Digital Commons Network^™

The Work Of The Nazi Special Services Among The Protestants Of The Reichkomissariat Ukraine (According To The Top-Secret Materials Of The Nkvd-Nkgb), Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Studying the work of Nazi special services among the Protestant denominations of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine during World War II is an under-explored aspect of modern historical science. The article attempts to fill this gap by covering the work of the Nazi secret services, Gestapo1 and Sicherheitsdienst (SD),2 among Evangelical Christians (EC), Baptists (B), and Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals, CEF) of the RKU. The basis of this study is the recently declassified documents and archival materials of the KGB of the USSR. The article first provides a brief analysis of the activities of the Soviet intelligence services (NKVD3) …

At God’S Service: Anatoly Dublyanski—A Metropolitan Of Western Europe And Paris Of The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church In The Diaspora (1912–1997), Vladyslav Fulmes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

A metropolitan of Western Europe and Paris, Anatoly Dublyansky, who was born in Volyn (Ukraine), was a prominent hierarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). Due to his intense activity, he considerably influenced the development of the culture of his native Volyn region, as well as the UAOC in Germany. After his emigration to Western Europe in 1944, he took an active role in the formation of church and religious life in Germany, and later devoted his life to the UAOC in the diaspora, having first become ordained to the priesthood, and, after the death of his wife, to …

The Club Of Senior Citizens Who Survived The Holocaust: A Case Study From Slovakia, Monika Vrzgulová

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper chronicles the process of how an informal group of Holocaust survivors in Bratislava organized into a senior citizens club that gradually evolved into a source of civic activism directed at the majority of society. Based on qualitative research: repeated interviews with survivors in Bratislava about their experiences of the Holocaust and the Communist era, which the author has carried out from 1995 to the present. It also draws on other data acquired during discussions at the Senior Citizens Club (2005–2017) and active observations of the survivors as civic activists engaged in public discourse and educational events for the …

Characteristics Of Growing Churches In Estonia: A Qualitative Study, Ago Lilleorg, Kaido Soom, TõNu Lehtsaar

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This is an overview of the characteristics of growing churches in Estonia. The study is grounded in semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019-2020 in nine Protestant congregations that have grown in 2003-2017. There were three to four interviewees from each congregation, a total of 14 being women and 18 men. The transcripts of the interviews were analyzed by combining both the open and the invivo coding model. No prescribed categories were used in the analysis. The results were formulated as characteristics of growing churches: spiritual life; inner climate; human focus; the minister of the church; relationships outside the church; and a …

Activity Of Evangelical Baptist Christians In Ukraine (1991-2021), Hnat Mierienkov, Mykhailo Fedorenko, Serhii Makarchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The religious movement of Evangelical Baptists is the largest in terms of the number of believers in the Ukrainian Protestant community. The review of missionary activity and social projects of this denomination presented is an outline of the key areas of work of Evangelical Baptists in Ukraine. The largest number of Protestant educational institutions in Ukraine belong to the Baptists. All Baptist educational institutions can be divided into two types: 1) general preparatory programs of state institutions (kindergartens, schools, institutes, educational centers), and 2) theological seminaries, which aim to train ministers to meet the spiritual needs of the church. Baptist …

Volyn Confessors Of The ‘Spirit Movement’: Survival Practices In The Context Of Soviet Totalitarianism, Iryna Panchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The trajectories of the modern “Spirit Movement” affirm qualitatively new phenomena in the Ukrainian evangelical movement and religious life in the region. The rapid development of Pentecostalism in the Volyn region, where a third of all Pentecostals in the Ukraine live, its active entry “into the world” and its capacity for creative contextualization, necessitate a scholarly analysis of the “Spirit Movement.” It is revealed that the Pentecostal movement in the Volyn region during the time of the totalitarian period functioned as an association of Christians united not by institutional context but by a common charismatic experience. The indifferent attitude of …

Monitoring Of The Living Conditions Of People With Disabilities In Ukraine Under The Conditions Of The Covid-19 Pandemic (On The Example Of Evangelical Christian Baptists), Olga Polumysna

