GERALDINE FAGAN

Many Ukrainian Christians threw their lot in with the mass protests on Kyiv’s Maidan Square in late 2013, sparked when then-President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, reneged on long-standing promises to deepen Ukraine’s association with the European Union. While not necessarily backing all aspects of the Maidan movement, they agree it was both justified and spontaneous. 

“People were so fed up with Yanukovych,” recalls Vitaly Sorokun, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in the eastern city of Kharkiv [Russian: Kharkov]. “He was saying, ‘We’re going to sign this EU agreement,’ and then all of a sudden he said, ‘We’re not going to sign it, because we calculated it will cost five billion dollars of damage to our economy.’ People were like, ‘Really? You’ve been talking about this for years, and your prime minister only took out a calculator a week before signing? Do you really think we are that stupid?’”1 

In Kyiv, Vladislav Golovin, an Orthodox parishioner of the Moscow Patriarchate who participated in Maidan, recalls his efforts to convince his mother that protests were not orchestrated by the United States, as alleged by Russian state media. “In the days after the massacre [20 February 2014, when snipers killed some 50 protesters], I took her to Maidan and showed her the glass boxes where people were donating hundreds of hryvnia [Ukrainian currency] to the wounded protesters. I said, ‘Mama, do you really think the CIA put these hryvnia in these boxes?’”2

New possibilities

Prayer led by a broad spectrum of Ukrainian church leaders— including senior Pentecostal Mykhailo Panochko—was a striking feature of the Maidan movement.3 This was not lost on some Russian media, which claimed that “radical Pentecostals, Charismatics and other sects” were behind the political changes across the border.4

Under Yanukovych, religious freedom was generally respected in Ukraine. “I cannot say that we were under some mega pressure,” admits Pastor Petr Dudnik of Good News Pentecostal Church in the eastern city of Sloviansk [Russian: Slaviansk]. Yet thanks to a radical shift following Yanukovych’s 2014 ouster— termed the “Revolution of Dignity” by its supporters—“what we have now, compared with the Soviet period, is as far as north is from south,” Dudnik maintains.5 The status of Protestants in particular has transformed: for several months in 2014, a Baptist pastor, Oleksandr Turchynov, was even acting president. 

Among the new possibilities, Jaroslaw Lukasik singles out a project by his ministry, Eastern Europe Reformation, to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. That year, he estimates having lectured on core Reformation principles to audiences totaling some 40,000 across Ukraine—including university and government personnel. Lukasik is certain that “we would not have had the same green light from the government under Yanukovych” as under then-President Petr Poroshenko.6 He points in particular to an August 2016 presidential decree instructing different levels of government to engage with Protestant organizations in staging conferences, exhibitions, and concerts commemorating the Reformation anniversary: “We are not a ‘sect’ anymore.”7

In Kharkiv, Pastor Sorokun agrees: “Poroshenko and his administration proved surprisingly open to Protestants. We are able to represent ourselves at the highest level of society.” He cites the now annual Sviato Podiaki—Thanksgiving holiday—initiated by Protestants as part of the Reformation commemorations and also enjoying government support— which sees 100,000-strong crowds in downtown Kyiv: “This says, ‘Look, we Protestants are a force too.’”8 While their approximately 9,000 registered congregations represent just two percent of the population, Ukraine’s Protestants are thus punching above their weight.9

Civilizational choice

Protestant thinking is in turn contributing to a cultural shift in Ukraine. “We are not Eurasia,” argues Jaroslaw Lukasik, “we are Eastern Europe.” In making a civilizational choice to be open to the West in 2014, Lukasik believes Ukraine is encountering Reformation thinking as a key pillar of that Western civilization. Only core Reformation principles, in his view, can offer real solutions to Ukraine’s ongoing political, social, and economic crises. One example is the rule of law. According to the Reformation principle of coram Deo [Latin: before God], “we are always in the presence of God,” Lukasik explains. “I submit to the law not because I fear the police, but because God is watching me. This is a crucial difference between Western—especially Protestant—culture, and that of Ukraine, he notes. “Here, the law has been a tool for the government to manipulate you, and people do not trust it.” 

Coram Deo is a component of “Five teachings that changed the world—could they change Ukraine today?”— Lukasik’s Ukraine-wide presentation that formed part of the Reformation commemorations. (The others: solus Christus [Latin: Christ alone], sola scriptora [Latin: by scripture alone], personal vocation, and the priesthood of all believers.)10

Lukasik has also observed significant shifts in attitude within Ukraine’s Protestant churches since 2014. Concerning secular authority, he notes a move towards recognition of rulers as fallible human beings rather than “little gods.” Concerning the Soviet legacy, he sees a greater appreciation for “de-Communization as a spiritual, rather than a political process.” And in contrast to previous pacifist leanings, he finds Protestants more willing to provide military chaplaincy and non-lethal aid to the armed forces. 

