Hennadii Khrystokin, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor
In the previous article, we demonstrated that the common good does not emerge through the proclamation of the “right” values, but through three prerequisites: a common cause as a constitutive act, the social imaginary as a shared horizon of vision, and the social contract as a living process of mutual commitments. However, we left aside one important question: what is the role of institutions in shaping these prerequisites? The state is obviously one such actor. The market is another. But there is yet another actor – the Church – which possesses a unique potential that no other institution has and which is most often overlooked.
The assertion that the Church possesses a “unique potential” in the formation of the common good requires two immediate qualifications. This does not concern special rights or special authority, but rather a distinctive mechanism of influence that differs fundamentally from the mechanisms of the state and the market. There is a considerable distance between potential and its realization. In Ukraine, the Church – or, more precisely, the Orthodox jurisdictions – has largely failed to realize this potential. Why is this so, and what lies behind it? We shall begin by considering what the role of the Church ought to be, then discuss why this role is blocked, and finally turn to the question of what can be done in practice.
What the Church Can Offer That the State and the Market Cannot
The state is an institution for the compulsory implementation of collective decisions adopted by parliament. It can establish laws and regulations, distribute resources, protect rights, and punish violations. All of this is necessary and important. Yet there are things that the state is fundamentally incapable of doing. It cannot give a person the conviction that sacrifice for the sake of a stranger is meaningful. It cannot generate solidarity that transcends the logic of mutual benefit. It can only make use of solidarity that already exists, but it cannot create it.
The market is a mechanism of coordination through price and exchange. It is extraordinarily effective in the allocation of resources, but it measures only what can be measured. Whatever has no price does not exist for the market. Consequently, solidarity, sacrifice, trust, and the image of another person’s dignity are all external factors for the market – factors it may utilize but cannot generate.
The Church, if it remains faithful to its calling, operates on an entirely different level. It shapes the social imaginary: the system of images, meanings, and significations that give purpose and form values and virtues. Through narrative, liturgy, symbols, and a community of practices, the Church forms a distinctive imagination in which another human being is the image of God and is therefore worthy in himself or herself, regardless of usefulness or belonging to “our own.”
Saint John Chrysostom wrote in the fourth century: “Do you wish to honor the Body of Christ? Do not neglect Him when He is naked.” The Body of Christ is the person beside us, whom we receive with respect as he or she is. The perception of one’s neighbor as possessing immense value gives rise to concrete behavior – to a distinctive ethic of dignity. Here lies the difference between morality enforced through coercion or rules and morality that arises from a vision grounded in dignity.
It is precisely here that the Church’s distinctive contribution to the three prerequisites of the common good becomes evident. The Church can shape the social imaginary – the image of who our neighbor is and what unites the entire Ukrainian community. Through its community of practices, it can become the space where genuine responsible action and cooperation among equals emerge, rather than merely hierarchical coordination. And through a system of mutual commitments, exemplified by the Eucharistic community, it can serve as a model of a social contract sustained by solidarity.
A Deformed Social Imaginary: What Is Actually Happening
If we apply to the Orthodox jurisdictions of Ukraine the same analytical framework that we previously applied to social institutions, the picture becomes more complex. Both jurisdictions – the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) – possess a deformed social imaginary, and this affects both their own activity and society as a whole.
In the previous article, we showed that the social imaginary can function either in an ideological or in a projective mode. The ideological imaginary justifies and legitimizes the existing order. The projective imaginary opens the horizon of what could be otherwise. The ideological imaginary of the OCU predominantly identifies the Church with the nation and with the state, legitimizing a particular social order through religious symbols. This is important, but it is insufficient for the Church’s calling. The UOC’s imaginary is likewise ideological, but it identifies the Church with “tradition” and with the “canons” that require protection, and therefore perceives any criticism as a threat. Both modes are ideological in Ricoeur’s sense: they justify what already exists and close the horizon of possibility.
