Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on war-related tensions within Ukrainian Jewish communities and addresses how Ukrainian Jewish congregations and religious leaders navigate the challenges generated by being at once Jewish, Ukrainian, and part of the global ex-Soviet Jewish diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

Religious communities across Ukraine have been fragmented by Russia’s war on Ukraine. Based on the testimonies of Ukrainian Jewry, this paper analyses the range of responses of Jewish religious leaders and their communities to Russia’s invasion. The war has forced many religious emissaries to navigate pressing questions of ethical values and their commitments to religious and political alliances. The paper thus explores the responses of those leaders who have remained in the country, the choice of those to evacuate their congregations, and those who have experienced the horrific reality of living in occupation.

It further highlights how congregations that once spanned the former Soviet Union have been divided by differing understandings of the war, loyalties to different nation-states, and attachments to contrasting strains of collective memory. Many Jewish religious emissaries and congregants have family and friends in Russia. In support of Ukraine, many have severed ties with Jews remaining in Russia, while others express continued connection with their “brothers and sisters,” choosing to see Jews as “one people,” while most are ambiguous about the life of Jews in occupied territories. Some approve of religious leaders and Jews remaining in Russia, while others pass judgement. In this way, the paper seeks to understand how Jews in Ukraine have balanced their solidarity and support of the Ukrainian nation, the concerns of their community members, and the familial, linguistic, and organizational entanglements with Jews across the FSU.

I argue that the war has transformed religious paradigms and established power hierarchies, creating new forms of religious identity—either reorienting away from Russia and closer to Ukraine, or accentuating the idea that religious solidarity transcends national allegiance. The choice of a rabbi to stay with his community is seen in different context and by different actors as a confirmation and a betrayal of religious loyalty.

Paper short abstract:

The paper provides an insight into everyday life of Evangelical Christians in war-torn Ukraine and their search for answers to questions posed by destructions, violence, and the increasing militarization of Ukrainian society.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation provides an insight into everyday life of Evangelical Christians in war-torn Ukraine and their search for answers to questions posed by destructions, violence, and the increasing militarization of Ukrainian society. The study also discusses how Ukrainian Protestant believers revise their historical legacy and memory in the context of war-time disintegration of old (post)Soviet religious networks. The Russia´s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, and particularly its major escalation since February 2022, had an enormous effect on the religious landscape not only in Ukraine, but in what used to be the post-Soviet space. The war ruptured last post-Soviet alliances between churches and congregations, bringing to life new religious identities and triggering new moral challenges.

Many Protestant movements in Ukraine were formed in the Soviet Union, hence, the Soviet legacy shaped the foundation for historical, institutional and identity continuity for many Ukrainian believers and faith communities. Besides, various post-Soviet Eurasian unions within Baptist, Pentecostal or Adventist movements mirrored Soviet – Russian-centred – structures. Their war-time disintegration had longstanding consequences as it was Ukraine – “the Bible belt of the Soviet Union” – that traditionally supplied with ministers, pastors, and missionaries the vast (post)Soviet religious networks. Indeed, Ukraine was the heart of Soviet and post-Soviet Evangelical Christianity but, at the same time, never had its distinct ethnically or nationally coloured historical memory. The war urged to often wrenching revise of and search for new historical identities amongst Ukrainian believers.

The Russo-Ukrainian war questioned other important features of the Ukrainian Protestantism, namely, its conservative, and pacifist stances. The struggle to find their niche as active members of war-torn society, while at the same time rigorously observing their faith-based principles, arouse new societal challenges. As the ethnographic observation of Protestant communities in war-time Ukraine show, believers transform these new challenges into novel peacebuilding approaches.

Paper short abstract:

I will focus on Ukrainian Greek Catholic minority in Poland, mainly on communities in the East and North-West of the country. By exhibiting the interactive nexus of religion, memories, connection to places and shrines, I will show their belonging to Ukraine, and engaged empathy to the ongoing war.

