Evangelicals emerge as a potent lobby for US support of Ukraine

ARLINGTON, Va. — Since the war in Ukraine began, Yaroslav Pyzh, a Baptist pastor in Lviv, has worn many hats.

He runs the large and growing Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary, while overseeing a network of 18 humanitarian aid centers across the embattled country.

He’s also become an ambassador of sorts to American evangelicals.

Several times a year, he treks to the Polish border and once permitted to leave, travels to the United States to preach about the plight of his country and its need for continued American support.

He is not alone in his advocacy. There has been sustained outreach by Ukrainian Baptists and other evangelicals to their American counterparts in the past two years, through coordinated campaigns and individual efforts. They have crisscrossed the U.S., visiting churches and Christian colleges, Capitol Hill and the Republican National Convention.

They are appealing to American evangelicals who hold sway politically within the GOP — an increasingly isolationist party with standard bearers who remain skeptical of Ukrainian aid.

“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.”

Gary Marx, a longtime conservative operative in the U.S., has been working with Ukrainian evangelicals to amplify their message — part of a $3.6 million contract between a Ukrainian organization and the lobbying firm DCI Group, according to foreign agent registration documents.

“(Ukrainians) know that their nation’s existence rides on whether the U.S. is supporting them,” Marx said. “It’s that simple. If the U.S. pulls support, there’s no way that they’ll survive.”

During his latest U.S. trip, Pyzh made stops in at least eight states, including meeting with Southern Baptist officials in Nashville, Tennessee.

An English speaker, Pyzh has translated for American church groups visiting Ukraine. He earned his doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas.

He is still a translator, moving between both countries.

“I serve as a bridge for two sides,” he told a gathering at a St. Louis church in August.

He said he has American friends who have visited Ukraine many times and supported his ministries but now are torn.

“What I see in them is that struggle between what they want to do, the way they want to help us, and some of their ideas on the political side,” Pyzh said. “Their heart is in Ukraine, but their mind is somewhere else.”

Evangelicals in the halls of Congress

Ukraine has often been called the “Bible Belt of Eastern Europe.” Though evangelicals account for only 2% to 4% of the population, that amounts to hundreds of thousands of people — a vibrant, influential religious presence. They have an outsized connection to an important constituency: Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant 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.

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 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 Steven Moore, founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project. It has helped fund Unguryan’s U.S. travel.

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 went up across from Johnson’s church in Louisiana, paid for by Razom, a Ukrainian humanitarian group 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 of Ukrainian Christians alleging they were tortured by Russians.

“Every day, we try to figure out how to build and maintain Republican support for Ukraine,” Moore said. “And the evangelical Christian messaging is one of the ways that we do that.”

Debating religious freedom in the U.S. and Ukraine

This advocacy work taps into a deep well of concern among Americans about religious freedom — something that's also a talking point used by Ukraine’s critics.

Russia has asserted Ukraine is the one discriminating against Christians, particularly since Ukraine passed a law seen as targeting the branch of the Orthodox Church historically aligned with Moscow. The law bans religious groups who support Russia’s invasion and those tied to the Russian Orthodox Church that backed Vladimir Putin in his efforts to seize Ukraine.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has raised concerns about Ukraine’s new law, but “stresses that Russia remains the most profound threat to religious freedom in Ukraine.”

“There’s significantly less religious freedom and religious pluralism in Russia than there is in Ukraine,” said Catherine Wanner, a Penn State professor of history, anthropology and religious studies who focuses on the region.

Evangelicals face persecution and repression in Russia and the occupied territories in part because of their faith’s perceived ties to the United States, Wanner said.

Russian authorities “assume 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 suburban Kyiv, after a sleepless night hearing sirens and drones.

Hundreds of churches and religious sites have been destroyed during the war. Bandura said 110 of 320 Ukrainian Baptist churches in the newly occupied Russian territories have ceased to exist because members fled. “Those who stayed are really under great, great pressure.”

Bandura visited the U.S. in May and June on a trip coordinated by Marx’s DCI project. His itinerary included the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Indianapolis, where he spent much time outside the hall, talking with fellow Baptists about Ukraine.

Southern Baptist churches have a long history of missionary work in Ukraine. After the war began, SBC representatives voted to “stand in solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.” The SBC’s humanitarian organization, Send Relief, said it has served 2 million people in the region since 2022. And Brent Leatherwood, head of the SBC’s public policy arm, has urged continued American support of 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.

“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. And so, I don’t think it’s as controversial as it often appears to be.”

Evangelicals see military conflict in Ukraine as a spiritual war

Sitting in the parlor of a Virginia Baptist church just outside Washington, Pyzh reiterated that he's grateful for American support. He noted that millions of Ukrainians will be watching the U.S. presidential election closely.

His seminary keeps adapting to the many needs that war imparts.

It now has more than 1,300 students, with thousands more in certificate programs. It recently started a counseling program to address growing mental health needs. This year, for the first time, the incoming class includes recent war veterans, some of them wounded and released from military duty.

Pyzh echoes other Ukrainian evangelicals when he says that for them, this is a spiritual war and an earthly one, waged for religious and political freedom.

“This is an existential fight for us in a sense as a nation,” he said, “but also as Christians, as believers.”

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AP journalist Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.