicity; political theology; civilizational identity; suffering ecclesiology.

I. From Historical Memory to Civilizational Ecclesiology

The contemporary crisis within Eastern Orthodoxy is frequently described as a conflict between Moscow and Constantinople, a dispute concerning Ukraine, or a disagreement over the canonical legitimacy of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Such descriptions are not incorrect, but they remain incomplete. They identify the institutional manifestation of the crisis without fully addressing its theological depth. The more fundamental question concerns the manner in which ecclesial identity is constructed when historical memory, national belonging, cultural affinity, territorial claims, and geopolitical narratives begin to converge. The central issue is therefore not simply who possesses jurisdiction over a particular territory, but what understanding of the Church makes such a claim possible and how far historical and geopolitical categories can legitimately determine ecclesiological consciousness.

The Orthodox Church has never existed outside history and culture. The emergence of distinctive Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Antiochian, Ukrainian, and other traditions demonstrates that Christianity does not abolish historical particularity. The Gospel enters concrete cultures, languages, societies, and histories. The existence of a Russian Orthodox tradition is consequently neither problematic nor exceptional. Russian liturgical, theological, monastic, missionary, and spiritual traditions constitute an important part of the historical patrimony of worldwide Orthodoxy. The theological problem begins at a different point: when a particular culture ceases to be understood as the historical context within which the Church lives and becomes instead the principle according to which ecclesial belonging, territorial legitimacy, and ecclesiastical authority are defined.

This distinction is indispensable for the interpretation of Russkii Mir. In its broad cultural sense, the “Russian World” can describe a linguistic, literary, historical, and spiritual space extending beyond the political boundaries of the Russian Federation. Such cultural relationships are not inherently objectionable. Russian literature, language, music, theology, spirituality, and ecclesiastical history have exercised influence far beyond the borders of the contemporary Russian state. The difficulty arises when the cultural space is transformed into a civilizational project and, subsequently, into an ecclesiological paradigm.

The 2022 “Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ (Russkii Mir) Teaching,” coordinated by Brandon Gallaher and Pantelis Kalaitzidis and published in Mission Studies, is particularly important in this regard. The declaration explicitly addressed the relationship between the Russkii Mir ideology, ethnophyletism, nationalism, and the war in Ukraine, presenting the issue not merely as a political controversy but as a theological challenge to Orthodox ecclesiology.¹ The declaration is significant precisely because it identifies the point at which a political and civilizational concept can become a theological claim.

The question, therefore, is not whether Russian culture exists or whether Russian Christians possess a legitimate historical identity. They unquestionably do. The question is whether such identity can acquire an ecclesiological absolutism. A civilization, a nation, a language, or a historical memory cannot, in themselves, constitute the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, and its catholicity cannot be identified with the geographical or cultural extension of any particular civilization.

This distinction becomes especially important when the historical memory of Kyivan Christianity is invoked in contemporary ecclesiastical debates. The Christianisation of Kyiv, the baptism associated with Prince Vladimir, and the subsequent development of Orthodox Christianity among the East Slavic peoples constitute an indispensable part of Orthodox historical consciousness. Yet there is a fundamental distinction between historical memory and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. A common Christian origin can create a profound spiritual relationship without necessarily establishing an eternal and immutable jurisdictional claim.

The problem can therefore be formulated as follows: historical memory may establish spiritual kinship, but it cannot by itself establish an immutable ecclesiastical jurisdiction. History is indispensable to the Church, but history cannot become an absolute principle of ecclesial ownership. If every historical jurisdiction were permanently irreversible, the development of the Local Churches throughout Orthodox history would become almost impossible to explain.

The Ukrainian case brings this problem into particularly sharp focus. Competing narratives concerning Kyiv, Rus’, baptism, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and national identity have become intertwined. What was once principally a question of historical memory has increasingly become a question of contemporary ecclesiastical entitlement. The crucial theological issue is consequently not whether Moscow has historical relationships with Ukraine. It unquestionably does. The more difficult question is whether historical relationship necessarily entails permanent jurisdiction.

This question cannot be answered through historical argument alone. Historical documents are essential, but ecclesiology must also consider the living reality of ecclesial communities and the principles by which the Church understands communion, jurisdiction, and local self-government. The very history of Orthodoxy demonstrates that ecclesiastical boundaries have changed in response to political, social, demographic, and ecclesial developments.

