If you look up the word “Byzantine” in an online dictionary you will find two definitions — one quite literal and the second rather abstract.

The first definition isn’t all that hard to grasp: “relating to Byzantium (now Istanbul), the Byzantine Empire, or the Eastern Orthodox Church.”

The second definition is the one that best applies to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast and post, the one with this headline: “Eastern Orthodox converts, Russian spies, the FBI and the Bible Belt (#horrors).” Here’s that second meaning for Byzantine, as an adjective: “(of a system or situation) excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

That is certainly true and, to be blunt, there are journalists covering the painfully divided world of Eastern Orthodoxy — think Ukraine, of course — who should read that second definition several times and then meditate on it.

This is a classic case of journalists, as my journalism mentor used to say, needing to learn to “know what they don’t know.” There are subjects so complicated that, even if you think of yourself as an insider (I am a convert to Orthodox Christianity and have studied church history at the undergraduate and graduate levels), you need to approach them with great care.

This brings me to this weekend’s “think piece” from the must-bookmark website called Orthodox History: “How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?” It was written by the website’s editor, Matthew Namee, who a lawyer who serves as General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer for Orthodox Ministry Services. He is also a friend of mine and a colleague and in work linked to the Saint Constantine College in Houston.

What does “this mess” mean, in the headline? Basically, the “mess” is the early 21st century. To dig into this puzzle requires (#DUH) understanding the tragedies of the 20th century: This essay is very complex — “Byzantine,” even — but I will note a few (rather long) passages. Here is the overture:

It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the state, and a recognized-by-only-some Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) that was created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate by joining together and legitimizing two schismatic church bodies. Moscow has broken communion with Constantinople and the other churches that have recognized the OCU: Alexandria, Cyprus, and Greece. In Africa, Moscow has established dioceses on the territory of the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Antioch has been out of communion with Jerusalem for close to a decade due to Jerusalem’s claim of jurisdiction in Qatar. Far from being a unifying event, it seems that the long-hoped-for Holy and Great Council of 2016 was, at best, a mixed bag, and after it, everything went downhill.

How did we get into this mess? In a word: geopolitics. This is nothing new; it’s a pattern we’ve seen play out since the Old Testament. But in our modern age of rapid travel and communications, geopolitical change occurs more quickly, and is communicated more widely, than ever before. And so the changes wrought upon the Orthodox Church by the powers of this world toss us to and fro, fast enough to give an observer whiplash. We witness more history over a given time interval now than humans did at any other point in the past. Sometimes, the Orthodox Church responds effectively to that change; more often, we’re caught on our heels and are carried along by the waves.

Namee isn’t trying to write a detailed history of Orthodoxy, which would require a long bookshelf of works on Byzantine history. He’s trying to help outsiders — think journalists — wade into these troubled waters.

Consider the article’s first sub-headline: “The Nine Years that Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church.”

World War I and the years that followed (specifically, 1917 to 1925) completely reshaped the landscape of Orthodoxy. Prior to the Great War, most Orthodox Christians lived in one of three great empires: Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg. By the mid-1920s, all of those empires were gone.

Think about that. Look that up on a map, even, then locate Ukraine.

In Russia, Orthodoxy fell from its status as the favored state religion to become a persecuted Church, with the atheist Bolshevik regime hell-bent on stamping it out in the most brutal and grotesque ways possible, and, when that failed, creating a pro-Communist false church (the “Living Church”) to subvert the Orthodox faith. 

In the Ottoman Empire, the catastrophic Greco-Turkish War led to the massacre of thousands upon thousands of Orthodox Christians and the deportation of millions of Greek Orthodox from Asia Minor. 

In the former Hapsburg lands, the various successor states organized themselves around national identities, leading to the creation of Greater Romania (and a unified Romanian Patriarchate) and Yugoslavia for the Serbs (and a unified Serbian Patriarchate).

The entire Orthodox order was upended. Something new was emerging, and for many years it was unclear what that new thing would be. 

Journalists will want me to cut to the chase, which isn’t wise in this Byzantine mess.

