Ukraine war divides Christian Orthodox churches on LI

Two Christian Orthodox churches in Sea Cliff serving Long Island’s Russian-speaking community are about a mile and a half from each other, but some of the faithful believe the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made them worlds apart.

Lena Zezulin, 67, said she grew up worshipping at St. Seraphim of Sarov church, which her father helped to build. However, she said she would spend this Easter at the nearby Church of Our Lady of Kazan.

Although both churches are liturgically Orthodox and both use the Old Slavonic language at their services, they belong to different religious jurisdictions.

“I cannot enter a church right now that is subordinate to Patriarch Kirill,” Zezulin said, referring to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. "I just I can't. My foot won't cross the door.”

St. Seraphim belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a self-governing part of the Orthodox faith that reunited with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007. Kirill, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has framed the Russian invasion of its Orthodox neighbor as a war waged by outsiders against Russia.

As two Orthodox countries fight each other in the fields and streets of Ukraine, a new schism divides the faithful. While Russian Orthodox Christians clash or tiptoe around the war, some Orthodox jurisdictions have condemned it outright. 

Zezulin said she switched to Our Lady of Kazan, which is part of the Orthodox Church in America jurisdiction, after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, even though it meant celebrating Easter away from family and friends.

“I just can't abide this when a church is supporting mass murder,” Zezulin said.

The Orthodox Church in America, which is not associated with a national or ethnic group, has called for the war to end.

“No Christian can remain impartial or lukewarm in the face of the suffering or remain silent when confronted with such evils as are being perpetrated,” the OCA said in a March statement.

Archpriest Serafim Gan of St. Seraphim said that his church was divided on the Ukraine issue — and was trying not to talk about it to keep the parish united.

“Everybody is very saddened, of course,” he said. “But that is something that is uniting us. We are saddened and we are united in prayer.”

The parish is collecting funds for humanitarian aid for the refugees, he said, but parishioners have different opinions about the situation in Ukraine.

“Some people consider it to be an invasion and some people consider it to be a fratricidal war,” he said, adding, “we try not to discuss these things here, or at least not passionately.”

Alex Kwartiroff, 74, of Sea Cliff, who had a mother from Ukraine and a father from Russia, continues to attend St. Seraphim. No one is happy about the war, and his church is actively praying for peace, he said, adding that the eastward expansion of NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union has pushed Putin into a corner.

“We’re not saying whether he did the right thing or not,” Kwartiroff said. “It’s that he was kind of forced into that position.”

Kwartiroff said that nonetheless the community was heartbroken by the violence, since Ukraine and Russia are closely linked, like cousins.

Since Russia’s invasion in February, Kirill has made statements mirroring some of the Kremlin’s justifications for the conflict — calling it a war against the West.

"Why did external forces rise up against the Russian lands?,” Kirill said last week, according to a Reuters report. "Why do they strive to destroy, divide, set brother against brother?"

At an April 4 event at Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church in Port Washington, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros of America said Kirill was responsible for condoning the war.

“This unjust, fratricidal war must not be laid at the feet of our Russian sisters and brothers, who are being deceived and victimized by their leaders, both civil and religious,” Elpidophoros said. “Even the poor Russian soldiers being sent as cannon fodder into Ukraine deserve our sympathy and our prayers, but for those committing atrocities, there will be justice, in this life or the next.”

No one picked up the phone at the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia headquarters in Manhattan on Friday and emails to the church leadership were not returned. 

Among the worshippers at the St. Michael’s Orthodox Church in Uniondale, where services are performed in Ukrainian, there was no hand-wringing over divisions. A memorial in front of the church erected in 1983 commemorates the “Ukrainians murdered during the famine deliberately created by Moscow,” referring to the millions of Ukranians killed in the Holodomor famine caused by Soviet policies in the 1930s.

At the April 3 service, the Very Rev. Yaroslav Dumanskyy asked the “Mother of God” to protect the Ukrainian people in need and “to help reach our common goal, our victory.”

“We pray for our life, we'll endure all the hardships, we pray for our soldiers who protect our land, for those who suffered, for those who are surrounded by enemies, for those who are in basements,” he said in Ukrainian. “We pray that God would show us a way out of this situation and save Ukraine.”

He ended the service calling out “Slava Ukraina!,” which means Glory to Ukraine.

After the service Dumanskyy said the Ukrainian church was a “second army” in the war.

“Prayer is the second weapon. It’s the most powerful weapon anybody can use,” Dumanskyy said. “We believe in God. We believe in the right things and the right thing is for the war to stop.”

Parishioners have focused on shipping humanitarian supplies to Ukraine. On the church’s Facebook page it lists items sought for donation; in addition to toiletries and baby bottles, it says “any type of wound dressing will be accepted.” Inside the church, sharing a table where prayer candles can be purchased, is a wooden collection box for donations to the Ukranian army.

Taras Tabachnyuk, 24, a college student from West Islip, helped pack boxes of aid at the church earlier this month.

“The only positive that I can see in this war is it did unite Ukraine as a nation,” Tabachnyuk said.

At the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in East Meadow, which is a parish of the Orthodox Church in America, the Rev. Martin Kraus said some of their parishioners had families in Ukraine. He's added their names to a list of people he includes in his prayers. 

Last month, a dying elderly parishioner had tried desperately to reach her family in the besieged port city of Mariupol, Kraus said.

The woman, whose funeral was held last month, had held on until she reached her family, Kraus said.

“She was on her deathbed,” he said. “When she got the phone call and heard they were safe, she was able to give up her spirit.”