The concept of canonical territory is therefore particularly revealing. The Orthodox Church necessarily possesses a geographical dimension. Dioceses and Local Churches require geographical structures, and canonical order cannot exist without some conception of territorial responsibility. The difficulty arises when canonical territory is interpreted as a form of permanent civilizational sovereignty. Johannes Oeldemann’s study of the concept of canonical territory in the Russian Orthodox Church demonstrates the significance of ecclesial space within Russian Orthodox historical consciousness and its relationship to the broader cultural idea of “Holy Russia.”²

The distinction between canonical geography and geopolitical geography must consequently be maintained with precision. Canonical territory is an ecclesiastical category; geopolitical territory is a political category. They may coincide historically, but they cannot be identified conceptually. When canonical geography becomes indistinguishable from geopolitical geography, ecclesiology risks becoming a theological reproduction of political geography.

The official documents of the Russian Orthodox Church are important evidence in this regard. The current Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church states that its jurisdiction extends to Orthodox Christians living within what it calls the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church, explicitly including the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and a number of other states and territories.³ This does not, by itself, settle the theological dispute concerning jurisdiction, but it provides indispensable primary evidence for understanding the institutional self-conception of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The significance of the formulation lies precisely in the way it constructs ecclesiastical space. The category of canonical territory is not merely geographical. It represents a theological and institutional claim concerning the continuing unity of communities distributed across multiple sovereign states. The fact that this ecclesiastical space extends beyond the borders of the Russian Federation means that the Russian Orthodox Church cannot be analysed simply as a national church in the conventional sense. It is a transnational ecclesiastical structure. Yet this transnational character creates a second question: when does transnational ecclesial communion become civilizational jurisdiction?

This is one of the central tensions of Russkii Mir. The Russian World discourse can be interpreted as an attempt to articulate a transnational cultural and spiritual identity. Yet when this identity is coupled with a common political centre, a common ecclesiastical centre, and a shared civilizational narrative, the boundaries between culture, Church, and geopolitics become increasingly unstable. The ecclesiological danger lies not in transnationality itself but in the sacralisation of a particular transnational political-cultural space.

The issue therefore reaches beyond the category of nationalism. It concerns what might be called civilizational ecclesiology: the tendency to imagine the Church as the spiritual expression or institutional guardian of a particular civilization. Such a model creates a serious tension with the catholicity of the Church when a particular civilization ceases to function as a historical context and becomes a normative principle of ecclesial identity.. The Church may sanctify cultures; it cannot be subordinated to a civilization.

II. Ethnophyletism, Canonical Territory, and the Ukrainian Test

The problem becomes clearer when placed within the longer history of Orthodox reflection on nationalism. The Council of Constantinople of 1872 condemned phyletism, rejecting the principle that ethnic or national distinctions could constitute the organising principle of the Church.⁴ Although the immediate historical circumstances concerned the Bulgarian ecclesiastical question, the theological principle has a much wider application. The Church may exist within nations, but nationality cannot become the ultimate criterion of ecclesial identity.

This principle remains particularly relevant in the contemporary context because Orthodox Christianity possesses a strong historical relationship with national cultures. The national Church became, in several Orthodox societies, an important bearer of collective memory and identity, especially under Ottoman and post-Ottoman conditions. Yet precisely because this relationship is historically powerful, the theological distinction between nation and Church must remain explicit.

Pantelis Kalaitzidis has repeatedly argued that contemporary Orthodoxy must critically reassess its relationship with religious nationalism. His work in political theology emphasises the need for an Orthodox public theology capable of resisting both nostalgic sacralisation of the past and the reduction of Christian identity to political programmes.⁵ The importance of this perspective is that it shifts the debate from the question of whether religion is being used by politics to the deeper question of whether political categories have begun to reshape theological consciousness itself.

This distinction is decisive in the Russian case. It would be methodologically simplistic to describe the Russian Orthodox Church merely as an instrument of the Russian state. Such an interpretation would ignore the Church’s institutional history, sacramental life, monasticism, theological traditions, pastoral work, and internal structures. The more useful analytical concept is convergence. Ecclesiastical and political narratives can converge around themes such as Russian historical identity, traditional values, civilizational sovereignty, opposition to particular Western cultural models, and the interpretation of Ukraine.

