Markers of the Orthodox environment of Ukraine: religious and confessional identity (1990–2021)

Abstract

With the proclamation of Ukraine’s independence, there was a national and religious revival. It
was accompanied by the rapid emergence of a large number of religious and church structures and
the integration of religious and ecclesiastical factors in the processes of social life.
The purpose of scientific research is to delineate the Orthodox space of 1990–2021, to clarify
the criterion of religious and confessional identity and to clarify the factors influencing the declared
characteristics of identity. The empirical basis of the study was based on the several year’s results
of sociological monitoring of the church and religious situation in Ukraine.
By religious and confessional identity we mean the believer’s belonging to a certain confessional
field or correlation with it. Confessional space (as socio-cultural) produces certain identities and
corresponding identification practices. Confessional identity is not present without religious and is
a form of its expression.
Legally and in fact until 2018 in Ukraine were three major Orthodox denominations – the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction
of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC (MP) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate
(UOC-KP). The starting point of change for the presence of church-confessional identity was the
Unification Council (December 2018). The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU) was constituted.
A complex organizational process of overthrowing the church structure began. The change in the
organizational design of Orthodoxy in Ukraine has brought to the fore the issue of the confessional
identity of the faithful (as opposed to fairly stable confessional affiliations). At the same time, the
transformation of the confessional landscape has led to a violation in the definition of its subjectivity,
a kind of rupture of the tradition of everyday life and the usual cultural experience.
The nature of the religious and confessional identity of the contemporary Orthodox environment
determines the incompleteness, blurring, syncretism in the formation of identity, the multiplicity of its forms, the “conflict of identities” and so on. Not only the problem of transformation of religious
and confessional identity in the conditions of the changed confessional landscape of Orthodoxy
seems important, but also the nature of development and functioning of this identity, its connection
with tradition and culturally fixed archetypes and stereotypes, a kind of incorporating of this identity
into the paradigm of national identity.
Keywords: religion, Church, Orthodoxy, identity, religiosity, religious and confessional identity,
religious practices