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article finds that the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected social relations and exacerbated the already vulnerable situation of people with disabilities. Everything that was hidden or veiled in relation to people with disabilities by society has fully manifested. In these conditions it is necessary to monitor the living conditions of people with disabilities as the most vulnerable category of the population, which are currently ignored because healthy people suffer and are usually put first. The social and medical spheres proved to be the most unstable in the conditions of the pandemic in terms of assistance to vulnerable groups of …

Ukranian Protestants’ Communicative Responses To The Covid-19 Pandemic, Maksym Balaklytskyi, Petro Kotliarov, Viacheslav Korchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article considers the reaction of Ukrainian Protestants to the Covid-19 pandemic. Most important for Protestant theologians was a discussion of the impact and consequences of the pandemic on church life. Most Protestants agreed to a hybrid model of church worship: online-offline as a manifestation of an open reaction to the changes that resulted from the introduction of state quarantine restrictions. During the pandemic, Ukrainian Protestants managed to move away from the established model that the church is a building and to accept the paradigm of the Church as the Body of Christ. Under limited conditions, digital Protestant theology began …

Armed Conflict And Protestant Volunteering In Eastern Ukraine, Valentyna Kuryliak, Maksym Balaklytskyi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The process of development and activity of Ukrainian Protestantism due to the influence of the recently destroyed Soviet ideology is somewhat complex and unstable. Protestants became noticeable to Ukrainian society after the events of Euromaidan and the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 in the center of the capital of Ukraine. The Protestant community, however, did make real, material contributions in the territory of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, which began in April 2014. The aim of this article is to evaluate the volunteer work of Ukrainian Protestants and to understand the difference between secular …

The Attitude Of The Protestant Community To Disabled People In Ukraine, Olga Polumysna

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

In this article, we research those publications that show examples of Protestant social service to people in need, including people with disabilities. Ukrainian scientific studies have not considered this issue but only briefly mentioned their charitable deeds. This article demonstrations that Protestant denominations in Ukraine--whether Baptists, Pentecostals or Adventists--are sympathetic to people with disabilities. They establish various organizations, foundations, and volunteer actions to care for them. Protestants rely on their religious teachings that call them to help those who need it. They help both morally and materially. The assistance is provided selectively, in those places where a certain community operates, …

Ukrainian Protestant Youtube Livestreams During Coronavirus Pandemic: Statistics And Analytics, Maksym Balaklytskyi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article analyzes the statistics of Ukrainian Protestant digital activity. The key indicator of Ukrainian Protestant digital outreach is the increased number of livestreams in different styles and formats. I use “All-Ukrainian Sobor” NGO’s YouTube livestreams catalog as a working statistic model. In the course of study, two peaks in the overall number of views of all videos of a given YouTube channel were singled out. These peaks were (1) from 500K to 100K and (2) from 50K to 10K. Analysis of the views rating of a single YouTube channel proved to be somewhat random and non-indicative; nevertheless, views number …

Ukrainian Protestants And Digital Culture, Maksym Balaklytskyi, Аndrii Shevchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Ukrainian Protestantism in recent decades has found fertile ground on the Internet. Activities through the Internet environment proved to be more successful than actual activities, as it was possible to cover larger areas and scales. Although the Internet is an additional option to the offline reality, it is also perceived by Ukrainian Protestants more as a marketing tool. This study examines two aspects of Protestant dialogue with digital culture: educational and applied. The educational direction is represented by the ecumenical curriculum in digital theology, initiated by Protestants. This educational center seeks to overcome confessional differences by establishing a common Christian …

Remembering Canon Michael Bourdeaux, Founder Of Keston Institute, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Through a regular email prayer letter from Mission Eurasia,1 its Director Sergey Rakuba and his close colleague Dr. Michael Cherenkov, I learned of the death on March 29, 2021, of Michael Bourdeaux, and his funeral on April 12, 2021, in Oxford. Bourdeaux’s persistence over many decades to make known the appeals for prayer, for assistance in making known the plight of prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union has continued, in spite of many changes and transformations over the decades. Even today the harassment of believers not conforming to Russia’s current state-church close integration and its banning of the Jehovah’s …

The Question Of The Autocephalous Status Of The Polish Orthodox Church In The Documents Of The Council For The Affairs Of The Russian Orthodox Church (1944-1948), Ella Bystrytska, Nadiia Volik