However, this next long passage will introduce some names and terms worth remembering right now:

The new era in Orthodox history begins with Fr Alex Karloutsos, who almost single-handedly re-established the relationship between the Ecumencial Patriarchate and the United States government. In 1979, due to Karloutsos’s efforts, Jimmy Carter awarded Iakovos the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1985, Karloutsos helped arrange for by then former President Carter to visit Istanbul and push the Turkish government to allow the reconstruction of the central building of the Phanar; the Turks agreed. … In 1990, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios (accompanied by then-Metropolitan Bartholmew of Chalcedon) visited America — the first-ever visit of an EP to the United States. Karloutsos arranged for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda to be closed to the public so that Dimitrios could be received by members of Congress. In Chicago, an outdoor liturgy was celebrated with over 12,000 people in attendance.

Behind the Iron Curtain, a thaw had begun. Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the USSR in 1985, and he authorized grand celebrations for the thousand-year anniversary of the conversion of the Rus’ in 1988. The Berlin Wall came down in November 1989; in December, the communist government of Ceaușescu in Romania was overthrown, and Patriarch Teoctist nearly fell with it. As in the 1920s, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, an old geopolitical order was falling away and an uncertain new reality was emerging, which would have seismic effects on the Orthodox Church. 

As this was happening, in 1990, Patriarch Pimen of Moscow died, and he was succeeded by the 61-year-old Alexy II, who beat out his rival, Metropolitan Philaret Denisenko of Kiev.

Remember that last name — Philaret Denisenko.

The new Patriarch Alexy took office as the Soviet Union was collapsing. Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia… it goes on — they all proclaimed independence, basically at the same historical moment. Aside from Georgia, the Orthodox Churches in the former Soviet republics were subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate; what would become of them now that their countries were independent? All eyes were on Ukraine, where the bishops of the Ukrainian Exarchate requested autocephaly. They were denied; instead, the MP granted them a form of autonomy, creating the modern-day structure of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which last year cut all remaining ties with Moscow. …

Philaret was incensed: he had lost out on the Moscow Patriarchal throne, failed to gain autocephaly for the church in Ukraine, and was the subject of scandalous news reports about his personal life. So he took a momentous step, going into schism and forming his own jurisdiction, known as the Kiev Patriarchate. Another, related but rival schismatic jurisdiction, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) was also created in the midst of this chaos. Moscow responded by defrocking Philaret, who appealed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate – but the EP denied the appeal, leaving Philaret and his followers outside of canonical Orthodoxy. In 1997, the MP anathematized Philaret; again, the EP supported this decision. 

Now, there is one final pair of clips to read, which I hope will encourage journalists and religion-news consumers to read the whole thing.

Again, this is too complicated for a cut-and-paste summary. I know that.

2008: In July, [Ecumenical] Patriarch Bartholomew visited Ukraine at the invitation of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for the 1,020th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’. Wikileaks has a fascinating U.S. State Department report on the event. The EP delegation had numerous high-level meeting with the Ukrainian president and his staff, as well as the leaders of the two schismatic churches, Philaret and Mefodiy. Led by Yushchenko, the talks were focused on how the EP could facilitate the unity of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. Nothing was ultimately resolved at that time.

Wait for it.

… In 2018, just shy of two years following the 2016 council and the failed Turkish coup, the [Ecumenical Patriarch] changed course on Ukraine, asserting its jurisdiction over the territory and, in one fell swoop, legitimizing both the Kiev Patriarchate and the UAOC, who up to this point were universally regarded as schismatics. The EP then convened a “unification council,” which led to the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, to which the EP granted autocephaly in January 2019. In response, the Moscow Patriarchate broke communion with the EP. The Mike Pompeo-led U.S. State Department publicly lobbied for the various Orthodox Churches to accept the OCU, although only a handful did. And now we’ve reached very nearly the present day — if you go back and read the first paragraph of this article, you’ll be basically caught up to the present day.

The bottom line: The Russian invasion of Ukraine comes after all of this.

The ultimate question (maybe) is this: What role did the United States government (and powerful financial interests) play in the creation of the new Orthodox body in Ukraine?

Again, read it all.