4 May 2011, 16:46 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

April: On the Church and Government

Out of all that was written or said about religion, society, and the state in April, I was personally most blown away by the Ukrainian president’s annual address to the Verkhovna Rada “Modernization of the Country: Our Strategic Choice.

1 April 2011, 17:36 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

March: The election and the role of personality in history

During the enthronement of the newly elected head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church it is likely that the same thing occurred to many of the guests. When Bishop Sviatoslav reaches the age at which his predecessor asked the pope to accept his resignation, the 21st century will be at its zenith and the world will be different.

2 November 2010, 10:49 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

October: On Lists and Expectations

This October’s increased political parties’ interest in priests, on whom it depends to embellish the lists of candidates to city council, was widely covered by the media. The enthusiasm of the servants of various churches who in large numbers sought authority was also explained.

4 October 2010, 11:15 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

September: On Religion and Violence

The world’s great religions are calling for peace and condemn violence, but in modern encyclopedias and dictionaries, in studies by the famous expert in conflictology David Rapoport, “religion and peace” is mentioned about five times less than “religion and war.”

7 September 2010, 15:56 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

August: About Rituals and Draft Laws

The main national holiday of every country is the collection of symbols and rituals that bring together the country and fill its citizens with pride for their glorious homeland. But nowhere, except maybe for the countries with apartheid, does the national holiday divide its citizens.

3 August 2010, 09:35 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

July: About Compromises

Why did the media – not only Ukrainian and Russian for that matter – show such an interest in this year’s visit of Patriarch Kirill to Ukraine? I think because the patriarch hit the most sensitive nerves of Ukrainian self-realization and self-recognition.

9 Jule 2010, 12:07 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

About the CIS and Europe

Spending the end of June in Kyiv, the head of the Synodal Department for Relations Between the Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin met with deputies of the Supreme Council of Ukraine from the Party of Regions and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. During the meeting Fr. Vsevolod noted that “…in the countries of the CIS, more and more the model of legislation on religion, typical for most European countries, is consolidating, and it foresees selective support by the society and state of one or more religious communities that play a role in the life of a country.”

2 June 2010, 13:55 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

May: About Kerchiefs and Identity

Even in the eventful religious-social life of May, the ban to wear traditional Muslim women’s clothes in public places in Belgium and the intention to pass such a ban in France stands out.

26 April 2010, 17:31 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

April: About the Resistance to Material

The uneasiness that stirred inside many religious environments of Ukraine since the announcement of the results of the presidential elections, after the Kharkiv pact developed into despair.

30 March 2010, 13:25 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

March: about the struggle between the “lower” and “upper”

Literally in the last few days I came across two recently defended dissertations about the “laicization of Christianity” and “secularization of all sides of the social life of modern Ukraine.”

24 February 2010, 15:09 | Viktor Yelenskyi's column | 

Religion and the Church in Ukraine: beginning of the year 2010

In a month and half into the year 2010 many events occurred in the religious life of Ukraine that deserve thorough, unhurried analyses.