“We walk by faith, and not by sight… …that, when our life of faith is done, in realms of clearer light we may behold you as you are, with full and endless sight.”
(1982 Hymnal #209: “We Walk by Faith” by Henry Alford; music: St. Botolph).
Ukraine’s evangelical Christians living in the Russian occupied territories walk with faith but are far from the “realms of clearer light.” What they see all too well is that Russians are torturing and killing their Protestant evangelical pastors. Russians oppress as well Ukrainian Orthodox priests who refuse to submit to the Russian Orthodox Church. Russians though are especially keen to oppress Protestant evangelical pastors and their congregations.
My wife Suzanne and I joined Rodney Mast of the Columbus area last April in Washington on a visit to the office of Senator Roger Wicker. Wicker is the Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Continued aid to Ukraine, long delayed, remained in the balance in Congress. We came as representatives of the American Coalition for Ukraine. We wanted also to thank Senator Wicker for his steadfast support of Ukraine. Rodney, a farmer of 9,000 acres outside Columbus, is the father of eight children including three he and his wife adopted from Ukraine. Rodney described the treatment of evangelical Christians in Ukraine. Shortly after our visit, we received an email from Senator Wicker’s legislative assistant, Warner Speed. Warner shared with us an article by Time reporter Peter Pomerantsev (Time April 20, “Russia’s War Against Evangelicals”).
Pomerantsev reported: “Protestants were the victims of 34 percent of the reported persecution events…. Baptists made up 13 percent of victims – the largest single group after Ukrainian Orthodox. Under Russian control 400 Baptist congregations have been lost, 17% of the total in Ukraine.”
According to Pomerantsev: “There’s a reason for this. Protestants [in Ukraine] flourished in the democratic decades since the end of the U.S.S.R. Baptists are the third largest denomination in Ukraine. The mayor of Kyiv between 2006-2012 was an evangelical. And for the Russian occupiers they are perceived as agents of America.”
In one telling passage, Pomerantsev describes Russians with a Russian priest present beating a Ukrainian Baptist minister: “After they beat Azat Azatyan so bad blood came out of his ears; after they sent electric shocks up his genitals; after they wacked him with pipes and truncheons, the Russians began to interrogate him about his faith. ‘When did you become a Baptist? When did you become an American spy?’ Azat tried to explain that in Ukraine there was freedom of religion, you could just choose your faith. But his torturers saw the world the same way as their predecessors at the KGB did: an American church is just a front for the American state.”
Vladimir Putin’s Archbishop is of course an ex-KGB agent, Patriarch Kirill. Under Putin and Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church is arguably no church at all, at least as any American would understand the term—but just another arm of Russian state propaganda. The Russian Orthodox Church teaches Russians their war against Ukraine and its Christians is holy. The image in one’s mind of “Holy Russia” under Czar Nicholas II though is long gone. It ended violently in 1918 with the death of the Czar and his beautiful family against the basement wall of the House of Special Purpose chosen by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg.
Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic and an author of authoritative histories of Stalin and of the Gulag, points out Russia is now the product of 100 years of unrelenting Soviet, and then Russian propaganda. The lies and propaganda drove Russians to unbelievable cruelty and violence against perceived enemies. In Ukraine during 1932-1933, for example, Stalin’s Russian Kulaks deliberately and systematically stole all the wheat produced by Ukraine’s rich, productive breadbasket (the same breadbasket Russia again seeks to steal today), until five million Ukrainians starved to death in the Holodomor (man-made famine). Russians said Ukrainians were subhuman. It is naïve to think most Russians are like Americans. Their history is colder, more brutal than ours, and the product of the endless propaganda. The short political thaw of the early 90’s under Yeltsin or the street of New York style shops once allowed in Moscow by Putin now seem far away memories.
In the magnificent, stately hymn recited above by English churchman Henry Alford, Alford took inspiration from the words of St. Paul: “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (II Cor.5:6). In the occupied territories of Ukraine, Christians continue to walk by faith. Ukraine became an independent nation 33 years ago in 1991, unified until shattered by Putin’s overt and covert invasions. Ukrainian Christians in their faith have chosen an irreversible path of alliance with us and Europe. We dare not look away, avoid American leadership in an interconnected world, or push them away with the same 1930’s style cries of “America First” that led to World War II. Ukraine will be the best trained and armed ally in all of NATO if we can get them there. It is in America’s security interest we do so and remain steadfast. Ukrainian Christians are relying on us. We must continue to support them until all of Ukraine’s Christians are liberated in the occupied territories and the Russian occupiers driven from Ukraine.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