When the Church imagines itself as the embodiment of the nation, a person belonging to another jurisdiction or another identity ceases to be a neighbor and instead becomes a stranger. Levinas’s concept of the “face of the Other” is not merely a metaphor but a description of the primary moral experience: another person places a demand upon me before I have the opportunity to classify him or her. An imagination that has already determined who belongs to “our own” deprives itself of this experience – it no longer encounters another human being but merely recognizes one of its own.
The UOC’s self-understanding as the true martyred Church creates a different problem. It forms an image of the Church as a victim seeking protection from external authorities – from international institutions, from canon law, and from its relationships with Moscow. Yet a Church that primarily sees itself as a victim and seeks protection ceases to be a responsible subject. It no longer asks, “What can we do for society?” Instead, it begins to ask, “How can we protect ourselves from society?”
In both cases, we encounter a deformation of the very nature of the Church. Both jurisdictions identify the Church with its institutional forms – its canons, property, and hierarchical structure – and subordinate their imagination to these forms. The Church has become an end in itself rather than an instrument of service. This is what Cyril Hovorun described as “political Orthodoxy”: a condition in which the Church ceases to see itself through the eyes of the Gospel and instead begins to perceive itself as a separate corporation demanding that others serve it.
A Common Cause Without What Is Common: The Paradox of the Orthodox Conflict
The conflict between the OCU and the UOC is a vivid example of the conflictual nature of what is presented as a common cause. A genuine common cause presupposes openness regarding the outcome and equality among its participants. The conflict between the two jurisdictions is precisely the opposite: it is a corporate confrontation in which each side knows in advance what the outcome must be, and where “equality” serves merely as rhetorical cover for a struggle for dominance.
The conflict between the jurisdictions unfolds simultaneously on several levels: canonical, property-related, identity-based, and media-related. Yet behind these different languages lies a single mechanism: each jurisdiction constructs the image of the other as illegitimate and incapable of dialogue. The OCU views the UOC through the image of the “Moscow Church,” reducing a complex and internally diverse community to a single denominator – pro-Russian affiliation. The UOC, in turn, views the OCU through the image of an “artificial project,” ignoring the real existence of its parishes and faithful.
This is precisely the mechanism that Stuart Hall described as stereotyping: the reduction of a complex reality to a few “fixed” characteristics that deprive the Other of subjectivity. Yet within the ecclesial context, this operation is especially paradoxical, because it takes place within an institution whose very calling is to see the image of God in every human being. A Church that stereotypes another jurisdiction violates its own evangelical calling within society.
If the Church itself becomes an arena of conflict, it cannot be that “third place” between the state and the market where different people meet around what they hold in common. Instead, it reproduces the logic of polarization rather than overcoming it. Moreover, it legitimizes polarization through religious symbols, which is particularly destructive because religious symbols are among the deepest carriers of the social imaginary.
A Social Contract That Does Not Exist: Why the Churches Do Not Reach Agreement with One Another
Let us apply the concept of the social contract to the relations between the jurisdictions. A social contract is alive only when it is not a single act but a process of mutual commitments that are constantly renewed. What, then, is required for such a process between the OCU and the UOC even to begin?
First and foremost, there must be a willingness to recognize the other as a legitimate subject of dialogue. This is the condition without which any contract is impossible in principle. Yet this very condition is blocked. For the OCU, the institutional structure of the UOC is associated with the aggressor and is therefore illegitimate as such. For the UOC, the institutional structure of the OCU is “uncanonical” and therefore has no legitimate right to exist. These positions are not merely rhetorical; they are structural elements of a deformed social imaginary that render a social contract conceptually impossible.
The willingness to undertake commitments and to fulfill them is a sign of maturity. Paul Ricoeur described the social contract through the concept of ipse-identity: faithfulness to commitments that remain open and subject to verification. Yet both jurisdictions exhibit a systematic problem in precisely this dimension. Public statements diverge from actual practices. Bishops proclaim one thing but do another. Society sees this and draws the conclusion that the Church is not a trustworthy partner in the social contract – it fails to fulfill its own commitments as a spiritual institution.