Paper long abstract:

From 2015 to 2018 I conducted fieldwork in the multiconfessional rural communities of the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands and Ukrainian communities in North-West of Poland. I did follow-up research there in 2022. Those communities were forged from Greek Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians, forcibly resettled from Subcarpathia in the frames of Operation “Vistula” (1947) to the North-West of post-war Poland. Since early 1960-s some Greek Catholics and later, their descendants started to return to their ancestral lands in Subcarpathia, reviving shrines, pilgrimage routs and churches that were ruined.

In communist Poland, the Greek Catholic Church was officially prohibited, and a number of priests were persecuted. Greek Catholics were forced to convert to Orthodox Christianity or Roman Catholicism. Despite the prohibition, a number of priests and nuns continued to carry out their pastoral work underground, organizing secret meetings at home, providing lessons of Ukrainian language and basics of catechesis. This quiet resistance against communist state-imposed Polish homogeneity and silence of the communist era, together with the memories about resettlement, religious rituals and liturgy in their native language, forged and cemented Ukrainian Greek Catholic minority in Poland.

For this community religion has served as a bridge, connecting the past with the trauma of resettlement and the future for the descendants who re-root with ancestral lands, “coming back” there, reviving pilgrimage sites and settling in. Religion has also been a means of resistance against officials and giving Ukrainians in communist Poland a hope that their religious and ethnic community will survive. This community holds strong connections with Ukraine, calling it "spiritual motherland" and "Great Ukraine". The community members showed a great empathy since the start of Russian invasion in 2014, being engaged in volunteer help. However, since the full-scale war (24.02.2022), they are fully engaged in Ukrainian matters, showing active empathy and belonging to Ukraine.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores testimonies of Ukrainian Evangelicals who experienced the full-scale Russian invasion, occupation and further displacement published and disseminated via YouTube. The focus is on how personal witnesses are contributing to faith narratives and strengthening religious identities.

Paper long abstract:

Compared with various branches of Orthodoxy Evangelicals have never been regarded by observers as an involved actor within the Russia’s enduring aggression against Ukraine. Since the collapse of the communist regime, Ukrainian Evangelicals had long perceived themselves as belonging to the larger “Eurasian” Evangelical community. Russian language dominated in their worship services and served as the main tongue for their religious self-expression. A large number of local Evangelical communities arose in the Eastern part of Ukraine. The full-fledged Russian invasion to Ukraine entailed violent casualties, ruined people’s homes and numerous prayer houses, and thus jeopardized the imaginary world of Ukrainian Evangelicals based on their perceived spiritual unity with their co-religionists in Russia.

The analysis of personal stories, which Evangelicals record and disseminate via public online channels, particularly YouTube, show how the lived testimonies of the war contribute to development and transformation of their religious identities through comprehension of this traumatic experience. Today such testimonies might be a part of worship services and are spread separately as video interviews with pastors and ministers of local churches. The testimonies are constructed around the plot of rapid and totally unexpected destruction of their local communities’ serene lives that drove them into traumatic loss and uncertainty. Searching for and providing theological and “Biblical” explanation for those calamities are essential for these testimonies thus transforming them into specific religious or “theologizing” narratives fully inscribed into the basic discourse of the Evangelical community.

Paper short abstract:

Since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, people worldwide started to support Ukrainians in various ways. What mechanisms enable humans to cross genetic, geographical, and cultural boundaries and promote extra-group prosociality? Data from 16 countries shows: social ties and religious beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

In reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, individuals around the world started to express their support and involvement in helping Ukrainians in various ways, such as making monetary donations for humanitarian as well as defensive purposes, volunteering in migration crises, and attending pro-Ukraine happenings. The influx of help towards more or less distant Ukrainians thus serves as a prime example of human ultra-prosociality manifesting in support of anonymous genetically unrelated strangers. However, it is unclear what distances –genetic, geographical, or cultural– can limit the reach of help and, conversely, what mechanisms can enable humans to cross these boundaries and promote extra-group prosociality. Considering the previous findings that the belief in moralizing gods contributes to cooperation across group boundaries, we tested whether the religious beliefs, specifically the moralizing gods beliefs, may help overcome the distances toward the Ukrainian population and consequently promote extra-group prosociality. Under the conditions of a natural experiment, we collected data from 3051 participants from 16 countries via an online survey about their involvement in the three forms of extra-group prosociality towards Ukrainians: monetary donations, volunteering, and attending pro-Ukraine happenings. Subsequently, we measured the relatedness coefficients, reciprocal relations with Ukrainian friends, cultural and geographical distance from Ukraine, and religious and moralizing gods beliefs. The results show that the help decreased with increasing cultural and geographical distances. However, the social ties to the Ukrainians increased all three forms of extra-group prosociality and even helped to overcome the distances. Furthermore, having religious beliefs mitigated the decrease in the size of monetary donations in connection to the increasing distances or even reversed the decreasing trend into a positive effect, thus enabling the crossing of geographical and cultural boundaries.

Paper short abstract:

The religious aspect of Russia's war against Ukraine, importance of this aspect in the course of this conflict. Religious war as a conflict of values (ideals); the history of these values (ideals) as religious phenomena, their description and analysis. The situation in Ukraine and Latvia.

Paper long abstract:

This report is made in the context of the wider studies to be carried out within the framework of the doctoral thesis in the field of the problems of religion and ideology in interwar Latvia (1918-1940). The given report is an interdisciplinary study involving the disciplines of theology, religious sciences and philosophy. The purpose of this report is find out the (quasi)religious reasons of the Russian war against Ukraine, to compare the situation of Ukraine and Latvia. The tasks are to apply the analysis of historical facts to the current situation and its causes, also to implement a summary of the results of this application, looking at the problem from the standpoint of Christian theology. The analysis presented here is based on the results of studies of trends of Russian religious philosophy and theology, as well of the history and doctrine of the Orthodox Church; these studies are quite well represented in the many scientific publications, however, their application to the current situation in the World just starting now. The given report provides a rationale for why Russia's war against Ukraine can be defined as a religious war, which is a conflict of values (ideals). The report also provides a review and an analysis of the philosophical, theological and historical preconditions of this conflict. In this context is examined the V.Zenkovski book "Five months in power" (early 1930s), in which this war was presented as an almost inevitable future, also is presented and justified a collection of narratives of this war. The comparison of the (quasi)religious aspect of the situation in Ukraine and Latvia allows a clear survey of the problems of the conflict of values, as well as drawing conclusions that could be useful today for Ukraine and Latvia, and possibly other countries of the World.

Paper short abstract:

Russian speakers from various countries, including Russia and Ukraine, share the same worship communities in Finland. The presentation analyses the reactions and consequences of Russia’s war on Ukraine to these Russian-speaking churches in Finland.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation analyses the reactions and consequences of Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Russian-speaking churches in Finland. Both the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and the Finnish Orthodox Church (Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarchate) have Russian-speaking services and communities in Helsinki. Furthermore, there are several Russian-speaking Evangelical churches in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Since the annexation of Crimea, Russians and Ukrainians have had tense relations in these communities, but last year, the situation also among them went worse. For example, the St Nicholas Orthodox parish of Moscow Patriarchate made a rule that one may not “talk politics” in the church meetings. On the other hand, the archbishop and other priests of the Finnish Orthodox Church have condemned Russian aggression and Patriarch Kirill’s support to the aggressive war.

This presentation aims to study the reactions and effects of the war on the selected communities with various nationalities as well as ponder the possibilities of the churches in peace-building – or causing conflict – both within the communities and with the wider society. The data come from the communities’ own communications, for example in their official internet pages, as well as from interviews and fieldwork in selected communities.