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The process and stages of the acquisition of autocephaly by the Polish Orthodox Church are explored. The formation of a socialist model of public administration in Poland after the Second World War required the resolution of some problems, in particular the restoration of canonical communication between the Polish and Russian Orthodox Churches. The cause of the conflict between these Churches was the proclamation of the autocephaly of the Polish Orthodox Church by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1924. The Soviet and Polish governments were interested in abolishing this Tomos. The state and church relations in the USSR provided for the …

In Lieu Of A Review: Reminiscences On Reading One Word Of Truth; The Cold War Memoir Of Michael Bourdeaux And Keston College, Mark R. Elliott

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

I first met Michael Bourdeaux in October 1983, at the beginning of one month of research at his Keston College Library and Archive, located in a southwest suburb of London, England. The back story to what gave occasion for our first meeting dates back a decade, to 1974, the year I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky and the year my wife, Darlene, and I made our first trip to the Soviet Union.

The Role Of Religion In The Lives Of The Last Soviet Generation In Lithuania, Milda Ališauskienė

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper contributes to the academic debates about the compatibility of religion and modernity and reveals the way Soviet modernization has affected the religious values of the last Soviet generation in Lithuania. It discusses the role and dynamic of religion, intergenerational transmission, and the manner in which religion becomes or does not become a resource for an individual’s social mobility. The article, focusing on the last Soviet generation (b. 1970–1985) living in Lithuania, is based on analysis of 88 narratives of representatives of this generation. Trends of religious individualism, critical engagement with institutional religiosity and conformity with religious identification with …

Forms And Roots Of Contemporary Religiosity In Estonia, Kaido Soom, Tõnu Lehtsaar

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The Republic of Estonia is a country on the east coast of the Baltic Sea. It borders Russia and Latvia on land and Latvia, Sweden, Finland and Russia on sea. As of 31 Dec 2011, Estonia had a permanent population of 1,294,455 (data from the Population and Housing Census). Estonia is a member of the European Union (2004) and of the Eurozone (2011).

Estonia has often been exemplified as a secularized nation having little regard for religion. Even so, religion is an important topic of conversation in Estonian society. For instance, Ave Tampere asked, in an article in one of …

Life Under Ban: Jehovah's Witnesses In Russia Since 2017, Emily B. Baran

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Since 2017, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been barred from legal practice of their faith in Russia. This marks the first criminalization of a major religious faith in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Witnesses, it has been a disturbing return to life under ban, a reality they experienced for decades under Soviet rule. Moreover, all indications suggest that this situation is unlikely to improve in the short term. Russian officials have shown consistent willingness to enforce a broad interpretation of the ban, including through the arrest and imprisonment of individual Witnesses. This article offers an overview of recent …

Emigration, Home, Identity: An Ethnological Examination Of The Identity Of Jewish Emigrants From Czechoslovakia, Peter Salner

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Stretnutie (The Meeting) is a group formed in October 2004 by Jewish emigrants from Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) who fled Czechoslovakia following the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The original intention behind its founding was to hold a reunion that would bring together people who, forty years after emigrating, lived in Israel, in different states across Europe and North America, and in Australia. The meeting took place in May 2005 in Bratislava, drawing over 200 participants. Encouraged by this initial success, the group and its website continued its activities, and it remains operational to this …

Agnosticism And Atheism As Amoralism And Anti-Ideological Sociopolitical Paradigm In The Balkans, Specifically In Bosnia And Herzegovina, Faruk Hadžić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The study investigates whether atheism in B&H is treated, a priori, as amoralism and how this affects plural civic space. If religion is privileged, is it a politically dictated value system or pure ideology? Besides in-depth critical literature review, the author refers to a number of structural interviews focusing on both groups (theists and agnostic atheists) as a direct indicator of variability. The B&H Constitution obstructs the creation of a plural civic identity, hypostasizes the collective political mentality, and stigmatizes atheism and agnosticism in everyday life. Spiritual usurpation has moved into the realm of identity. The ideological ethnonationalism has metastasized …