Both jurisdictions also suffer from a profound divide between the hierarchy and the laity. John Dewey argued that the public, and indeed publicity itself, emerges when people recognize a shared problem and assume responsibility for solving it. Yet both Orthodox jurisdictions are dominated by the opposite – a non-public model in which the hierarchy makes decisions without meaningful influence from clergy or laity. Sobornost, one of the most valuable principles of the Orthodox tradition, becomes merely declarative. Yet it could have become an instrument of unity and an example of a social contract grounded in civic conciliarity. The central problem here is not a lack of goodwill but the absence of mechanisms through which that goodwill could be translated into practice.
If a social contract between the two jurisdictions is blocked at the level of the hierarchies, then the level of local communities remains. Here, however, genuine experience exists that contradicts the official logic of the conflict. Volunteer initiatives, joint assistance to internally displaced persons, common memorial services for those who have fallen in the war – in these concrete practices, people from different jurisdictions discover a common cause without waiting for permission from above. This is precisely the level from which a genuine social contract between Orthodox communities in Ukraine could begin. Yet it remains situational and largely invisible because it enjoys neither the support of the hierarchies nor institutional forms capable of making it sustainable.
What Is the Church’s Calling with Respect to the Common Good?
Against this background, the question arises: what is the Church’s true calling with respect to the common good, and what alternative exists to what is happening today?
Above all, the Church becomes a subject of the common good not when it serves “its own,” but when it assumes responsibility for those who lie beyond the boundaries of its own jurisdictional identity. This is not a secular demand imposed upon the Church; it is its very mission. If every human being is created in the image of God and possesses God-given dignity, then the Church’s responsibility cannot be limited by jurisdictional boundaries. A Church that bears responsibility only for its own members is not the Church in the fullest sense. This means that the Church bears no less responsibility for shaping the common good than the state, local communities, political organizations, or trade unions.
Furthermore, the Church is a subject in the formation of the social imaginary. The state may proclaim values. The market may shape consumer perceptions. But providing the theological foundation for the image of every human being as a person of dignity, regardless of usefulness, identity, or institutional affiliation, is a unique task of the Church. If the Church abandons the formation of such a vision of dignity, or replaces it with the particularistic image of “our” nation or “our” tradition, society loses the very source of this imagination, and nothing else can replace it. For this reason, the deformed imagination of the Church is not merely an ecclesiological problem but also a societal one.
The Church becomes a subject of the social contract not only through participation in formulating social doctrine or defining principles, but by serving as a model of the social contract within itself. A church community that lives through genuine sobornost – where the voices of both priest and layperson are heard, where the decisions of the Synod are transparent, and where the commitments of the metropolitan are fulfilled – provides an example of what a living social contract can look like in general. The Church teaches society not through preaching alone but through its very mode of existence.
Miroslav Volf described this through the concept of “witness.” The Church enters the public sphere not by imposing its own norms but by demonstrating an alternative way of being. If this demonstration is genuine, society can recognize in it its own deepest intuitions and acknowledge them as its own. If, however, the Church’s witness is merely rhetorical, society perceives the gap between proclamation and practice.
What, then, can social concord be built upon? It has two layers. The thin layer consists of a relatively small set of principles that are shared by virtually everyone: human dignity, justice, responsibility, solidarity, and subsidiarity. The thick layer is the sphere of substantive, culturally embedded answers: whom we regard as a hero, what language we speak at home, how we understand our duty to the state. The social contract is built upon the thin layer. The thick layer remains the space of an ongoing conversation that is never finally resolved.
This distinction is fundamentally important for understanding where the Church can act as both an actor and a guarantor of the common good for society as a whole. The Church fulfills this role only when it theologically defends and embodies the thin layer: affirming the dignity of every human being regardless of identity, upholding responsibility as a norm, and serving as a space of solidarity that transcends group interests. It is precisely here that the Church makes its irreplaceable contribution to the common good – a contribution that neither the state, nor politics, nor the market can provide.
