The Orthodox Christian community of the North Shore tries to remain united in prayer in the face of the war in Ukraine. The saddest thing, said the clergy of the local Orthodox church, is that the war is going on between the two predominantly Orthodox countries.
“People are disappointed that Russians would wage a war against another Orthodox country,” said the Rev. Christopher Foustoukos from St. Vasilios (Basil) the Great Greek Orthodox Church in Peabody. “Against any country, unprovoked, and the targeting of the innocent — women, children, elderly, hospitals, neighborhoods — things that don’t have any military value.”
Religious identity plays a significant role in Eastern European national self-identification. The Pew Research Center estimated that 78 percent of the Ukrainian and 71 percent of the Russian population were Orthodox Christians in 2017.
“In many Central and Eastern European countries, religion and national identity are closely entwined,” said its report, entitled “Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe.”
“This is true in former communist states, such as the Russian Federation and Poland, where majorities say that being Orthodox or Catholic is important to being ‘truly Russian’ or ‘truly Polish,'” the report continued.
The Rev. Theophan Whitfield of St. Nicholas Church in Salem said this parish was founded in 1901 by immigrants from an area that today would be known as Western Ukraine. For 120 years, Whitfield said the main ethnic group at St. Nicholas has been Ukrainians.
“The first thing that we have done was just sharing a lot of grief,” said Whitfield. “That’s been our main response — just togetherness, prayer, and staying in communication with one another.”
“It is very complicated for us,” added Foustoukos. “We have Ukrainian people in our parish, and we have Russian people in our parish. No one blames the Russian people.”
St. Nicholas Church in Salem belongs to the Orthodox Church in America, which has come up with a decisive reprobation of the war.
“As Orthodox Christians, we condemn violence and aggression,” said the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America Metropolitan Tikhon in his statement on the war in Ukraine.
St. Nicholas Church in Salem shared the anti-war sentiment on its official website.
There are two other Orthodox churches in the area, in Salem and Lynn. Both belong to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and are accountable to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
“The recent geopolitical developments and aggression against Ukraine will inevitably bring suffering and death on innocent children, women, and men,” said the Hierarchs of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the USA in their statement. “So many of them (are) our brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Christian faith.”
In Lynn, the Rev. George D. Tsoukalas from St. George Greek Orthodox Church said the Church has asked its parishioners to pray for and collect funds for the people of Ukraine.
“The funds will be sent to the archdiocese and to support the people of Ukraine with food and with whatever is necessary to help them in the hardships that they are going through right now,” said Tsoukalas.
Foustoukos said the Peabody parish is doing the same.
“The archdiocese sent $100,000 to the Ecumenical Patriarchate to send to the Autocephalous (Orthodox) Church of Ukraine,” said Foustoukos. “And we continue to collect cash donations to send money so that International Orthodox Christian Charities could respond to the crisis there.”
The humanitarian and development agency International Orthodox Christian Charities launched a campaign to raise $1 million dollars to support Ukraine.
“Our church and parish are so opposed to what is happening in Ukraine,” said Anna Sherman, a parishioner at one of the Orthodox churches on the North Shore. “It’s terrible for the Ukrainians and it’s also terrible for the Russians who oppose it.”
Church politics have long been part of a political campaign aimed at dividing the Orthodox community. The ministers of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) participated in the annexation of Crimea. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, previously affiliated with ROC, became divided into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is ruled from Moscow, and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The latter was established under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2018. That triggered the discord in the global Orthodoxy.
Some fear this situation might also echo on the North Shore.
“The relation with the Russian Orthodox Church here is going to be very difficult,” said Sherman. “Their Patriarchate is Moscow, and that means that the head of their church is the patriarch of Russia.”
Others, however, are more optimistic.
“What happens in our mother countries, hopefully, doesn’t spill over the churches here,” said Foustoukos. “We are Americans first.”