Foreword: Interactions Between Religion And Medicine In Eastern Europe During The Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic: Social Context, Iurii Kuchyn, Nataliia Ishchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

A special issue of OPREE, dedicated to the interaction of religion and medicine, is being released on the anniversary of the struggle of humankind against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Unfortunately, hopes of overcoming the infection quickly proved futile. The outbreak of this infectious disease has caused chaos in the private and social lives of billions of people. It changed the usual rhythm and forced people to obey new rules. For many people, it caused job and income loss and changes in personal priorities. For most people, the question of reappraisal of values arose when the need for self-realization gave way to …

Religious Epidemics On The Territory Of Ukraine: Historical Parallels And Essential Characteristics, Olena Predko, Denis Predko

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article deals with two religious epidemics that unfolded in Ukraine in a span of one hundred years. The study analyzes the factors influencing the emergence and development of religious epidemics. On this basis, their peculiar algorithm has been singled out, the components of which are, on the one hand, the worldview and crisis of values caused by the rapid turns of history, and—on the other—-choosiness by God, charisma of the leader of a particular organization, which is “fed” by an eschatological idea, syncretic teachings, which are cultivated as an alternative religious model to established traditions. The definition of a …

Eudaimonic Happiness As A Convergence Point For Religion And Medicine: The Ukrainian Context, Uliana Lushch-Purii

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper is aimed to present arguments for consideration of eudaimonic happiness as a convergence point between religion (Christian denominations) and medicine in the contemporary world in general and Ukraine in particular. Similarities between eudaimonic definition of happiness and traditional interpretation of happiness as a virtuous good life in historic Christianity are shown. The present tendency of modernized Christian denominations in Ukraine to elaborate a secular context of happiness concept is traced. Based on analysis of contemporary religious information resources and documents, it is shown that nowadays the majority of Christian denominations in Ukraine concur in considering happiness with others, …

The Religious Aspect Of The Macedonian Society In The Condition Of The Crisis Caused By Covid 19, Gjoko Gjorgjevski, Ivan Blazhevski

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic has influenced all spheres of social life of the Republic of North Macedonia. Introduction of precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus impacted on the religious life of citizens-believers. The attitudes of the religious communities towards these measures impacted the behavior of the believers, but also on the opinion and attitudes of the general public. In order to give a clear picture of the religious aspect of the Macedonian society, this paper is divided into two parts. The first part presents the action of the larger religious communities during conditions of the …

Interrelation Of Religiousity And Physical Health Condition: Ukranian Case, Maksym Parashchevin

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The role of religion for supporting of physical health is a popular and debatable topic. This topic can be considered from two sides – the impact of health condition on the acceptance of religious faith and the strength of its manifestation, and the possible impact of religious affiliation on the health. The analyses of the interrelation between religion and physical and mental health was made in many publications, but there was no such a publication as for Ukraine. We used here the data from the longitudal sociological survey, which shows that some indicators of health are worse among religious Ukrainians …

"Then What Are We Fighting For": Securitizing Religion In The Ukrainian-Russian Conflict, Viktor Yelenskyi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

With the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, religion has shifted from a sphere of great importance in inter-state relations to the national security domain, where the sides in the conflict perceive religion as potentially posing the utmost threat and have resorted to extraordinary measures to securitize it. The author argues that at the core of the Ukrainian securitizing move was the struggle for the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which allowed weakening Russia's influence not only on the Orthodox milieu but also on Ukrainian society as a whole. Russia, viewing the loss of control over Ukraine …

All-Union Council Of Evangelical Christians And Baptists As A Product Of Work Of Soviet Special Services, Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The purpose of the study is to show the work of the Soviet special services in the 1940s among the evangelical denominations of the Ukrainian SSR, which consisted of the formation of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists (hereinafter ACECB). The study of the work of the Soviet special services among the Protestant denominations of Ukraine during WWII and in the post-war period is generally a poorly studied topic of modern historical science. The article attempts to fill this gap by highlighting the work of the NKVD-MGB bodies among Evangelical Christians and Baptists, which aimed to create a …

Book Review: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements In Eastern Europe, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

A review of Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović & Radmila Radić, eds. Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. ISBN 978-3-319-63354-1, 339 pp. Index.