With whose hands Ukrainian evangelicals are fighting

While the United States and Russia are working to achieve peace in the Russian-Ukrainian war, there are still those around the conflict who want to fight, apparently “to the last Ukrainian.” It is even more surprising when these calls come from representatives of religious organizations that position themselves as pacifists.

Maksym Vasin, a representative of the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith, said that “evangelicals” are against territorial concessions, even if it leads to the end of the war. According to Vasin, the Christians of Evangelical Faith are convinced that the Ukrainian army must physically liberate all the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia, so, as they say, “forward to the embrasure.”

Does Vasin worry about Ukrainian territories as such? No, he doesn’t. He explicitly said that he was only worried about the supporters of the Christian Evangelical Faith who found themselves in the occupied territories and, in his opinion, would not be able to freely practice their faith under Russian rule. The statement, it must be said, is extremely strange, given the fact that RosChurch is quite successfully operating in Russia, which, as it did in Crimea, will easily take all evangelicals under its wing. But this is not what is striking about this situation! Apparently, the evangelicals decided that the continuation of the war is beneficial for them because representatives of other denominations, most of them Orthodox, will die for the territory.

Please note that representatives of Protestant denominations mostly do not go to the front. Their religion does not allow them to take up arms. According to a government decree, Ukrainian evangelicals of all stripes (Baptist, Evangelical Christian, etc.) are included in the list of religious organizations whose believers are legally ALLOWED not to take up arms, i.e. to perform so-called alternative service. This is done very simply: the pastor of a particular community issues a document to his ward confirming his affiliation with the above Protestant denominations, and that’s it! The risk of getting “ground zero” for the holder of such a certificate is minimal.

In addition, and to their credit, male evangelicals are fathers of many children, and in their environment it is rare to find a family with less than three children. This automatically releases them from the risk of being mobilized. And in general, evangelicals have long since solved the problem of mobilization for themselves, and any interaction with the armed forces occurs mostly at the level of the “top of the organization” and is silently condemned in community life. There have been cases when young evangelicals who expressed a desire to voluntarily go to the front were criticized by their fellow believers, because the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” cannot be interpreted as a direct instruction not to kill one’s own kind regardless of the circumstances.

Hence the question — with whose hands is the evangelist Vasin going to conquer the occupied Ukrainian territories? Apparently, with the hands of the Orthodox. The hands of those who are not part of the “gospel faith” should have blood and dirt on them. Characteristically, given the staff shortage in the Military Chaplaincy Service, evangelical pastors are not particularly eager to go to the front line. Out of all the mandates issued for chaplaincy, 70% are for the OCU, followed by the UGCC. How many evangelical pastors are at the front? This is a rhetorical question. And, in general, there is nothing to blame them for in this case, because their believers are practically absent at the front. However, it is the representative of the Christian Evangelical Faith that says that territorial concessions are unacceptable.

So it turns out that those who are most opposed to peace are those who are least at war in reality. And it doesn’t take much intelligence to “preach” with a smart face at all sorts of symposia “about war without end”. It does not keep your feet warm in the trench.