State Ethnopolitics: Authorities can’t initiate meetings on temple transfer

On August 28, 2022, the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Religion published clarifications on the procedure for changing a denomination by a religious community. The document is published on the official website of the Service.

The text says that the initiators of the meeting can only be members of a religious community. The authors emphasize that "members or clergy of other religious communities with local registration can NOT be members of the initiative group".

The document declares that representatives of the authorities, which include "officials of state authorities, local self-government, including united territorial communities," cannot be initiators or organizers of such meetings.

The authors highlight that “a “religious community” and a “territorial community” are not identical concepts and cannot replace each other”, only members of a religious community can be participants in a meeting, and membership in a community is determined solely by the statute of this community.

The following provisions of the statute (if any) should be mentioned in the announcement of the meeting: “Members of the community shall be believers who are at least 18 years of age, who regularly participate in the services in this community, confess and receive communion in this community, are not under a ban or other ecclesiastical condemnation that forbids full participation in liturgical life.”

The authors stress that the decision to transfer is legitimate only if two-thirds of the religious community vote.

As the UOJ wrote earlier, the head of the State Ethnopolitics Olena Bohdan said at a meeting of the territorial community on the transfer of the church in Bilohorodka that only its members can decide the fate of the UOC church community.

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