c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The political crisis that has gripped Ukraine for the past three weeks in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election runoff _ pitting the Moscow-leaning establishment of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych against his Washington-leaning challenger, Viktor Yushchenko _ is mirrored in the country’s religious divisions.

Although the churches have been cautious in their public statements since the crisis erupted with the Nov. 24 announcement that Yanukovych narrowly beat Yushchenko in a runoff vote, what they have said suggests the religious divide is as deep as the political one.

The crisis appeared to ease Wednesday (Dec. 8) with passage by Ukraine’s parliament of a package of laws aimed at strengthening safeguards against electoral fraud. A new runoff is set for Dec. 26.

During the crisis, however, tens of thousands of mostly pro-Yushchenko demonstrators, clad in the movement’s signature orange, many bearing statues of the Virgin Mary, took to the streets of Kiev nightly to protest the vote.

Smaller groups of dueling protesters carried Orthodox icons.

“The opposition supporters of Yushchenko believe _ and he has actually said so _ that he will be a president for believers of all faiths, although he himself is Orthodox,” according to Felix Corley, a British expert on Ukraine quoted by the BBC on Tuesday.

As the larger political division is seen as a conflict between East and West _ with Yanukovych representing a political culture rooted in the tightly controlled Russian-style government and Yushchenko symbolizing the liberal, free-market politics of the West _ so, too, the religious division appears to pit traditional Orthodoxy and the stability it represents against a more free-wheeling religious pluralism.

Early in the crisis, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexey II issued a statement expressing the hope that the “current disorders will be resolved in a peaceful and worthy way … without destructive influences from outside.

“It is the will of the majority of Ukraine’s citizens to strengthen their country, preserve its true independence and self-determination while also widening their mutual fraternal ties with Russia,” he said.

The Moscow Patriarchate has jurisdiction over the largest of Ukraine’s three Orthodox churches and Alexey’s remarks were seen as directed at U.S. and European officials who have pressed the Ukraine government on the election but which the Russians see as interference.

American officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, disagree. “What we have seen isn’t interfering in democracy,” he said in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Tuesday. “What we have seen is the international community coming together to support democracy.”

Many of the ecclesiastical schisms _ principally between Orthodox and Roman Catholics _ have come to the surface since the breakup of the officially secular and atheist Soviet Union and center on issues of church property that were confiscated during the Soviet era.

In Moscow, Orthodox leaders also complain about what they view as overly vigorous efforts at conversion by the Catholics.

But Ukraine is also among the most religiously diverse of the former Soviet republics and includes significant Protestant and Greek Catholic communities. And it enjoyed greater religious freedom than many of the other republics.

“We have seen a fairly free field, which has allowed Protestant groups to flourish, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, other newer groups, with connections in the outside world,” Corley told the BBC.

“They seem to be able to practice unfettered, although this election has seen a lot of government learning on religious communities not to take part in the political arena,” he said.

The Rev. Olexander Hoursky, a Roman Catholic priest at St. Anthony’s church in Kiev, echoed Corley. “The ecclesiastical authorities are not supposed to take a stand in this crisis,” Hoursky told the International Herald Tribune on Sunday (Dec. 5).

But, he added, the church “supports good against evil, the protection of human rights and the end of any injustice, corruption, the state abuse of power. Personally, I hope Yushchenko becomes president. He will give us back our property.”

According to Paul Marty, president of HOPE International and a resident of Ukraine, the future of Christianity in the former Soviet Union is at stake in the election.

“If the election goes toward the pro-Russian candidate,” he was quoted by the ecumenical San Francisco-based Christian Post as saying, “then a lot of the policies of the country are going to follow.

“And he’s (Yanukovych) publicly stated that the only church he would recognize would be the Russian Orthodox Church and would not tolerate others.”

KRE/PH END RNS