FAITH AND WAR: Grassroots Ukrainian Protestantism in the context of the Russian invasion

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has had an enormous effect on the religious landscape not only in Ukraine but also in what used to be the post-Soviet space. War has ruptured the last post-Soviet alliances between churches and congregations, bringing to life new religious identities and triggering new moral challenges. This chapter provides insight into the everyday lives of Evangelical Christians in war-torn Ukraine and their search for answers to questions posed by the destruction, violence, and increasing militarization of Ukrainian society. It discusses how Ukrainian Protestant believers are revising their understandings of historical legacy and memories in the face of the wartime disintegration of old (post-)Soviet religious networks. This has longstanding consequences, as Ukraine was “the Bible belt of the Soviet Union” and traditionally supplied ministers, pastors, and missionaries across the region. Indeed, Ukraine was the heart of Soviet and post-Soviet Evangelical Christianity, although it never had a distinctly ethnic or nationally colored historical memory. The war has changed that and questioned other important features of Ukrainian Protestantism, namely, its conservative, traditionalist, and pacifist stances. Evangelicals’ struggle to redefine themselves as active members of a war-torn society, while observing their faith-based pacifism, has created new challenges and novel approaches to peacebuilding.