ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Since the war in Ukraine began, Yaroslav Pyzh, a Baptist pastor in Lviv, has worn many hats.
He leads the enormous and growing Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary while overseeing a network of 18 humanitarian relief centers in the embattled country.
He has also become something of an ambassador for American evangelicals.
Several times a year he makes his way to the Polish border and, once permitted to leave, travels to the United States to preach about his country’s plight and the need for continued American support.
He is not alone in his advocacy. Over the past two years, Ukrainian Baptists and other evangelicals have made sustained outreach to their American counterparts through coordinated campaigns and individual efforts. They traveled across the United States, visiting churches and Christian colleges, Capitol Hill and the Republican National Convention.
They appeal to American evangelicals who hold political power within the GOP, an increasingly isolationist party with standard-bearers who remain skeptical of Ukrainian aid.
“This war is a loser,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a recent podcast. His vice presidential candidate JD Vance said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.”
Gary Marx, a longtime conservative activist in the United States, worked with Ukrainian evangelicals to spread their message, part of a $3.6 million contract between a Ukrainian organization and lobbying firm DCI Group, according to foreign agent registration documents .
“(Ukrainians) know that the existence of their nation depends on whether the United States supports them,” Marx said. “It’s that simple. If the US withdraws its support, there’s no way they’ll survive.”
During his most recent trip to the United States, Pyzh made stops in at least eight states, including meeting with Southern Baptist representatives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Pyzh speaks English and has translated for American church groups visiting Ukraine. He received his doctorate from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas.
He still works as a translator and commutes between the two countries.
“I serve as a bridge for two sides,” he said at a meeting at a church in St. Louis in August.
He said he had American friends who had visited Ukraine many times and supported his services but were now torn.
“What I see in them is this struggle between what they want to do, the way they want to help us and some of their political ideas,” Pyzh said. “Their heart is in Ukraine, but their mind is somewhere else.”
Evangelicals in the halls of Congress
Ukraine is often referred to as the “Bible Belt of Eastern Europe.” Although evangelicals make up only 2 to 4 percent of the population, they are hundreds of thousands of people—a spirited, influential religious presence. They have an outsized connection to a key constituency: the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States with 13 million members.
Baptists from both countries earlier this year implored Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson – a Southern Baptist and former denominational official – to support aid to Ukraine, even as his party’s right flank threatened to oust him if he did so.
Pavlo Unguryan, a prominent Ukrainian Baptist leader, met with Johnson several times.
“We are brothers in one body of Jesus Christ,” said Unguryan, who once served in Ukraine’s parliament and leads the country’s National Prayer Breakfast.
After an attack in Odessa killed a Baptist pastor’s daughter and youthful grandson, Unguryan arranged for the grieving son-in-law to meet with Johnson just before the speaker helped push through $61 billion in war aid for Ukraine.
While intelligence may have given Johnson “the intellectual information about why it is in the 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 Steven Moore, founder the Ukraine Freedom Project. It helped finance Unguryan’s trip to the United States.
Moore, a veteran Republican Hill staffer, founded the project in 2022. It has coordinated meetings with more than 100 congressional offices.
During the debate over Ukraine aid, Moore’s organization ran digital ads in Johnson’s district. A billboard was erected across the street from Johnson’s church in Louisiana, paid for by Razom, a Ukrainian humanitarian group that Moore has advised. It showed a damaged Ukrainian Baptist church and invoked the biblical Book of Esther: “Speaker Johnson, for such a time as this.”
Moore’s organization also created a website with stories from Ukrainian Christians who claimed they were tortured by Russians.
“Every day we’re trying to figure out how to build and maintain Republican support for Ukraine,” Moore said. “And the evangelical Christian message is one of our ways to do that.”
Debate about religious freedom in the USA and Ukraine
This advocacy taps into Americans’ deep concerns about religious freedom – something also used as a talking point by Ukraine’s critics.
Russia has alleged that Ukraine is the one discriminating against Christians, especially since Ukraine passed a law targeting the branch of the Orthodox Church that has historically been allied with Moscow. The law bans religious groups that support Russia’s invasion, as well as those affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, which supported Vladimir Putin in his efforts to conquer Ukraine.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has expressed concerns about Ukraine’s up-to-date law, but emphasizes that “Russia remains the greatest threat to religious freedom in Ukraine.”
“There is significantly less religious freedom and religious pluralism in Russia than in Ukraine,” said Catherine Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University who focuses on the region.
Evangelicals face persecution and oppression in Russia and the occupied territories in part because of their faith’s alleged ties to the United States, Wanner said.
Russian authorities “assume that all evangelicals are American spies,” said Igor Bandura, senior vice president of the Ukrainian Baptist Union. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone from a suburb of Kiev after spending a sleepless night surrounded by sirens and drones.
Hundreds of churches and religious sites were destroyed during the war. Bandura said 110 of the 320 Ukrainian Baptist churches in the newly occupied Russian territories no longer exist due to the flight of their members. “Those who stayed are really under great, great pressure.”
Bandura visited the United States in May and June on a trip coordinated by Marx’s DCI project. His travel schedule 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.
Southern Baptist churches have a long history of missionary work in Ukraine. After the war began, SBC officials voted to “stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.” The SBC’s humanitarian arm, Send Relief, said it has served two million people in the region since 2022. And Brent Leatherwood, head of the SBC’s public policy division, called for continued American support for Ukraine.
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.
“When I talk to Southern Baptist pastors — rank-and-file pastors — for the most part they really want Ukraine to win,” Darling said. “Many of them have connections there with missions. So I don’t think it’s as controversial as it often seems.”
Evangelicals view the military conflict in Ukraine as a spiritual war
Sitting in the parlor of a Baptist church in Virginia, just outside Washington, Pyzh reiterated that he was grateful for American support. He noted that millions of Ukrainians will closely follow the US presidential election.
His seminar constantly adapts to the many needs that war brings.
There are now more than 1,300 students, with thousands more in certificate programs. A counseling program was recently launched to address growing mental health needs. This year, for the first time, the up-to-date class includes combat veterans, some of whom were wounded and discharged from military service.
Pyzh joins other Ukrainian evangelicals in saying that for them this is a spiritual and earthly war being fought for religious and political freedom.
“This is in some ways an existential struggle for us as a nation,” he said, “but also as Christians, as believers.”
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AP journalist Hanna Arhirova in Kiev, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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Associated Press religion coverage is supported by the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
