Baumeister: Authorities force "spiritual independence" on 6 million citizens

350,000 UOC believers participated in the Cross Procession on the Day of the Baptism of Rus. 2021. Photo: uoc-news.church

Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Andriy Baumeister, in his video "The City of God and the City of Man: 'Spiritual Independence' and the Church Issue in Ukraine", called the law effectively banning the UOC "blasphemous, an absolutely strange law waging war against its own heritage".

"Some Ukrainian political elites, opinion leaders, and bloggers have found themselves in a situation I describe as a fever or dangerous euphoria. These are all euphemisms; one could find a religious word that describes all of this, but I will be tactful: euphoria. And this euphoria allows them to rejoice and embrace each other when the country is approaching the most dangerous brink in its history. But they consider as their victory an anti-legal, anti-historical, blasphemous, absolutely strange law that fights against their own heritage, their own past," said the Doctor of Philosophy.

Baumeister recalled that the former head of the State Service for Ethnic Affairs and Freedom of Conscience (DESS), Olga Bohdan, mentioned a figure of 6 million faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. According to him, currently, there are about 20 million Ukrainians living in the country by various estimates. He asserts that the attacks on the UOC are "simply a war against their own people."

"There are paramilitary groups, police support that doesn't intervene (referring to the seizures of churches), not to mention the SBU, local authorities, and finally, the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, and the Ukrainian president. And all of this, this entire machine, is coming down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on practically a third of their faithful, their citizens, believing that they are spiritually liberating them by banning them from attending the churches they consider spiritually close," says the Ukrainian philosopher.

In his view, this can be summed up as: "I will make you spiritually free and forbid you from going where you want, praying where you want, understanding your identity as you wish." As soon as the believer is completely spiritually broken, Baumeister continues his analysis, loses their identity, stops thinking, and praying, then supposedly, they "will become spiritually free".

"What is there to hope for here? As you can see, it's pointless to hope for common sense," he concludes.

As previously reported by the UOJ, Andriy Baumeister explained why law on UOC ban is dangerous for Ukrainians.

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