The Real Threat Is the Use of the Church to Serve Totalitarian Regimes — Serhii Shumylo

Freedom of religion is threatened not by restrictions on the activities of the pro-war Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in the free world, but by the use of the Church to serve the interests of totalitarian regimes.

This was stated by Dr. Serhii Shumylo, Executive Director of the Libertas Fidei Centre, in comments to Novaya Gazeta concerning a legislative initiative that could affect the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania.

According to Shumylo, what makes Lithuania distinctive is that the ROC’s national structure is directly subordinate to Moscow, without hiding behind the façade of “autonomy” or “self-governance”.

“That is precisely why,” Shumylo explains, “the authorities of the Church dealt so harshly with an entire group of anti-war clergy here. They were simply defrocked without any hearing, merely for daring to express disagreement with the position of Patriarch Kirill.”

According to Dr. Serhii Shumylo, the particular functions performed by ROC clergy abroad have resulted in a situation in which “the Church ceases to be a Church”.

The scholar believes that the real threat to freedom of religion comes not from restrictions on the activities of the pro-war ROC in the free world, but from “the use of the Church to serve the interests of totalitarian regimes, turning it into a propaganda mouthpiece for war”.

Serhii Shumylo previously stated that under Kirill Gundyayev’s leadership, the Russian Orthodox Church has increasingly become an extension of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin regime.

As LF previously reported, an international analytical study by the Libertas Fidei International Centre for the Study of Religious Freedom was presented in Vilnius.