The lecture will examine the political theology/ecclesiology of the russkiy mir (the World of Rus), which legitimates the war of aggression against Ukraine as a “just war” in defense of the legitimate canonical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate over the territory and the people of Ukraine, as well as a metaphysical fight between good and evil fought by Holy Russia in defense of “traditional family values” against the decadent West. These monopolist claims of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine will be contrasted with the reality of the vibrant and solidaristic religious pluralism that one finds in Ukraine in the midst of war, which is exemplified by AUCCRO (All Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations) and is captured in the picture of Ukraine’s religious leaders visit to Pope Francis.
José Casanova is a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. He has an M.A. in Theology from the University of Innsbruck and a Ph.D in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, where he served as Professor of Sociology from 1987 to 2007. His book, Public Religions in the Modern World, (Chicago, 1994) has become a modern classic and has been translated into many European and non-European languages. Among his other publications, Global Religious and Secular Dynamics (Brill, 2019), collections of essays in German, Spanish and Ukrainian, and co-edited books with Thomas Banchoff, The Jesuits and Globalization (Georgetown UP, 2016) with Jocelyne Cesari, Islam, Gender and Democracy in Comparative Perspective (0xford, 2017), and with Peter Phan, Asian Catholicism and Globalization (Georgetown UP, forthcoming).
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