An Interview with Taras Telkovsky

On 2 March 2022 the editor of the East-West Church Report spoke with Taras Telkovsky, founder of Trinity Church, an Evangelical congregation in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. In 2021 Pastor Telkovsky was forced to flee his native Belarus amid an escalating crackdown by its authoritarian regime. Now in Warsaw, Poland, he has embarked upon a Christian initiative to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees from the war in Ukraine. The interview took place in English via Zoom. 

How did Trinity Church come to be founded in Belarus? 

In 2013-15 I studied expository preaching in England. This was not a seminary education, but the Cornhill Training Course, begun by Dick Lucas and David Jackman of St. Helen’s Bishopgate in central London. When I returned to Minsk I gathered a small group of people—12, coincidentally—and for a year we clarified what we were about. We wanted to create two things—a culture of theological clarity and a healthy community. Our first official service took place in 2017. We were mainly first-generation Christians, 25-35 years old, white-collar workers. Before the pandemic hit, we had around 70 members.

Is the congregation linked to a more established church union in Belarus? Technically we belong to the Baptist Union, but how we believe the church should be structured and led is very different. We joined the Baptist Union out of pragmatism because we thought we might get official registration [Editor’s note: required to function legally in Belarus], legal support, and more opportunities for ministry. 

Did you manage to obtain official registration as a church community? 

No. I did try, but I was only manipulated and threatened by the government. 

I understand you used to be a professional athlete. 

Yes, I was on the Belarusian national athletic team for a few years. But once I became a Christian my values in life shifted. I decided that I did not want to commit the rest of my life to professional sport. I began to train less and lost my place in the national team. 

You have put your athletic talent at the service of your faith, nevertheless. How did that come about? 

In 2017 the rest of the Protestant world was planning to celebrate 500 years of Reformation, but in Belarus we were celebrating 500 years since Frantsysk Skaryna’s translation of the Bible into [Old] Belarusian. This is quite remarkable— even Martin Luther’s translation came later—and most Belarusian churches were organizing cultural events such as history lectures or organ concerts. I wondered whether there was anything I could do to draw public attention to the Bible, not just as a literary landmark, but as something which continues to change people’s lives on a daily basis, including mine. I thought, “There’s not much I can do: I can speak, and I can run, so maybe I can combine them.” I decided to run 500 kilometers [approximately 300 miles], or 100 kilometers a day over five consecutive days. I asked people to join me, and on each of the five days I tried to share a section of the Christian story. The idea was to get as much attention as possible, and that did happen—I was on every national television channel in Belarus. A lot of people expressed interest in the Christian faith and started to come to our church and Bible studies. How many hours did you run per day? The first day I ran very fast—I completed the 100 kilometers [approximately 60 miles] in eight hours and 20 minutes. After that I started to lose pace, so the fifth day took nearly eleven hours.

How many hours did you run per day? 

The first day I ran very fast—I completed the 100 kilometers [approximately 60 miles] in eight hours and 20 minutes. After that I started to lose pace, so the fifth day took nearly eleven hours.

Why are you currently in Poland? 

I cannot go back to Belarus. I was very outspoken during the 2020 pro-democracy protests. They actually began earlier than election day itself [9 August 2020] because [Belarusian President Aleksandr] Lukashenko denied the existence of the coronavirus—he claimed that there was no virus because he had not seen it. We could see that people around us were dying from coronavirus, but the government was hiding the statistics from us, and so people felt increasingly bitter towards the government. When opposition candidates decided to run for the presidency and started to collect signatures, there were long lines of people waiting to sign up to support them. Lukashenko then started putting one candidate after another into prison. At that point something happened in Belarusian society—people started awakening to what kind of ruler we had been living with for the past 25 years. I was one of many people who became active—I wrote articles, delivered public speeches, and tried to bring a Christian perspective to what our government was doing. All that was before the election. 

