Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 25 – Members of
Protestant Christian denominations are playing a major role in the new
Ukrainian government, from acting president Aleksandr Turchinov, who is a
Baptist, on down, a development that these denominations are celebrating but
that some Russians see a threat to what they call “the Russian world.”
Ukraine sits astride cultural fault
lines between east and west, and nowhere is this today more evident than in
religious affairs, where as one Russian commentator put it, “representatives of
non-traditional religious organizations, which in many countries are considered
sects” are now in power (kavpolit.com/articles/uroki_sektovedenija_po_ukrainski-2206/).
The “contribution” of Protestants
and intellectual influenced by them to the “orange revolution,” the Maidan and
the ouster of Viktor Yanukovich was significant, Nikolay Protsenko says in an
article posted on Kavpolit.com, and the presence of Protestants in the
government is the result.
Robert Tolliver, a Protestant
minister who works in Kyiv, says that the Baptist Turchinov is “a suitable person
for the demands of the current moment and will receive widespread support.” He
points out that “Ukraine is the most evangelical and spiritually advanced
nation of all the former Soviet countries.”
Ukraine, Tolliver continues, “has
sent more missionaries abroad than any other forner Soviet country. Ninety
percent of the pastors in Russia are from Ukraine.” The largest charismatic
church, the largest Baptist Union, the largest messianic congregation, and one of
the largest Baptist seminaries “are all in Ukraine.”
President Turchinov belongs to the
Union of Life Baptist Church which was founded in 1983 by Swedish pastor Ulf Ekman. “Like many other Protestant congregations,”
Protsenko says, “this church is oriented toward active missionary activity, including
in the post-Soviet spae and in particular in Russia.”
Among other members of this
denomination in the new Ukrainian “establishment,” the Kavpolit.com writer
continues, are former Kyiv mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, former Dandy Bank head
Mikhail Brodsky, and Ukrainian Popular Self-Defense Union ideologist Andrey
Shkil.
Exact figures on the number of
Ukrainian Protestant remain in dispute, but most estimates suggest that two to
three percent of the population of the country are members of approximately 10,600
Protestant congregations. Moreover, all
these numbers are increasingly rapidly.
Most of Protsenko’s article is
devoted to the relatively small number of Ukrainians who are members of the
controversial Church of Scientology, a trend that many in the West are very
critical of and that many Russians view as the symbol of all that is wrong with
what the Russian Orthodox Church and its supporters call “sects.”
In Protsenko’s telling, the 2004
Orange Revolution which brought Yushchenko to power opened the floodgates for
the influx of Protestant influence into Ukraine and for Ukraine’s conversion
into a base from which Protestant groups sought to spread their influence into
the Russian Federation and other former Soviet republics.
Moreover, he continues, standing
behind the Protestants in Ukraine is the US State Department, which he says has
promoted Protestantism in the post-Soviet space particularly since 1998 when
the Congress approved the International Religious Freedom Act which encouraged
contacts between religious groups in these countries and Washington.
Protsenko’s article concludes by
quoting Lyudmila Filippovich, a professor at Kyiv’s Mohylev Academy. She has said that “the Maidan was angered by
the obviously anti-Christian spirit and inhumanity of Yanukovich’s administration.” As a result, she says, the Maidan was shaped
by these moral concerns.
According to the Kavpolit.com
writer, there is no need for commentary on this point. But in fact, there are three observations
that must be made. First, this article reflects the fears of many in Russia
that Protestantism threatens political change in the post-Soviet states and
thus is an enemy of both Orthodoxy and the Russian state.
Second, it suggests that the Kremlin
may make its anti-Protestant attitudes a central part of it ideological attack
on Ukraine in the future, something that would by touching on some of the
deepest and most personal aspects of faith, inevitably exacerbate what is already
a tense conflict between Russians and Ukrainians.
And third, such commentaries – and Protsenko’s
is hardly alone – suggest that one of the features of life in Russia and in any
portion of Ukraine Russia controls may soon be a violent crackdown on
Protestant Christians. If that happens,
it will create yet another division between east and west – and one not limited
to what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine.
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