Such convergence does not necessarily mean that the Church has ceased to possess institutional agency. It does, however, make the boundary between ecclesial witness and political ideology more difficult to maintain. The critical question is whether political concepts remain external categories employed by ecclesiastical actors or whether they become internal elements of ecclesiological self-understanding.

The relationship between Church and state is therefore crucial. The Orthodox concept of symphonia cannot legitimately be reduced to political subordination or theological identification with the state. Nor can it justify the sacralisation of political power. A Church that claims to speak for the Gospel must preserve the capacity to speak critically to political authority, including authority that presents itself as a defender of Christian civilisation.

The Ukrainian crisis is the most significant contemporary test of these principles. The Ecumenical Patriarchate formally granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in January 2019 through the Patriarchal and Synodal Tomos. The Tomos describes the Church as a local and autocephalous ecclesiastical body within the politically independent state of Ukraine and presents the act as part of the effort to heal long-standing divisions.⁶ The Russian Orthodox Church, by contrast, regards the intervention of Constantinople as an intrusion into its canonical territory and has articulated an alternative ecclesiological understanding of the events.⁷

The importance of these competing positions is not merely juridical. They reveal two different ways of conceptualising ecclesial space and authority. For Moscow, the historical continuity of the jurisdiction of the Russian Church is central. For Constantinople, the history of the Metropolis of Kyiv and the responsibility of the Ecumenical Throne toward ecclesiastical situations involving schism and division provide the basis for its action. The dispute is therefore not simply about territory. It concerns the meaning of territory within Orthodox ecclesiology.

The Russian Orthodox Church’s own 2023 document concerning the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople makes this particularly explicit. It presents the Ukrainian intervention as a distortion of Orthodox ecclesiology and insists on the equality and internal independence of the Local Orthodox Churches.⁸ The document is important not because it resolves the dispute, but because it demonstrates that the Moscow Patriarchate understands the Ukrainian issue through a comprehensive ecclesiological framework involving autocephaly, canonical territory, primacy, appeals, and the equality of Local Churches.

The existence of competing ecclesiological frameworks should therefore be acknowledged in any serious academic treatment. A journal-quality analysis cannot simply reproduce one side’s terminology as if it were neutral fact. The term “canonical territory,” for example, is itself part of the contested theological vocabulary. Moscow uses it as a central category of ecclesiastical order; Constantinople’s actions in Ukraine demonstrate a different understanding of the limits of that category.

This is why the Ukrainian question is so significant. It is a laboratory in which competing conceptions of Orthodox ecclesiology become visible. The issue is not simply whether one Patriarchate is “right” and another “wrong.” The deeper question is whether Orthodox ecclesiology possesses sufficiently developed mechanisms for adjudicating disputes concerning territory, autocephaly, appeals, and primacy without allowing those disputes to become geopolitical confrontations.

The question of autocephaly is especially important. Autocephaly is not simply political independence translated into ecclesiastical language. It is an ecclesiological form of self-government within the communion of the Orthodox Church. The 2019 Ukrainian Tomos itself emphasises the unity of the one Church while simultaneously recognising local and self-administered Churches.⁹ The theological principle is therefore not isolation but communion.

The problem emerges when autocephaly and sovereignty are conceptually equated. Political sovereignty is based upon territorial independence and state authority. Ecclesiastical autocephaly is based upon ecclesial self-government within the wider communion of Orthodoxy. The two may coincide historically, but they are not the same theological reality.

This distinction also clarifies why the concept of Russkii Mir is ecclesiologically problematic. If a political civilization possesses a common centre and a common ecclesiastical structure, the distinction between state sovereignty and ecclesial communion becomes blurred. The Church risks being interpreted as the spiritual infrastructure of a civilization.

The critique must, however, remain symmetrical. The existence of a Russian civilizational ecclesiology does not mean that other Orthodox Churches are immune from the same temptation. Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and other national traditions can also confuse cultural memory with ecclesial universality. The theological condemnation of ethnophyletism loses its meaning if it becomes a weapon directed selectively against others.

