Time/Date: Tuesday, Mar 17 from 7 pm to 9 pm PDT
Location: St. Mark’s College at UBC, Vancouver, BC. Live-Streaming available
This lecture is part of the CCE Christian Nationalism Project and explores questions of nationalism, identity, and religious freedom.
Russia’s war on Ukraine, supported openly by the Russian Orthodox Church, has prompted the Ukrainian government to restrict Moscow’s influence among Ukrainian Christians, many of whom belong to the Russian tradition. A recently adopted law, if enforced, could ban Russian-affiliated religious communities altogether. The Kremlin, in turn, insists that the fate of Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine should be part of any eventual peace settlement. While the proposed ban is framed as a matter of national security, it has also sparked concerns about violations of religious freedom—raised not only by the United Nations and international human rights groups, but also by the Holy See and the World Council of Churches.
For the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a minority long persecuted under Soviet rule and historically committed to defending religious freedom, this development poses a dilemma. On one hand, the Church supports the decolonization of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and acknowledges the threat Moscow poses to Ukrainian identity and nation-building. On the other, it remains wary of state measures that may establish troubling precedents for political intervention in religious life.
Is Ukraine’s proposed ban compatible with international human rights standards? Can religious freedom be reconciled with national security imperatives in times of war? Is religious endorsement of aggression itself protected as a form of religious expression? And what lessons can Ukraine draw from the West’s experience of securitizing religion in the aftermath of 9/11?
This lecture is co-hosted by the Dominican Institute of Toronto.
Dr. Pavlo Smytsnyuk specializes in political theology, religious nationalism, and Eastern Christianity. He is currently a visiting scholar at New York University’s Jordan Center. Before moving to New York, he held research and teaching positions at George Washington University in D.C., Princeton University, and Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. He studied philosophy and theology in Rome, Athens, and St. Petersburg, and holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Smytsnyuk is co-editor of Marian Reflections on War and Peace: Trauma, Mourning, and Justice in Ukraine and Beyond (Routledge, 2025).