Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists after the Ukrainian Revolution, 2013-14, Joshua T. Searle, 2016

rthodoxe Kirche und das Konzept der ‘Russischen Welt’, Russland- Analysen 289 (January, 2015), 6-8. '© Anton Shekhovtsov, “Putin’s Brain”, in New Eastern Europe 4 (September-October 2014),72-79. '7 John O’Sullivan, “The difference between real journalism and Russia Today”, Spectator (December, 2014). Available online: http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9390782/the-truth-about-russia-today-is-that-it-is-putins- mouthpiece. 'S There are clear echoes here of the delusions of Adolf Hitler, who similarly believed that “god” had chosen him to lead the German “Volk” in a divine mission to rid the world of liberals, gays, Jews and other “undesirables”. Recent commentators have pointed out the remarkable parallels between the foreign policy strategies of Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin. In the 1930s Hitler used the existence of large German populations in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland to justify his demands for territorial expansion. Today, this is precisely the policy that Putin’s Russia is pursuing in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where substantial minorities of Russians live. everything is possible”,'® it is ironic to see how the mafia-controlled regime that currently holds power in Russia assumes the pseudo-Christian legitimacy conferred by the notion of “Holy Russia”.”° The sacralisation of the Russian World has reached such a level that social scientists are observing how the pro-Russian pseudo-states in South Eastern Ukraine are x 21 being transformed into “Russian Orthodox theocracies and how fanatics of the Russian World ideology are pursuing a violent campaign of “Orthodox jihad” in a “Holy War” against “schismatics and sectarians”.”” Why Should We Care about What is Happening in Ukraine? All of this may seem like an academic or political debate about ideas, and as something that is far removed from theology or Baptist principles. The following questions might, therefore, be raised: “Why should we as British Baptists be concerned about what is happening in Ukraine?”; “Is the current conflict in Ukraine not — as Neville Chamberlain in 1938 infamously said about Czechoslovakia — just ‘a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing’?”; “Are the events in Ukraine not primarily political in nature, and, if so, what is the need for the church to be involved in political processes?” So far it seems that the only countries threatened directly by this ideology are Russia’s immediate neighbours. In Ukraine the Russian World ideology is causing death and destruction on a scale unknown since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Baptists and evangelicals have been tortured and murdered in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. If these facts alone are not sufficient to cause us to care about what is happening, then it needs to be made clear just how volatile the situation is in Ukraine at this time. Unless decisive action is taken now, the Western worl