President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew. Photo Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International / The President of Ukraine. Some rights reserved.Who now remembers the “clash of civilizations”, Samuel Huntington’s hypothesis that religious identities would prove a primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world?
Events in Ukraine over the course of the last few months are indicative of wider reconfigurations shaking the Orthodox world. The Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarchate of Moscow) has broken off communion with Ecumenical Patriarchate (Constantinople), based in Istanbul, traditionally “first among equals” in the Church order. The Russian Church has even opened parishes in territories under the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s jurisdiction, including in Istanbul.
While Ukraine is faced with ongoing division, Russia is confronted by increased difficulties in the use of religion to project power into neighbouring countries. The rest of the Orthodox world is called on to take sides. In short, it is the clash within the religious group rather than between civilizations that has come to the fore. But arguably, it is the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople which is confronted with the greatest challenge.
