Protestantism in Ukraine
According to Christianity Today magazine, Ukraine has become not just the "Bible Belt" of Eastern Europe, but a "hub of evangelical church life, education, and missions".
[2] Compared to Protestants and Evangelicals in Western Europe and the United States, believers in Ukraine are considered to be more conservative and traditional.
Due to the 1990 Lautenberg Amendment granting refugee status to Soviet religious minorities, some Ukrainian Protestants have emigrated to the United States and gone on to take an important part in local social activities.
[5] The Protestant Festival of Hope, with the participation of evangelist Franklin Graham, was held on July 6–8, 2007, and gathered more than 40,000 Ukrainians at the Olympic National Stadium in Kyiv.
Guests of the festival were able to hear testimonies of faith by well-known athletes, evangelical activists, and civil leaders.
During a spiritual revival among them in the 19th century they started reaching out to the local Ukrainian population with the Gospel, inviting them for an hour of Bible study.
Since an hour in German is pronounced as Shtunde, the early converts became known as the Shtundists and later the Baptist denomination in Ukraine was created by them.
were compulsively sent to mental hospitals, endured trials and prisons (often for refusal to enter military service).
[7] Some part of the baptists (as well as other Protestants groups of Ukraine) in last decades of 20th century emigrated to USA and Canada.
The influx of thousands of Germans to Ukrainian regions in the 19th century resulted in dramatic growth of the Lutheran Church but it appears that there was no significant influence within the local ethnic groups.
The Lutheran Church of that era was governed by the General Consistory office in St. Petersburg, Russia, which maintained quality records of births, marriages, and deaths from 1835 onwards.
Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, ULC communities have renewed their activities in Kyiv, Ternopil, Kremenets, Zaporizhzhia, Sevastopol, Simferopol and other places.
[11] In 2002 a pastoral center of the German Lutheran Church closed by Stalin's atheistic regime in 1938 reopened in Odesa.
[12] By 2007, the Ukrainian Lutheran Church conducted its ministry in 25 congregations and 11 mission stations all over the country, having about 2500 parishioners served by 22 national pastors and 2 missionaries from the USA.
It incorporated Pentecostal communities from the All-USSR Association of the ECB, independently registered and unregistered churches, and missions.
The official press outlets of the AUU CEFP are the magazines "Blahovisnyk" (Announcer of Good News), "Yevanhelskyi holos" (Evangelical voice), and "Yevanhelyst" (Evangelist).
[13] One of the most widely known neopentecostal groups in Ukraine is "Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations" headed by Nigerian pastor Sunday Adelaja.
The community holds mass gatherings and marches and takes an active part in local social life.
The Sub-Carpathian Reformed Church (SCRC) declares its foundations on the works of Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin written during the 1520s and 1530s.
[14] SCRC is considered to be the oldest Protestant community in Ukraine (first group of Reformers appeared in Sub-Carpathia in the 1530s) and, prior to the American Presbyterian missions, the only church of the Calvinist tradition.
Pastoral leaders are educated and trained mainly in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia (Sub-Carpathia borders on various countries, and Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks and other ethnic groups live there, in addition to Ukrainians).
[16] Leaders and members of the Sub-Carpathian Reformed Church were persecuted by the Communist authorities in the Soviet Union and were sent to Gulag labour camps in Siberia.
In 1886, a group of people was baptized in Crimea by Pastor Lui Konrad, who founded the first community of Seventh-day Adventists.
[17] Ukraine-born leader of the Seventh-day Adventist movement of the Soviet Union Vladimir Shelkov (1895–1980) spent almost all his life from 1931 in imprisonment and died in Yakutia camp.
After the imperial Russian government announced a russification plan that would end all special privileges by 1880, Mennonites were particularly alarmed at the possibility of losing their exemption from military service and their right to German-language education, which they believed was necessary for maintaining their cultural and religious identity.
During the Soviet period, many Mennonites were persecuted, sent into exile as "kulaks", imprisoned and executed as "enemies of the people", and suffered from hunger and diseases.
Various Mennonite businessmen, scientists, scholars, tourism specialists, church and relief workers, and others, have been operating in the country.
The Organization has four branches in Kyiv, Kherson, Kharkiv and Lviv and special department for Bible translation into Ukrainian language.
