New book offers food for thought
Books on the religious problems of Ukraine are extremely popular these days, both among scholars and people who would like to understand the role of religion in modern Ukraine and their own place in the church or outside of it. One useful book, which will be of interest even to nonprofessionals, is the monograph Ukrainske relihiieznavstvo doby natsionalnoho vidrodzhennia [Ukrainian Religious Studies in the Age of National Revival] by the Lutsk-based religious scholar Leonid Kondratyk. In his book the author analyses the research and theories of outstanding Ukrainian intellectuals during the early decades of the 20th century. There is no question that it is necessary to revisit and redefine the works of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Oleksandr Lototsky, Viacheslav Lypynsky, Ivan Ohienko, Arseniy Richynsky, and others. It is also time to introduce into modern scholarly discourse those concepts that these authors were not able to bring to their readers under previous regimes.
An analysis of works by outstanding Ukrainian scholars and philosophers is especially relevant today, in view of the discussions surrounding Ukraine’s civilizational choice as well as the current deadlock in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Kondratyk’s book leaves no doubt that “nothing new is happening under the sun, and what was done in the past will be repeated.” It should be noted that Ukrainian Religious Studies in the Age of National Revival was published under the imprint of the Religious Studies Department at Hryhoriy Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences.
Kondratyk’s monograph provides graphic evidence that the works of the above-mentioned Ukrainian thinkers encompass all the “eternal” scholarly problems relating to the church. They address such issues as determining the essence of religion, the relationship between religion and culture, religion and politics, and the church as a religious organization and its role in the church life of the faithful and the clergy. The book is appealing in that it presents the opinions and ideas of Ukrainian scholars against the background of ideas of foreign thinkers of the same era (Weber, Durkheim, et al.) as well as works by such contemporary Ukrainian scholars as Kolodny, Yarotsky, Fylypovych, et al.
Kondratyk’s book has many dimensions, too many to survey in a single newspaper article. I will focus on one problem that is not only as relevant in modern Ukraine as it was in Hrushevsky’s day, but has become much more pronounced. This is the problem of the so-called “sects,” which many writers of the time opposed to the notion of “church,” much like many modern scholars do today. As we know, the term “church” is used only in connection with the Orthodox and Catholic communities of believers, while the term “sect” is used in relation to various branches of Protestantism, whose origins date back to the Reformation movement of the 16th century. (Incidentally, the global community of Protestant believers outnumbers Orthodox believers three or four to one).
Despite the fact that only 46 to 48 percent of respondents in Ukraine consider themselves Orthodox, and the fact that individual Protestant churches gained a foothold in our country in the 19th century and as far back as the 16th century in the western regions of our country, a large part of Ukrainian society is hostile toward “sects.” A similarly negative attitude toward “sects” was held by one of the personalities discussed in Kondratyk’s book — Viacheslav Lypynsky. This prominent historian, political analyst, and sociologist, who was also a politician and diplomat in the period of Hetman Skoropadsky and the Directorate of the Ukrainian National Republic, spoke of the bottomless abyss that separates a “sect” from a “church.” Lypynsky always considered the Catholic Church to be the ideal of a religious organization and viewed “sects” as something inferior. However, it is an open secret, especially to historians, that every major religion, including Christianity, began its social existence as a “sect.”
Meanwhile, Hrushevsky treated this Ukrainian church problem quite differently (see his work Z istorii relihiinoi dumky na Ukraini [From the History of Religious Thought in Ukraine]), linking it to the European Reformation, the movement that “developed the life-giving force of self-regeneration and molded Ukrainian citizens into progressive (vanguard) democratic, civic movements.” It was obvious to him that Protestant “sectarianism” could not be called inferior or something that had no influence on the course of the history of Western civilization. “The entire national (Ukrainian) movement of the 17th century followed this impetus of reformation, which was transformed by the Lviv bourgeoisie of the time.”
Hrushevsky was very much attracted to the fact that, unlike the “classical” church (Catholic, Orthodox, or Greek Catholic), a “sect” always encourages free-thinking and independence among its members — traits that are typical of the Ukrainian mentality. “The free-thinking nature of the Ukrainian mind and the poly-religious conditions in which the Ukrainians lived, having dealings with people of various creeds since ancient times, prepared Ukrainian society for its attempts in the 16th-17th centuries to free the popular mind from the constraints of priestly teachings,” Hrushevsky wrote. That same period saw a burgeoning of church fraternities in which all members had the right of choice and judgment, while the clergy had to heed the brothers’ opinions. During this period spiritual books were published, schools were supported, and help was offered to the poor. These new winds fostered the establishment of the principle of the universal organization of church life.
The free-thinking influences of the Reformation also left a mark on the work of many outstanding Ukrainians of the time. Hrushevsky writes, for example, about Count Ostrozky, who often defended the positions of reformationists and who declared that order had to be brought to the Eastern Church and its doctrine corrected because the illiterate clergy had made a mess of it. Another graphic example is Ivan Vyshensky, one of the “pillars” of Orthodoxy. It turns out that he protested against the magnate claims made by the bishops of the Kyivan church of the time, which is something you would not normally expect from an Orthodox monk.
Hrushevsky also maintained that religious perceptions have a certain correlation with society’s development, which is why sects not only have social roots, but also influence the way society develops. Wherever they have appeared, sectarian organizations have spread the ideas of rationalism, universality, civic engagement, and personal freedom, all of which fostered spiritual progress in societies. But in any case, the nature of the influence and social role of a church or “sect” should always be considered specifically, based on the results of their efforts.
In one of his major conclusions the author of Ukrainian Religious Studies in the Age of National Revival says that Ukrainian historians in the early decades of the 20th century “substantiated their original theories of religious studies, which are not dimmed by the European and global scholarly space.”