The contribution of the Volos Academy is important precisely because it frames the issue more universally. The Russkii Mir declaration associated with Gallaher and Kalaitzidis explicitly rejects the attribution of divine establishment, sacredness, or special status to any particular national or ethnic identity, whether Russian, Greek, Romanian, Ukrainian, or otherwise.¹⁰ This universal dimension is essential. The theological problem is not Russian identity as such; it is the sacralisation of national identity.

Ecclesiastical diplomacy must also be evaluated within this framework. Diplomatic relations between Churches are necessary, but ecclesiastical diplomacy cannot be reduced to the logic of international politics. The ultimate purpose of ecclesiastical diplomacy should be communion. When ecclesiastical acts are interpreted primarily through geopolitical categories, the Church’s public credibility suffers.

This becomes particularly relevant in local contexts. Ecclesiastical visits, commemorations, pilgrimages, and liturgical encounters may possess authentic spiritual significance while simultaneously acquiring diplomatic and geopolitical meanings. The case of Corfu, particularly in relation to the cult of Saint Spyridon and its wider Orthodox significance, should therefore be approached with methodological caution. The academic task is not to attribute geopolitical intention to every ecclesiastical action, but to analyse the multiple layers of meaning that ecclesiastical acts acquire within a divided Orthodox world.

The distinction between intention and reception is therefore essential. An ecclesiastical act may be pastoral in intention and geopolitical in reception. The latter does not necessarily invalidate the former, but it does require theological and institutional responsibility. If the same ecclesiastical principles appear to be applied differently depending upon political circumstances, questions of credibility inevitably arise.

The issue is therefore broader than Moscow and Constantinople. It concerns the institutional capacity of Orthodoxy to preserve a coherent distinction between ecclesial communion and political interest. If that distinction becomes unstable, the crisis moves from diplomacy into ecclesiology.

III. Toward a “Suffering Ecclesiology”

The preceding analysis suggests that the expression “politicisation of the Church” is insufficient to describe the depth of the contemporary Russian ecclesiological problem. Politicisation describes the influence of political power upon ecclesiastical life. What is at stake in the Russian case is potentially deeper: the transformation of ecclesiological categories themselves through the incorporation of national, civilizational, historical, and geopolitical concepts.

It is in this context that the concept of “suffering ecclesiology” may be proposed as an analytical category. The term is not intended as a dogmatic judgment or as a declaration that the Russian Orthodox Church has ceased to be a Church. Nor is it intended as a collective judgment upon Russian clergy or faithful. Rather, it describes an ecclesial condition in which sacramental, liturgical, and institutional life remains real and substantial while the relationship between catholic ecclesial identity and national-civilizational self-understanding becomes increasingly strained.

The language of suffering is deliberate. It allows the analysis to remain critical without becoming merely condemnatory. A living organism can suffer without ceasing to be alive. Similarly, an ecclesial body can retain its sacramental and institutional identity while simultaneously experiencing an internal pathology in its understanding of the relationship between Church, nation, territory, and political authority.

The pathology becomes visible when several distinctions are progressively blurred: nationality and catholicity, cultural affinity and ecclesial communion, historical memory and jurisdiction, canonical territory and geopolitical space, political sovereignty and ecclesial responsibility. None of these conceptual confusions needs to be absolute. The argument concerns a structural tendency within contemporary ecclesiological discourse.

The concept is especially useful because it permits a distinction between the Russian spiritual tradition and certain contemporary ideological constructions associated with it. Russian Orthodoxy cannot be reduced to the political theology of the contemporary Russian state. Nor can the spiritual heritage of Russian Christianity be dismissed because of the political use of Orthodox symbolism. Russian saints, theologians, monastics, missionaries, liturgical traditions, and spiritual writers belong to the wider patrimony of Orthodoxy. The critique therefore concerns not Russian Christianity itself but the transformation of Russian cultural and historical identity into a comprehensive ecclesiological and civilizational project.

The notion of suffering also prevents the analysis from becoming triumphalist. The purpose of ecclesiological critique cannot be the humiliation of another Local Church. It must be the recovery of communion. If the Orthodox Churches respond to one another merely through accusations and counter-accusations, the underlying ecclesiological problem will remain unresolved.

