Orthodox ecclesiastical court to hear case of defrocked pacifist priest. Complaint argues pacifism is ‘heresy.’

An ecclesiastical court is about to consider the case of Ioann Burdin, a defrocked cleric from Kostroma who’s a vocal objector to the Ukraine war.

According to the case documents, the hearing scheduled for June 16 will consider Burdin’s criticisms of the war. The complaint describes them as “undermining the believers’ trust in the patriarch and the bishops” and damaging to the church and its unity.

The defendant has posted some of the case materials on his Telegram channel. One of the preliminary filings, for example, says that

in different epochs of church history, pacifism has been part of heretical doctrines like Gnosticism, Paulicianism, and the teachings of the Bogomils, Albigensians, and Tolstoyans, revealing, similarly to other utopian ideologies, its ties with ancient chiliasm.

In other words, a pacifist position may be deemed heretical on the basis of being close to the idea of establishing a “heaven on earth,” instead of waiting for the world-to-come.

Apart from connecting pacifism with heretical utopianism, the complaint also says that the Russian Orthodox Church has historically “blessed warriors to defend the Fatherland” and that the former priest’s pacifist position is distinctly anti-Russian, and therefore “unacceptable.”