Yet both Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine systematically compete for their own place within the thick layer, while simultaneously claiming to be the spiritual authority of the nation. The OCU speaks from the thick layer when it identifies the Church with a particular version of national identity or speaks on behalf of the Ukrainian people. The UOC speaks from the thick layer when it appeals to a particular civilizational affiliation and to a particular understanding of the canons and tradition. Both positions are legitimate as voices within the thick layer of public discourse. However, they are incompatible with the claim to be the moral voice of the Church for the whole of society. A Church that concentrates on establishing the thick layer ceases to be a subject of the common good and becomes merely one of many competing particular voices. This is the boundary that determines where the Church’s mission remains socially significant and where it becomes a group interest wrapped in religious language.
The Church supports the common good if and only if it speaks in the public sphere from the perspective of the thin layer: defending the dignity of every human being regardless of jurisdictional affiliation, upholding responsibility irrespective of who bears the consequences, and practicing solidarity that crosses every group boundary. The discussion of the thick layer – what Orthodox orthodoxy should be, which tradition is authentic, and which jurisdiction is canonical – it both can and should conduct, but it should do so as an equal participant in the public conversation, not as its judge. This means that the Church participates in society in two dimensions: first, as one of the actors in an equal public dialogue, subject to the same public standards as everyone else; and second, as the guardian of the highest values of humanity, where it becomes the prophetic voice of God.
Practical Implications
If the social contract between the jurisdictions is blocked at the level of the hierarchies, then the only realistic path forward is to support and make visible those practices of common action that are already taking place among people from different jurisdictions. Joint inter-jurisdictional social initiatives – support for internally displaced persons, assistance to the families of those killed in the war, the restoration of destroyed buildings, and care for veterans – become examples of a common cause in which a living social contract between Orthodox communities can begin to take shape from below.
This means that both jurisdictions need not new declarations but concrete practices that transform the social imagination. Such practices may include joint theological education, academic conferences where students of theological institutions study the common tradition rather than focusing solely on differences. Equally important is the Church’s consistent presence in those spaces where the social imagination is formed – in education, culture, and public discourse – not as an ideological ally or opponent, but as a responsible actor raising the questions that others prefer to avoid.
A Church that claims to be a subject of the common good must bear genuine responsibility before society. This requires transparency in financial management, mechanisms through which the laity can genuinely influence decision-making, and the willingness to acknowledge its own mistakes publicly. Without these, any claim to a public role remains empty rhetoric.
Conclusions
The Church possesses a distinctive potential in the formation of the common good that neither the state nor the market possesses. This potential lies in its ability to shape the social imagination through narrative and practice, to become a space of genuine common action, and to serve as a model of the social contract through authentic sobornost. These three dimensions correspond precisely to the three prerequisites of the common good.
Yet the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine have, to a large extent, failed to realize this potential. Their deformed social imagination – the identification of the Church either with the nation or with tradition – deprives them of the ability to see the image of God in the Other. The absence of genuine common action between the jurisdictions, blocked at the hierarchical level by corporate conflict, prevents the emergence of an inter-Orthodox social contract. The divide between hierarchy and laity undermines sobornost and transforms the Church from a subject of the common good into yet another institution serving its own interests.
The way out of this condition begins with the concrete practices of common action that are already taking place among ordinary people and that deserve support. It continues through practices that cultivate an alternative social imagination, in which the Other is seen not as a threat or competitor but as the image of the One for whose sake the Church exists at all. Finally, it requires mechanisms of genuine sobornost and responsible leadership that would make the living social contract within the Church not merely a declaration but a reality. These steps are both theological imperatives and social necessities. This is precisely the distinctive nature of the Church’s calling: it is socially significant and civically responsible to exactly the same extent that it is faithful to the Gospel.
