By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand
An edited clip of former Vice President Mike Pence seemingly telling Tucker Carlson that decaying American cities are “not my concern” instantly went viral, but Pence’s most controversial statements at the Family Leader Summit, about Ukraine’s respect for “religious liberty,” have passed without comment.
The moment came when Carlson asked if the former vice president, who made a return visit to Ukraine in June, had pressed President Volodymyr Zelensky about his “treatment of Christians within Ukraine.” Pence replied, “I raised [the issue] with the leader of the Orthodox Church when I was visiting Kyiv and asked him about concerns about religious liberty. He assured me that the Zelensky government in Ukraine was respecting religious liberty.” (You can watch the exchange here.)
Pence’s answer seems definitive, but those who cherish religious liberty need to identify its verbal sleight-of-hand: Pence met with the “leader of the Orthodox Church” whom Zelensky’s discriminatory policies benefit, not the Christians they harm.
Is Zelensky’s government “respecting religious liberty” in Ukraine? Let’s examine the facts.
Which “Leader of the Orthodox Church” Is Which?
Two major churches in Ukraine call themselves Orthodox. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the historic body founded in 989 A.D., has perhaps 10,000 churches. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), a coalition of breakaway parishes and formerly unrecognizedgroups which the Patriarch of Constantinople declared autocephalous in January 2019, has an estimated 7,000 parishes. Pence met with Metropolitan Epiphaniy of the OCU, whose news service announced the meeting at the famous golden-domed sanctuary. Metropolitan Onufriy of the UOC would likely have given Pence a difference assessment about the Ukrainian government’s respect for “religious liberty.”
Zelensky Discriminates against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
During his exchange with Pence, Carlson noted, “The Zelensky government has raided convents, arrested priests, has effectively banned a denomination — a Christian denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, within Ukraine — has persecuted Christians.” That nearly echoes the words of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which reports that from February through the end of April, Zelensky’s “[g]overnment and local authorities took several measures targeting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).” Government agents “searched places of worship and other UOC facilities, issued notices of suspicions against clergymen, and placed several of them under house arrest.” Since the beginning of the conflict, seven regional councils have banned all “activities of the UOC,” overstepping their legal authority.
Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has introduced numerous bills to redistribute church property from the disfavored UOC to the favored OCU, some with Zelensky’s personal approval:
- Draft law No. 8221 — which bears the Orwellian title, “On ensuring strengthening of national security in the sphere of freedom of conscience and activities of religious organizations” — would forbid any church from using the title “Orthodox” unless it is (in the words of the state news agency, UKRINFORM) “subordinated to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (OCU);
- Bill No. 7403 strips the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of its tax-exempt status;
- Draft Resolution No. 8012 transfers the historic monastic properties of the Kyiv Pechersk and Pochaiv Lavra — a sacred site in Orthodox history — from UOC to the OCU; and
- Draft law No. 8262 bars the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) from using state property.
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