As war continues to devastate Ukraine, a powerful spiritual revival is unfolding amid the ruins, according to Ukrainian evangelist David Karcha, who told a gathering of European church leaders that the Gospel becomes unstoppable in a time of war.
Speaking at the European Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, Germany, on May 29, Karcha described how churches across Ukraine have become beacons of hope, drawing thousands to Christ even as the country endures deep physical and emotional suffering.
His address came just a day after
Franklin Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin to pray for peace, underscoring the Congress’ message of gospel resilience in the face of crisis.
Continued below.
As war continues to devastate Ukraine, a powerful spiritual revival is unfolding amid the ruins, according to Ukrainian evangelist David Karcha, who told a gathering of European church leaders that
www.christianpost.com
This is a complex story told by one side. It misses out on the long history of Ukrainian Christianity and the tumult in contemporary Ukrainian Orthodoxy. It also presumes that there is no 'real' Christianity in the Ukraine other than the evangelical kind.
The oldest part of the story is the arrival of Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius more than a thousand years ago in 988 in the Kievan Rus. From there Christianity spread north to Russia. It was Byzantine Christianity still united with the bishop of Rome but under the patriarch of Constantinople but on the distant fringes of that patriarchate.
Six hundred years later four bishops of the Ruthenian Church aligned with the Catholic Church at the Union of Brest and disaligned from the patriarch of Constantinople, mostly because of the erection of the patriarchate of Moscow. Their worship continued to be Byzantine but they were Catholic. The term 'Ruthenain' is just a Latinized term for 'Rus' or 'Russian'. That Church is known by many names, but now the UGCC, the Ukrainina Greek Catholic Church. It became and was the dominant Ukrainian expression of Christianity.
Fast forward to Joe Stalin, who suppressed the UGCC because they were not compliant with his wishes. He transferred church buildings to the Orthodox, who were more compliant. Millions of Ukrainians starved in the Holodomor, as Stalin forced compliance on the Ukrainians. Ukraine became a majority Orthodox country, subservient to the patriarch of Moscow.
When the Soviet Union collapsed the UGCC was liberated and began a slow but steady comeback. Orthodoxy is still dominant in Ukraine, but it is tumultuous, with pro-Russian and anti-Russian elements. The patriarch of Constantinople a few years ago approved of an Orthodox Church independent of the Moscow patriarch. Lots of battles over that. In fact the Ukraine-Russia war COULD be analyzed as a religious dispute between pro-Moscow patriarch Orthodox and anti-Moscow patriarch Orthodox.
In this Orthodox civil war it is not surprising that there would be defections from one or the other or both sides of Orthodoxy. Some have moved to the UGCC. Some apparently have also moved to become evangelicals. THAT, the move of some to become evangelicals, is what the OP is about. About people who were baptized Orthodox getting rebaptized as evangelicals. It is described as some great movement of God, but it's cause is civil war among the Orthodox.
My opinion is that the patriarch of Moscow has no business controlling religion in Ukraine. If anything the See of Kiev should be controlling religion in Russia by historical right. Also that Orthodoxy in Ukraine was the result of Joe Stalin and that the proper thing to do would be for Ukrainian Orthodoxy to merge back into the UGCC, thus ending the Ukrainian Orthodox civil war. That civil war is not good for world-wide Orthodoxy and is the cause of a world-wide Orthodox schism. The UGCC should be elevated by the Catholic Church to a patriarchate of it's own and should have several cardinals eligible to elect the next pope. Major archbishop Sviatoslav would have been a good choice for pope, and one can hope he will be in the running next time.
The history of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is fantastically complex and this Wikipedia article does a decent job of detailing the intricate history.
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church - Wikipedia
My point here is that the OP for this thread is way too simple an 'explanation' of what is going on religiously in the Ukraine.
Saints Cyril and Methodius, pray for us and for peace in Kiev and all of the Rus.
