Katherine Kelaidis

It’s easy to forget that white evangelicals aren’t the only ones driving the march toward government takeover — and destruction.

From the Renaissance onward, architecture inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome belonged to the realm of the elite.  

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for “targeted closures” of “Moscow-backed” religious organizations in Ukraine, a more polite way of saying that he wants effectively to ban the Russian Orthodox Church. To be clear, the decree signed by Zelenskyy doesn’t immediately close all

If you’ve been educated in North America or Western Europe, you might be forgiven for having never heard of the Battle of Kulikovo, a battle between Russian forces and the Golden Horde, on September 8, 1380, in which the Russian forces emerged victorious. Though Mongol domination of what is today Ru

On September 5, Patriarch Porfiry of Belgrade, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, awarded the highest degree of the Order of Saint Sava (the Patriarchate’s highest chivalric order) to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. According to a statement, the award was given “for his efforts in def

Late last week, the Orthodox Church in America, the second largest Orthodox church body in the country, issued an unprecedented statement seeking to silence any discussion about same-sex relationships and the sacramental inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the Orthodox Church. The statement is

Saying outrageous, verifiably untrue things has sort of become Patriarch Kirill of Moscow’s brand. The chief Russian Orthodox cleric had a history of outrageous statements before the Russian invasion of Ukraine (including calling the concept of human rights a heresy), but he’s certainly stepped up h

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sanctions against Russian officials have been the most visible and powerful form of support offered by the global community to the Ukrainian people. These sanctions have targeted high-ranking Russian officials, oligarchs, and their families. Al

There's little doubt that Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s Forgiveness Sunday Sermon last month received more attention than any Orthodox cleric’s sermon has received in the Western media in a long time. Beyond its frightening absurdity, it’s likely this attention is due, in no small part, to its

In case you’re thinking that Ukraine is the only place in the world where Orthodox Christianity is entangled in a global hotspot, please turn your eyes to Jerusalem. Two days ago, following an eighteen-year struggle, members of the Israeli settler organization, Ateret Cohanim, with the assistance of

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three weeks ago, it’s likely you’ve heard the term Russian World (or Russkii Mir). It’s easy to conflate this concept with nostalgia for the Soviet Union (it’s just another term for Russia plus satellite states, right?), but the term—and the concept—predat

If someone from 1965 were to arrive in a time machine, there’s likely much about our current state of affairs that would shock them. But I cannot imagine anything that would be more confusing than the love affair between the American Right and Russia—the extent of which has come into stark clarity i

If it wasn’t already blatantly apparent that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow is not “calling for peace,” he’s now described Russia’s opponents—in its unprovoked, illegal invasion of the Ukraine—as “evil forces,” telling the faithful: “God forbid that the current political situation in brotherly Ukraine

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus is not calling for peace in Ukraine, and the fact that some in the Western media seem to think he has done so is evidence of how much the West has to learn about Orthodox Christianity, church-state relations in Russia, and Kirill himself. The first time the

Putin has now ordered Russian troops into Donetsk and Luhansk. The first major conflict between two Orthodox Christian nations since the War of the Stray Dogs in 1925 has likely just begun. That conflict (the resolution of which was incidentally perhaps the only significant accomplishment of the Lea

Last week a six-week-old baby died in Suceava, Romania during his baptism into the Romanian Orthodox Church. The priest is being held on manslaughter charges and a firestorm of anger has begun to be directed at the Orthodox Church’s practice of full-immersion infant baptism, including a petition urg

It’s a weird story, even in 2020—and that’s saying something. Father Sergey, a COVID-denying conspiracy-spewing Russian monk, had, with the help of an ad hoc personal army that includes veterans of the recent conflicts in Ukraine, seized control of the women’s monastery in the Ural mountains he’d fo

There are those who would co-opt American Orthodoxy, make it the voice of white nationalism. Churches need to confront the problem head on.

There is little doubt as to why Orthodoxy seems appealing to a white nationalist movement.