2004
Volume 34, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0960-2720
  • E-ISSN: 2666-9730

Abstract

Summary

This article highlights the challenges faced by evangelicals in Ukraine who have set out to be faithful disciples of Christ in the face of the country’s current war for survival. It opens with an analysis of the historical context that shaped Ukrainian evangelical Protestantism, including the influence of the radical Reformation, dispensationalist eschatology, the tradition and spirituality of the Orthodox Church, and life in the atheistic, hostile Soviet society. It discusses distinct features of the traditional Ukrainian evangelical theology of discipleship and its practice, such as the importance of conversion and separation from the world, Christianity as a way of life following Christ, radical pacifism, and the significance of evangelism. Next presented is an analysis of the existential, theological, ethical and social challenges that Ukrainian Christians are facing as they seek to incorporate social responsibility into the discipleship of the Kingdom of God since the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian aggression in 2014, and especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Attention is briefly paid to the responses of Russian evangelicals to the war, before the article concludes with an overview of the theology of discipleship in a war of attrition: humility, the solidarity of love, self-denial, prophetic imagination and courage.

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2025-03-01
2025-04-01
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