About 400 of Ukraine’s 2,300 Baptist churches have been lost during the war with Russia, according to Yaroslav Pyzh, president of the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary.
Pyzh told Baptist Press that the displacement of Ukrainian people as a result of the ongoing war has led to entire congregations ceasing to exist:
“Our main challenge in the future, when the war will be over, is to bridge the gap in leadership that we lost,” Pyzh said. “And sadly, the longer the war goes, the more the gap’s going to be. The church is not buildings. It’s people leaving that place and relocating to the United States, and with people relocating to Germany, or people relocating to other places. And with those people, pastors left too.”
Pyzh also said that as Western attention has been less focused on Ukraine, “donations are dropping down big time, not like we had two or three months ago. People are just tired of the war, but I see a tremendous decrease in donations.”
Ukraine has long been a hub for Evangelical Christianity in Eastern Europe, and the country had the largest Baptist population in continental Europe before the war, with over 100,000 believers. As I wrote in February, Russia’s war poses a direct threat to their religious freedom. Baptists in the Russian-occupied portions of eastern Ukraine have faced persecution since 2014 when Russia first invaded, with the Baptist Hymnal banned and the Ukrainian Baptist Union declared a terrorist group. One older Baptist pastor in Luhansk said the persecution was worse than what he experienced under the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Putin’s idea of “spiritual security,” which involves using the Russian Orthodox Church as a vehicle for national and cultural unity, does not have room for Baptists. The Russian government has long used its anti-terrorism and anti-evangelism laws to target Evangelical Christians. Ukraine, on the other hand, has had much more religious freedom since the fall of communism, which has allowed its Baptist population (which has been around since the 1800s) to grow and flourish.
Putin would be happy if the hundreds of congregations lost due to the war never return. Pyzh is focused on rebuilding, with Nehemiah as his guide. He told Baptist Press, “It’s not only rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. It’s rebuilding the nation of Israel, of worshiping God. . . . That’s the same thing here in Ukraine.”