This is where synodality becomes indispensable. Synodality should not be understood merely as an administrative procedure. It is an expression of the Church’s communion. A Local Church cannot understand itself as an isolated ecclesiastical civilization because its very existence is relational. It exists in communion with other Churches. Consequently, the recovery of synodality requires mechanisms through which disagreements concerning territory, autocephaly, primacy, and jurisdiction can be addressed without becoming permanent geopolitical confrontations.

The Russian case also demonstrates the need for a more developed Orthodox political theology. Kalaitzidis has argued that Orthodox Christianity requires a theological vision capable of engaging political realities without reducing Christian public witness to nostalgic theocracy or political ideology.¹¹ This insight is particularly relevant to the present crisis. If Orthodoxy does not develop a sufficiently critical theological language for addressing the state, nationalism, civilization, sovereignty, and war, political concepts will inevitably occupy the empty space.

The theological alternative is not withdrawal from politics. The Church cannot simply abandon public life. The alternative is a political theology grounded in Eucharistic communion, eschatology, human dignity, justice, and the universal horizon of the Gospel. In such a framework, no state can claim absolute theological legitimacy, and no civilization can claim sacred status.

This is also why the concept of Russkii Mir deserves theological rather than merely political criticism. A civilizational project becomes problematic when it claims a sacred genealogy, a privileged spiritual territory, and an ecclesiastical structure corresponding to its geopolitical boundaries. At that point, civilization ceases to be a descriptive category and becomes a theological claim.

The central ecclesiological principle must therefore be restated: the Church can inhabit a civilization, but it cannot become the religious embodiment of that civilization. The Church can preserve historical memory, but it cannot transform memory into permanent ownership. The Church can possess geographical structures, but canonical territory cannot become an ecclesiastical equivalent of geopolitical sovereignty.

The Ukrainian crisis has made these distinctions impossible to ignore. The competing claims of Moscow and Constantinople reveal an Orthodox world in which the language of canonical territory, autocephaly, primacy, and historical jurisdiction is no longer sufficient to preserve communion. Each category has become contested, and each has acquired political significance. The result is a crisis that is simultaneously canonical, ecclesiological, diplomatic, and geopolitical.

Yet the crisis should not be understood solely as a failure. It may also become an opportunity for theological clarification. The Orthodox Churches are being forced to reconsider what constitutes a Local Church, what limits canonical territory, what autocephaly means, how primacy functions, and how the Church should relate to political power. These are not peripheral questions. They concern the architecture of contemporary Orthodox ecclesiology.

The final diagnosis, therefore, must be carefully formulated. It would be inaccurate to describe the Russian Orthodox Church simply as a “political Church.” It would also be theologically irresponsible to declare that the Church has ceased to be Orthodox merely because certain ecclesiastical narratives have converged with political and civilizational narratives. A more precise diagnosis is that certain contemporary forms of Russian ecclesiological self-understanding reveal the significant tensions within the ecclesiological self-understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church, tensions that may be described through the analytical category of a “suffering ecclesiology.”.

The adjective “suffering” is preferable to “collapsed.” It indicates that the ecclesial reality remains alive and therefore capable of healing. It also directs attention away from collective condemnation and toward theological diagnosis. The issue is not the rejection of Russian Christianity but the recovery of the distinction between Russian culture and the Church, Russian historical memory and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Russian civilizational identity and catholic Christian communion.

The implications extend beyond Russia. The Russian case is a test of the entire Orthodox ecclesiological imagination. Every Local Church is vulnerable to the temptation of converting historical identity into theological absoluteness. Every national tradition can become an idol if it is treated as the ultimate form of ecclesial belonging. Every Church must therefore ask whether its historical consciousness serves catholicity or competes with it.

The answer requires a return to the most basic ecclesiological distinction: the Church belongs to Christ. It does not belong to Russia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Constantinople, Moscow, or any other national or civilizational entity. Local Churches are genuinely local, but they are not autonomous civilizations. Their identity is constituted by communion.

The Church may have a culture, but it cannot become a culture. It may have a history, but history cannot become a permanent title of ownership. It may live within a nation, but it cannot be identified with the nation. It may engage political authority, but it cannot become a theological extension of geopolitical power.

When these distinctions are obscured, ecclesiology becomes ill. When they are restored, healing becomes possible.