Maksim Vasin of the Kyiv-based Institute for Religious Freedom—also an Evangelical—stresses that many volunteers in the broader humanitarian sphere are active members of Ukrainian churches. According to recent sociological research in Ukraine, volunteer organizations enjoy the highest level of public trust (67 percent), with the Church placing third (61 percent).11 “But often sociologists forget to mention that most of the volunteers are from churches,” notes Vasin. “That is why the Church remains among the institutions afforded the highest trust by Ukrainian society.”12 

Pastor Dudnik agrees that Ukrainian Protestants’ activist drive for local change has contributed to a rise in their public standing, including in his eastern city of Sloviansk. “Changes should happen here, in our way of thinking, our hearts. That is our position,” he explains, “and this position of the Protestant churches has created a new opinion in the East.” (For an example of the substantial social ministry undertaken by Ukrainian Protestants, see Dudnik’s separate interview in this issue.) 

Christian solidarity

A further striking aspect of the changed atmosphere for Ukrainian Protestants since Maidan is the spirit of solidarity among Christians. Jaroslaw Lukasik finds the emergence of unity among Protestant churches—with some 40 leaders collaborating in the 2017 Reformation commemorations— unprecedented: “The ‘Year of Reformation’ did it.” Poroshenko’s presidential decree supporting their events, he adds, “helped Christians to be more courageous, to go out into the public square.” 

This spirit was indeed consolidated by the 2014 political crisis. Responding to the Russian state’s approval of military intervention in Ukraine, Protestant leaders joined with other members of the remarkably broad Pan-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations in condemning Moscow for “the possibly irreversible consequences of military conflict on Ukrainian soil.” (Signatories included the leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Patriarch of Moscow—then rotating chair of the Council—as well as Jewish and Muslim representatives.)13

One of the spheres of activity of Vasin’s Institute for Religious Freedom is to facilitate such co-operation. He views it as a distinct achievement of Ukrainian society: “People from different denominations, professions, and regions want to cooperate to protect their rights, freedom, and dignity. They are able to think not just of themselves, but about the benefits for society in general.”

Stark contrast The contrast with places to the east and north is now stark. Beyond Kyiv’s reach, the authorities of the pro-Moscow separatist territories within Donetsk and Luhansk Regions have rendered public Protestant worship illegal. Some congregations have suffered raids, court proceedings, and property confiscations. (A future issue of the East-West Church Report will feature a primer on the religious freedom situation in these areas.) “From our monitoring, it seems that believers there suffer from religious persecution much more than in Soviet times,” observes Vasin. (Although strictly controlled, some Protestant churches were at least able to function publicly in the later Soviet period.) And while less oppressive, Russian law—now extending to annexed Crimea—punishes the sharing of religious ideas outside narrowly defined limits. As of mid-2016, merely inviting a non-believing friend to a worship service, for example, may prove sufficient grounds for prosecution for “unlawful missionary activity.”14 

For some religious communities, the disparity is even more dramatic. On an Indian summer day in central Kharkiv in 2018, a group of local Jehovah’s Witnesses manned a small literature stall undisturbed. Just 50 miles away across the Russian border, police in the city of Belgorod raided the homes of 16 Jehovah’s Witnesses that spring, confiscating Bibles and detaining two men for 48 hours. Sergei Voikov and Anatoli Shalyapin are now suspects in a criminal extremism case, along with some 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses—including three in Crimea—who face similar charges under Russian law. Thirty-five are being held in detention at the time of this writing.15

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are similarly banned in the separatistheld territories within Donetsk and Luhansk Regions. 

Reformation’s legacy

There is a further discrepancy with Belarus, as Jaroslaw Lukasik well knows. Originally from Łuków in eastern Poland, Lukasik moved to Belarus as a student of the Belarusian language in 1993. He has long experience of working with Protestants there promoting the Reformation’s legacy in Belarusian culture. “Belarus was a precursor of what is happening [in Ukraine],” Lukasik recalls. “But in Belarus, we did not have such freedom for this.” Back in 2003, four Protestant denominations joined to mark the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in Belarus with an international conference in the capital, Minsk. Local government refused the organizers permission to rent a public venue, however, and consequently to advertise the event.16 In 2017—shortly after the arrest and overnight detention of his friend, Pastor Antoni Bokun of Minsk’s John the Baptist Pentecostal Church—Lukasik was deported for “activity aimed at bringing harm to the national security of the Republic of Belarus in the sphere of interconfessional relations.”17 He and his family moved to Kyiv. 

Lukasik’s hope is to utilize Reformation history as an introduction to faith: “Parliamentarianism, democracy, civil society… we have our Biblical argumentation to take part in all these things, to be very conscientious, to hold authority to account.” In Ukraine he finds a similar Reformation heritage to that of Belarus, including Protestant influences on local Orthodox culture. Here, he cites the foundations of the Ostroh (1576) and Kyiv-Mohyla (1632) Orthodox academies as having occurred in response to the strength of Calvinism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. All of modern-day Belarus and a large part of modern-day Ukraine belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the time. 

