Public Religion as the Contention for Public Space

Abstract

The phenomenon of religion in public space is nowadays complemented by symbolic and informational factors that, through certain mechanisms, play a significant role in political processes. This is related to the formation of the political identity of the nation, in which the religious component becomes a certain marker that splits or unites society. Even though politics and religion have their own public fields, there is a struggle for influence and expansion of their public field between politics and religion in most European countries of the East. With the aim to engage citizens in the discourse of political or religious, the political and ecclesiastical elite mentally forces individuals to balance on the verge of the political and religious and turns them into participants of political processes. At least, exactly this takes place in the modern history of Ukraine.
The loss of state territories and military events in the East have given rise to the Ukrainian discourse of Tomos, which, through the context of the war, established a new marker of Ukrainian identity. Perceiving public religion as a field for public dissent, Ukrainian society has found itself in internal and external confrontation:
between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and the official policy of the power during Petro Poroshenko’s presidency – the level of the conflict was "power-church";
internal conflict between Ukrainian Orthodox denominations when, due to the signed Tomos, they united to form a unified Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) – the level of the conflict was "churchchurch";
between the official policy of Russia, which supports the activities of the UOC-MP and is recognized by official Ukrainian authorities as the military aggressor of Ukraine (mostly during P. Poroshenko’s presidency and less during V. Zelensky’s presidency) – the level of the conflict is "power-power".
The discourse of Tomos in Ukraine has provoked not only interconfessional and political confrontation. It influenced confidence in the church as a moral institute because, on the one hand, we’ve had a “church of the aggressor state” (UOC-MP) and an “illegal church” (OCU), and on the other hand, there were “Orthodox” and “schismatics”. This has mentally widened the gap between the East and the West of Ukraine. An analysis held based on data from the Razumkov Center, official statistics of religious organizations in Ukraine, as well as judicial acts, testifies that this gap is formed along a territorial line. Therefore, S. Huntington’s theory of a global policy developed along the cultural line finds support.