The concept of “suffering ecclesiology” should therefore be understood not as a final condemnation but as a theological diagnosis. It identifies a wound in order to make healing conceivable. The Russian case demonstrates the consequences of allowing national, civilizational, and geopolitical categories to penetrate ecclesial self-understanding. Yet it also demonstrates that the crisis cannot be solved merely by defeating one ecclesiastical party or another. What is required is a renewed Orthodox ecclesiology capable of distinguishing communion from possession, catholicity from nationalism, historical memory from jurisdiction, and Christian witness from geopolitical ideology.

The ultimate alternative is therefore not between Moscow and Constantinople. It is between two different understandings of what the Church is. One understands the Church primarily as the catholic communion of the Body of Christ, within which diverse peoples and cultures participate without becoming absolute. The other risks understanding the Church through the boundaries of historical civilization, national identity, and geopolitical space.

The Russian Orthodox case is thus not merely a Russian problem. It is a test of whether Orthodoxy can remain genuinely catholic in an age of resurgent nationalism and civilizational politics. The challenge is not to abolish cultural identity but to relativise it within the larger mystery of the Church. The challenge is not to erase history but to prevent history from becoming ideology. The challenge is not to reject political engagement but to ensure that political engagement remains subordinate to the Gospel.

In this sense, the deepest question raised by the present crisis is remarkably simple: Can the Orthodox Church remain the Church of Christ when national and civilizational identities demand to become the principal language of ecclesial belonging?

The ecclesiological challenge, therefore, is to preserve the primacy of catholicity over nationality, communion over territorial possession, and the Gospel over geopolitical interest.

Otherwise, the Church does not cease to exist. It begins to suffer.

Notes

Brandon Gallaher and Pantelis Kalaitzidis, “A Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ (Russkii Mir) Teaching,” Mission Studies 39, no. 2 (2022): 269–276. The declaration was issued on the Sunday of Orthodoxy in March 2022 and explicitly addresses ethnophyletism, nationalism, and the theological claims associated with the Russkii Mir ideology.

Johannes Oeldemann, “The Concept of Canonical Territory in the Russian Orthodox Church,” in Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 229–236. Oeldemann specifically examines the ecclesial understanding of “space” in Russian Orthodox identity and its relation to the idea of “Holy Russia.”

Russian Orthodox Church, “I. General Provisions,” The Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church, Department for External Church Relations, sec. 3. The official text states that the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church extends to Orthodox Christians living in its “canonical territory,” explicitly listing Ukraine among the territories concerned.

Council of Constantinople, “Synodal Decree against Phyletism,” 1872. The decree condemned the principle of organising the Church according to racial or national distinctions. See also the historical text reproduced in Orthodox historical documentation.

Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology (Geneva: World Council of Churches Publications, 2012). Kalaitzidis argues for the development of a distinctive Orthodox political theology grounded in ecclesiology, Eucharistic community, and eschatological hope rather than in a nostalgic idealisation of a theocratic past.

Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine,” January 6, 2019. The Tomos presents the Ukrainian Church as an autocephalous local Church and explicitly situates its ecclesial self-government within the unity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

Russian Orthodox Church, “The Distortion of the Orthodox Doctrine of the Church in the Actions and Words of the Hierarchy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople,” document approved at the Episcopal Conference of the Russian Orthodox Church, July 19, 2023. The document presents the Moscow Patriarchate’s competing interpretation of canonical territory, autocephaly, and the authority of Constantinople.

Ibid. The document explicitly describes the Ukrainian intervention by Constantinople as a distortion of Orthodox ecclesiology and insists on the equality of the Local Orthodox Churches.

Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.” The document emphasises that the Church is one Body of Christ while also consisting of local and self-administered Churches.

Gallaher and Kalaitzidis, “A Declaration on the ‘Russian World’ (Russkii Mir) Teaching.” The declaration explicitly rejects attributing divine establishment, special sacredness, or divinely ordained status to any single national or ethnic identity.

Kalaitzidis, Orthodoxy and Political Theology. The work argues for an Orthodox political theology that is neither a nostalgic restoration of theocratic models nor a simple political programme, but one grounded in the Eucharistic community and the eschatological horizon of Christianity.

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