The freer atmosphere in today’s Ukraine—and the much larger Protestant community there—has allowed Lukasik to repeat his Belarusian experience on a grander scale. He is now on the steering committee of the Eastern European Leadership Forum, which gathers some 600 Evangelical leaders in Kyiv annually to co-ordinate networks in 12 spheres, including evangelization, art and culture, business, youth ministry, and civil society.18 While designed for Protestants, it features several Catholic and Orthodox speakers. “We are very open for co-operation among confessions,” Lukasik notes. 

Ukraine entered a new chapter in 2019 with the election of professional comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as president. Zelensky is guarded when it comes to faith. So far, he has offered publicly only that he believes in and speaks to God; never discusses this, even with his family; and does not attend any place of worship. At the same time, he is adamant that, “we should interfere less with human freedom.”19 Whatever Zelensky’s degree of sincerity, Ukraine’s Protestants have reached a point where such interference would be difficult.

Notes 

1. Interview with the author, Kharkiv, 18 October 2018.
2.  Interview with the author, Kyiv, 7 October 2018.
3.  [In Ukrainian] “Molytva Otche Nash na Vyche Evromaǐdan 16.02.14h,” YouTube, 16 February 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1USO8Zkpck; “Panochko Mykhaǐlo. Vystup na maǐdani 09.03.2014,” YouTube, 9 March 2014, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=RPkA1a9GcQE&t=138s.
4.  [In Russian] “Glavnoe. Otkrytyi pokaz ‘Lovtsy dush’,” Nika TV, 17 November 2016, http://nikatv.ru/tv/programs/glavnoe/u1ui2MDjhSuv8vHAOWme.
5.  Interview with the author, Sloviansk, 16 October 2018. 
6. Interview with the author, Kyiv, 3 October 2018.
7.  [In Ukrainian] “UKAZ PREZYDENTA UKRAÏNY №357/2016,” Office of the President of Ukraine, 26 August 2016, https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/3572016-20423.
8.  See also Mikhail Cherenkov, “Churches as Agents of Change in Eurasia,” East-West Church Report, vol. 26, no. 3 (2018), 15-16.
9.  [In Ukrainian] “ZVIT pro merezhu relihiǐnykh orhanizatsiǐ v Ukraïni stanom na 1 sichnia 2017 roku,” Culture Ministry of Ukraine, 29 March 2017, http://mincult.kmu.gov.ua/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=245234272.
10. [In Ukrainian] “P’iat’ ideǐ, iaki kolys’ zminyly svit. Chy zmozhut’ vony s’ohodni zminyty Ukraïnu?,” R500, https://r500.ua/p-yatpropovidej-reformatsiyi-shho-sformuvali-suchasnij-svit-yaroslavlukasik-video/.
11. [In Russian] “Ukraintsy bol’she vsego doveriaiut volonteram, armii, spasateliam i Tserkvi – opros Tsentra Razumkova,” Interfax Ukraine, 20 February 2019, https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/567395.html.
12.  Interview with the author, Kyiv, 10 October 2018.
13. [In Russian] “Zaiavlenie Soveta Tserkvei po povodu resheniia Rossii o voennom vtorzhenii v Ukrainu,” Pan-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, 2 March 2014, http:// vrciro.org.ua/ru/statements/381-council-of-churches-statementon-decision-of-russian-military-invasion.
14. Lauren B. Homer, “Making Sense of the Anti-Missionary Provisions of Russia’s 2016 Anti-Terrorism Legislation,” East-West Church & Ministry Report, vol. 25, no. 2 (2017), 1-7.
15. Victoria Arnold, “Russia: Two criminal trials, three criminal investigations,” Forum 18, 20 February 2018, http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2355; https://jw-russia.org/prisoners.html.
16. Geraldine Fagan, “Belarus: Calvinists kept quiet,” Forum 18, 31 October 2003, http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=172.
17. Geraldine Fagan, “Belarus: Pentecostals raided at Pentecost,” Forum 18, 28 May 2007, http://www.forum18.org/archive. php?article_id=964; Geraldine Fagan, “Foreign Protestants expelled for ‘harming national security’,” Forum 18, 17 May 2007, http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=958.
18. Eastern European Leadership Forum Report 2016, https:// faithandlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/eelf_2016_ report.pdf.
19. [In Russian] “Vladimir Zelenskii: Nam vygodno raspustit’ Radu, no budem dumat’ i postupat’ po zakonu,” RBK-Ukraïna, 18 April 2019, https://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/vladimir-zelenskiy-namvygodno-raspustit-1555546435.html; [In Russian] “Kandidat v prezidenty Ukrainy Vladimir ZELENSKII: «Peregovory s Trampom? Nu my zhe iz odnogo biznesa!», Bul’var Gordona, 
20. March 2019, http://bulvar.com.ua/gazeta/archive/s724/kandidat-v-prezidenty-ukrainy-vladimir-zelenskij-peregovory-strampom-nu-my-zhe-iz-odnogo-biznesa.html.

Geraldine Fagan is editor of the East-West Church Report