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Did Communism influence the way churches deal with members?

During the Soviet period there was a very defined sense of who is a member and what are the responsibilities of members and that members must fulfill those responsibilities. During the Soviet period, they were very quick to exclude (or excommunicate) members who did not fulfill those responsibilities. There still is a very high level of expectation of participation.

Why is Ukraine an evangelical center?

The laws and the bureaucracy in Ukraine have created circumstances that are far more conducive to missionizing, and they're far more welcoming of the arrival of missionaries and religious leaders from elsewhere, as well as the arrival of humanitarian aid and allowing local religious organizations to distribute that aid. So, the legal and bureaucratic environment that's been created in Ukraine is far more welcoming to�foreign religious organizations but also to the functioning of local religious organizations.

Is there still a feeling that evangelicals are very much on the fringe, that they are cultish?

Yes. I would say overall there's a fairly negative still impression of evangelical faith.

However this is really beginning to change. For example, the current mayor of Kiev is an openly practicing Pentecostal believer. And there are several members of parliament who are of a Baptist tradition, and for a while there the head of the KGB was an openly practicing Baptist. So it's important to note that it is beginning to change as people who are very open and upfront about their religious faith are actually choosing to acknowledge that they practice an evangelical faith.

That's even occurring among standard politicians, where it's become more accepted and maybe even expected that politicians will state their position on religion.

In what ways is the movement in Ukraine transnational?

It's uniquely transnational in this respect: Given that Ukraine was part of this three hundred million—strong country known as the Soviet Union, Ukrainians have a certain cultural and even linguistic commonality with other members of the former Soviet Union. In other words, they make better missionaries than people coming from the United States, because they know the language and they know the culture and the mentality of the people whom they're proselytizing. And as a result, they tend to have more success.

So in that sense, that's why Ukraine, as I argue in the book, has not only been a key site to which missionaries have come, but Ukraine has also become a key supplier of missionaries. And many of those missionaries go to Russia and to other parts of the former Soviet Union.

What influence will this have on the region?

Ukraine has sort of become a center of evangelical training, if you will. As other countries within the former Soviet Union, such as Russia or Kazakhstan, make it difficult certainly for formal religious organizations to establish things like seminaries and [religious] printing presses, Ukraine makes it comparatively easy.

So it has a very significant effect on the region. When Ukraine at once allows for people who are interested in becoming evangelical leaders to come to Ukraine, gain training and then perhaps go back. So it makes the efforts of the Russian government, which are ever more significant, as well as Belarus — we're not even speaking about that country — to thwart any kind of evangelical growth. They have to be that much more rigorous, and yet they're still likely to deliver less and less of a result.

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January (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52