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.