The first three days after the election [Editor’s note: widely rejected internationally as illegitimate] were horrific. Thousands were arrested, and some people were killed. I organized non-denominational public prayers in central Minsk, after which we would join the protests. Here I did not use the pulpit as a political platform—the pulpit is for heralding the Gospel. I did not even encourage anyone to go out and protest. This was something that people knew in their heart they should do themselves. At the end of August the protests were violently suppressed. I was arrested at one of them, but—amazingly—I was released the next day. I had never been arrested previously, and there were so many arrests that they could not hold everyone in the cells, so they had to release some people. At a court hearing a few weeks later I received the maximum fine—more than $300—despite the fact that I have three kids under 18 to support. 

Where did your motivation to protest come from? 

I grew up in a family where political issues were discussed constantly. Before the Soviet Union collapsed, my father, Andrei Telkovsky, was a chief executive for human rights in our parliament. In 1990-91 he delivered a lot of prodemocracy speeches on our central square in Minsk. My father participated in the Soviet war in Afghanistan [1979-89], and when he returned from that war he realized the Soviet Union was in a total mess. Yet even after its collapse, when he became politically active, he was surveilled by the KGB [secret police, still functioning in Belarus]. They threatened him by showing him a picture of kids similar to myself and my brother and telling him that we might not come back home from kindergarten one day if he did not stop what he was doing. So he gave up politics, but later on he felt that he had betrayed his ideals. He had not been able to achieve what he wanted in politics, and when he saw who came to power [Lukashenko in 1994] it crushed him completely. He became an alcoholic. Later on this actually influenced my turn towards faith. I realized that my father had been unable to find answers in business, politics, the military, or sporting achievements, and I began to investigate the Christian faith more deeply. Once I became Christian, I started to think about how I could bring a Christian perspective into politics. 

How do you understand your duty to protest in biblical terms?

 I formulated this in a series of points just recently: 

1. All power belongs exclusively to God. 
2. God delegates some of this power to the institute of the state. 
3. Christians should submit themselves to God and therefore to the state. 
4. God hates evil. 
5. If the state becomes an agent of evil, then Christians should call upon the state to repent for the evil that is being done.
6. God loves life, and the state is His instrument to supply all the necessities of life. If the state takes away life, it stops functioning as God designed. This is like adultery in marriage: the marriage covenant is broken, and so the family stops functioning. 
7. Christ is Lord, not an earthly president. Christians sometimes have to call everyone to repentance—not only those below them, but those above them, including presidents.
8. God is just, righteous, and loving, and the state should reflect this. If it does not, it loses its legitimacy and even necessity, because society does not need institutions of oppression and pain.
9.  Through their participation in earthly life, Christians are called to transform their state and the society around them. 

I was able to state the essence of this at my court hearing. I said that the state is God’s design, and while I must submit to the state, this is only in so far as it is in line with God’s purposes. What was happening on Belarusian streets—what was being done by the Belarusian government—went against God’s design. Lying goes against God’s design. When people are beaten or otherwise treated without dignity or respect, this goes against God’s design. When people are being killed, this goes against God’s design. It is therefore my duty as a pastor to call the state authorities to repentance, to stop what they are doing and turn back to God’s design. 

Is this position held widely within Belarusian churches?

There are some like-minded church circles, but frankly only a minority of Evangelical communities raise their voice openly against the regime. Yet this is not a position they have  thought through theologically, or a deep conviction nurtured out of their study of Scripture. Mainly, this conviction has come about out of a fear of government persecution. 

Most pastors quote Romans 13: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” But if you listen to them carefully, in their minds and hearts it is the state that has absolute power, while God has secondary power. From a purely exegetical perspective, I am not sure whether they have interpreted this passage correctly, for it is a misreading that all power belongs to the state, and that you should therefore totally submit to the state. If Roman 13 teaches something clearly, it is that all power belongs to God, not to the earthly state. 

Many Belarusian pastors also emphasize free will: that your salvation depends upon your decision of whether or not to accept God. If you accept God, you are saved; if you reject Him, you are doomed. But when it comes to the earthly state, they are suggesting that there is total determinism: there is no free will, and you cannot influence anything. It is amazing—you can reject God easily, but when it comes to earthly powers, you should totally submit to them. This is such a wrong understanding of Scripture. 

