Analysis of Public Media Discourses of the Main Actors of the Church Crisis in Ukraine

Abstract

By analyzing the main public statements of the actors of the church crisis in Ukraine, we managed to identify their basic narratives, main discursive logics, power positions, and hidden motives and interests that influence social processes. To do this, we used the techniques of narrative analysis of public discourses. The main actors (players, participants) in the church crisis are representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), government agencies, popular media, international and Ukrainian experts. Theological, political, state, and mass-media types of discourses were identified. We found that the participants' narratives form pairs that are mirror images of each other with quite polar opposite discourses, whose narrative strategies reflect the interests of certain actors, structures, and social groups. At the same time, the participants use their own discourses, which are not always clear or acceptable to others, and the media present the different voices of discourses as a clash. The impossibility of a productive dialogue between the UOC and the OCU is due to the difference in narratives, different assessments of history and current events, and different political or corporate interests, although they speak the same theological language. Not all of the UOC is a carrier of the Russian Orthodox Church’s “Russian World” ideology. In the case of the UOC, we are faced with the phenomenon of a persistent conservative, corporate consciousness, fear of losing its sacred power, unwillingness and inability of the current leadership to change the church structure, to engage in dialogue with the OCU, and unwillingness to modernize the church. While the OCU, which is also in no hurry to change and renew itself, is successfully destroying the monopoly of the symbolic power of the UOC, showing that, after receiving the Tomos, it has canonical equality in the Ecumenical Church. The difference in the capabilities of the actors is that the state operates in the field of secular law, and the church operates in the field of church law (canons), which do not coincide with each other, so it is impossible to resolve the conflict without the official consent of the UOC. However, the UOC does not compromise, does not maintain a dialogue with the authorities, with the OCU or the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but instead claims “persecution” in order to preserve the inviolability of its structures.