Ukrainian Christian evangelicals have turned into a powerful force that helps lobby for the interests of Ukraine in America, writes the Associated Press.
The article reports that Ukrainian pastors are traveling across America, speaking at churches and Christian colleges, talking to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the Republican National Convention to convince American evangelicals who have weight in the GOP to continue supporting Ukraine. They talk about Russia persecuting them for their faith, while Moscow claims it is supposedly protecting the Orthodox in Ukraine.
At this time, Republican leaders – presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance are still skeptical about helping Ukraine.
In the focus of AP’s story is a Lviv-based Baptist pastor Yaroslav Pyzh, who heads the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary, coordinates a network of 18 humanitarian aid hubs across the country, and travels across the U.S. In the interview, he talks about Ukraine’s difficult situation and the need for continued American support.
During his latest trip to the United States, Pyzh, who once earned a doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, visited at least eight states, including meeting with Southern Baptist officials in Nashville, Tennessee, AP says.
Pyzh says he has American friends who have visited Ukraine multiple times and supported his ministry, but now their feelings are torn between their desire to help Ukraine and the political ideas being promoted by their party leaders.
“Their heart is in Ukraine, but their mind is somewhere else,” Pyzh told AP.
As the author of the article emphasizes, representatives of the evangelical currents politically prevail in the Republican Party, whose leaders lead it on an increasingly isolationist course and are invariably skeptical of aiding Ukraine.
“That war is a loser,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on a recent podcast. His running mate, JD Vance, has said, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.”
To change this attitude among party leaders, over the past two years, many Ukrainian Baptists and representatives of other evangelical movements have traveled to the United States to address believers and tell them firsthand about the situation of Ukraine and evangelical Christians.
Ukraine, as AP writes, has often been called the “Bible Belt of Eastern Europe.” And although evangelicals make up only 2-4% of the population, they are hundreds of thousands of people — a vibrant, influential religious presence, the agency emphasizes.
They have huge ties to an important constituency: Southern Baptists, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, with 13 million members.
“Baptists from both countries beseeched Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — a Southern Baptist and former denominational official — to support Ukraine aid earlier this year, even though his party’s right flank threatened to oust him if he did,” AP recalls.
Ukrainian Baptist leader Pavlo Unguryan, a former member of the Verkhovna Rada, who leads the National Prayer Breakfast and establishes relations with evangelicals in the United States, met with Johnson several times.
This work in the U.S. involves professional lobbyists, such as Gary Marx, a longtime conservative operative in the US, who is part of a $3.6 million contract between the Ukrainian organization and the DCI Group lobbying firm. NGOs are also involved, in particular, the one headed by Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, or another project – Razom for Ukraine.
Their message is simple – Ukrainians know that the existence of their nation depends on whether the US supports them, Marx explains.
“It’s that simple. If the U.S. pulls support, there’s no way that they will survive,” he said in a conversation with AP.
After an attack in Odesa killed the daughter and infant grandson of a Baptist pastor, Unguryan arranged for the grieving son-in-law to meet with Johnson, just before the speaker helped push forward $61 billion in war-time aid to Ukraine.
While intelligence briefings may have given Johnson “the intellectual information about why it’s in U.S. interest to support Ukraine, our work and the work of others like us gave him the emotional and spiritual connection to Ukraine,” said Moore.
Ukrainian evangelicals are also helping debunk Russian fake stories of alleged “persecution of Christians” in Ukraine.
Another interlocutor of AP, pastor Igor Bandura, senior vice president of the Ukrainian Baptist Union, said the Russian authorities “assume all evangelicals are American spies.” According to him, 110 of 320 Ukrainian Baptist churches in the territories recently occupied by Russia have ceased to exist because their members fled due to persecution by Russian authorities.
“Those who stayed are really under great, great pressure,” Bandura told AP.
This pastor also visited the U.S. in May and June on a trip coordinated by the DCI Marks Project. His itinerary included the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis, where he spent a lot of time outside the hall talking to other Baptists about Ukraine, AP emphasizes.
Southern Baptist churches (SBC, – ed.) have a long history of missionary work in Ukraine. After the war began, the organization’s representatives voted to “stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.”
Humanitarian organization SBC Send Relief said it has helped 2 million people in the region since 2022. And Brent Leatherwood, head of the SBC public policy department, called for continued American support for Ukraine, AP recalls.
In April, Daniel Darling, director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, signed a letter with Pyzh and other prominent Baptists, urging Johnson to support aid to Ukraine.
“For the most part, when I talk to Southern Baptist pastors — rank-and-file pastors — they really do want Ukraine to prevail,” Darling said. “Many of them have ties there with missions.”
“I don’t think it’s as controversial as it often appears to be,” Darling tells AP.
Pastor Pyzh adds that the Ukrainians are grateful to the Americans for their help because, despite the war, his seminary keeps operating – now it hosts over 1,300 students, and for the first time the freshman class includes war veterans, some of them wounded and discharged from military service.
In an interview with AP, the Ukrainian pastor says millions of Ukrainians will closely watch the U.S. presidential election, believing that the war in Ukraine is going on not only on a physical level, but also on a spiritual one – for religious and political freedom, for the opportunity to remain Ukrainians and Christians.