As a consequence of this, such pastors have trained not free thinkers, but people with a slave mentality of simply submitting and not asking questions, no matter what the government does. Partly, this indifference is driven by their eschatology. They read in 2 Peter that, “the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up” [2 Peter 3:10], and conclude that there is no point in trying to get involved in this world as God is going to destroy it and build something from scratch. This is not only a very unhealthy eschatological perspective, it is also new to Christian thinking. It appeared in the 20th century in some fundamentalist circles in America as a response to the liberalist movement, and it makes people absolutely indifferent. When there is moral conflict in society, believers should be salt and light, bring clarity, and call things by their proper names. Yet here they are neutral—they say that drinking alcohol and smoking is evil and sinful, but if your president kills people on the street, things are not so clearcut. As Dante is meant to have said, “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” 

Do you think this neutral attitude has anything to do with the Soviet authorities’ infiltration of religious communities over the years? 

A great deal. Stalin told different churches that they could either register and start working with the KGB or go straight to the concentration camps. This has influenced generations, and it has gotten to the point where a generation has grown up with a perspective that is not biblical. They have been trained in this slavish submission to the state. 

As we speak we have recently entered a major moral and political crisis—a week ago Russian armed forces invaded Ukraine. You were in Ukraine just a few days before the war started. What was the atmosphere like? 

I was invited to a conference in Kyiv organized by Campus Crusade for Christ. I gave some talks on responsibility—that was the theme of the conference. Even when I landed at the airport, I could sense that people were nervous, but trying to suppress it. They were trying to convince themselves that such a thing [an invasion] could not happen in the 21st century. Some of the young people at the conference were discussing where to find the nearest bomb shelter, but there was also a lot of laughter. Everything was going on as normal, but at the same time there was a horrible possibility of war coming. So people were experiencing a cocktail of feelings. 

What has happened since to the church communities you know in Ukraine? 

Many churches mobilized themselves and are trying to provide as much help as possible. I know a few pastors who are in Kharkiv in the eastern part of Ukraine. That city is being bombed, and some of those pastors have said that they are not going to leave—that if they die, then they die. Another young pastor I know in Kyiv has joined the groups for territorial defense. Most people I know are trying to provide humanitarian aid. Others are concentrating on bringing spiritual and moral relief and trying to comfort people as much as possible. 

As soon as the bombing began, people over here in Poland started asking me if I could help with shelter, so I started to connect them with as many people as possible. When housing could not be found, I tried to find money to rent Airbnb accommodations where fleeing families could stay. I know quite a few Belarusians here who I thought might be willing to join me in helping Ukrainian refugees, and so we quickly gathered a team of 15 people to co-ordinate this. Most are political refugees like me. A few work in IT, so they have helped us to create a clear structure. People fill in online forms they have designed—“I can help” or “I need help”—that make it easy to connect those in need with those who are able to assist. When we started getting requests from within Ukraine itself, we partnered with a team in Ukraine that is providing assistance, including with evacuation, to those who are still there. We have also started to think about how we might help in the long term, because sooner or later immediate humanitarian needs will be covered. It is not easy. The greatest influx of refugees has been into Poland: a quarter of a million are here already, including around 150,000 in Warsaw.

How many people do you think you have helped so far? 

Probably hundreds, if you include consultation, help with housing, and transportation. We stopped counting— it has been overwhelming. We are trying to offer as much humanitarian relief as possible, but no one can cope with the number of requests, even government organizations. So there is a need for a lot of small groups of people providing help alongside government initiatives. 

As the political crackdown in Belarus was worsening last year, you wrote “in the big picture, things are getting clearer, evil won’t last.” Do you still feel that in the current circumstances?

 Definitely. Of course, I have days of doubt, when it seems this is going to last for many years, and I might never return to Belarus. But then I remind myself of the greater narrative to which I belong. I do not think we are driven by pure facts, but by interpretation of the facts. I can either interpret what is happening right now in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Russia from a pragmatic, political perspective or from a theological perspective. As I am a believer, I try to interpret from my theological standpoint: An empty grave. Jesus is risen. God is coming back. He will restore this creation. All evil will eventually lose its grip on this world.