Highlights: Russian churches have lost half of their faithful in five years, according to official figures. Orthodox Church is an ever-present supporter of the Kremlin and its war effort. Official religious bodies support the sending of Russian soldiers to Ukraine and crack down on any priest who opposes it. Since Kirill has been at the helm of the institution, going to church in the eyes of many of the faithful has now become equivalent to pledging allegiance to the Kremlin. The rapprochement between the Church and the government has been strengthened by the war.

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kiril, is an ever-present supporter of the Kremlin and its war effort. But Russian churches are emptying, according to statistics presented on January 8,...

Russia: Orthodox Church loses followers, according to official figures

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kiril, is an ever-present supporter of the Kremlin and its war effort. But Russian churches are emptying: according to statistics presented on 8 January, they have lost half of their faithful in five years.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, center, celebrates the Christmas service at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. © Sergey Vlasov/AP

By: Anissa El Jabri Follow

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From our correspondent in Moscow,

This drop in the number of faithful could not be more official: the Ministry of the Interior announced it just after the celebration of the Orthodox Christmas. This year, 1.4 million people came to celebrate services in churches. While the figures for 2021 and 2022 have not been released, the figures for 2023 are almost half as many as in 2018.

Out of an official population of 143 million, this is already an extreme minority: the 2% of practitioners has now fallen to 1%. But in a country marked by an ultra-conservative turn, accentuated since the war in Ukraine, it does signal a real decline in religious practice.

Covid-19 is said to have started a dynamic of abandonment of religions

According to experts, the first reason could be the Covid-19 pandemic. This affected the elderly, as everywhere in the world, who were already practicing much more than the others.

Another consequence of the coronavirus is that churches have been closed during the period. Of those who had to stop coming to pay their respects, some simply did not return. According to Ksenia Luchenko, a visiting scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations, quoted in the Moscow Times (a media outlet classified as a foreign agent by the authorities), "it's like when you interrupt a subscription and you have to take it back and pay again: there are always people who don't do it."

The Political Positions of the Church and its Patriarch

Other experts have taken as a starting point the peak year of religious practice in Russia: 2008, the last year of the previous patriarch, Alexy II.

According to these analysts, the hallmark of the reign of the current patriarch, Kirill, is that of a Church that is very involved in ideology and politics, and less involved in what is called "mission," that is, to bring people to the Church, to make it attractive. Since Kirill has been at the helm of the institution, going to church in the eyes of many of the faithful has now become equivalent to pledging allegiance to the Kremlin.

In Russia, however, the basis of the implicit social and political contract is that the state, power and its elites pursue their goals on the one hand, while citizens live their lives on the side.

The rapprochement between the Church and the government has been strengthened by the war in Ukraine. Official religious bodies support the sending of Russian soldiers to Ukraine and crack down on any priest who opposes it. The priest Alexei Uminsky, a well-liked media figure, paid the price this weekend: an ecclesiastical court defrocked him on Saturday, January 13, for his refusal to recite the prayer "for Holy Russia," a text that asks God to grant victory to Russia.

Still, he's not the first. Since the beginning of the war, many clergymen in the Russian regions have had to return to civilian life, in silence, under duress and coercion. Some have even gone into exile. This was after direct criticism or muted appeals for peace.

In a sign of a kind of new syncretism of this period, in mid-August, Orthodox clerics blessed an eight-meter statue of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in front of a factory in the town of Velikie Luki, in the western region of Pskov, in the presence of representatives of the local Communist Party. However, the religious authorities made it clear that they acted without the "blessing" or agreement of their superiors.

Russia: Orthodox Church loses followers, according to official figures

Russia: Orthodox Church loses followers, according to official figures

Covid-19 is said to have started a dynamic of abandonment of religions

The Political Positions of the Church and its Patriarch

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