Setting Goals During Wartime
Reflections on Ukraine: May 25, 2024
I have spent more than four decades of my professional life as an educator in American, Russian, and Ukrainian institutions. I am now working in partnership with ScholarLeaders International to support a group of Ukrainian seminaries and Bible institutes that are struggling to survive brutal attacks by Russian armed forces. As I track the war, I write brief updates to help my readers understand what is taking place on both the battlefield and the home front. I had the opportunity to meet with the generation of theological leaders in Ukraine from the 1990s, individuals who kept their schools open during a time when Ukraine was one of the fifteen republics of the USSR. Their jobs involved difficult challenges because of the anti-religious policies of the Communist Party and periodic arrests and harassment of their faculty and administrators.
Putin’s administration decided to close the Russian American Christian University in Moscow in 2012. As president, the staff and I felt obligated to help our students enroll in other schools in the States, Canada, Lithuania, and public universities in Russia. After shifting our work to Ukraine in 2014, I developed friendships with the new generation of Ukrainian presidents who became the leaders of the country’s Protestant seminaries. I admired the quality, energy, and vision of these young leaders, who were light years ahead of the university presidents I got to know in Russia.
During two trips to Ukraine in 2016 and 2017, I had the opportunity to visit several seminary campuses and meet their young presidents who had big dreams about the future of their schools. When the Russians invaded in February 2022, the challenges these young leaders faced dramatically changed.
The Russian troops who invaded Ukraine were instructed to completely eliminate the Ukrainian nation, which meant targeting civilians, not just the Ukrainian army. Russia’s strategic goals of destroying the energy infrastructure of cities and villages had no relevance to battlefield objectives — these tactics were intended to terrorize the Ukrainian population. A genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine was released by Russia’s official press agency in April 2022. The manual calls for the “denazification” of Ukraine, explaining that a “Nazi” is anyone who self-identifies as a Ukrainian. Ukrainians are “Nazis” because they fail to accept “the necessity that the people must support Russia,” and they refuse to stop believing that they are a separate people. The handbook calls for the liquidation of the Ukrainian state, meaning that much of the population in Ukraine are to be killed or sent to work in labor camps to pay for their guilt of not loving Russia. This is the reality that these presidents must face. At this time, there are estimates about the total number of colleges, institutes, and universities damaged or destroyed, but the final number is still not known. The estimated costs of reconstruction of educational facilities is in the billions of dollars.
Within a year of the initial attack, 1,600 cases of damage to Ukrainian cultural heritage sites have been documented, “including some 700 monuments and memorials, more than 200 museums, archives, and libraries . . . [and] more than 500 religious sites,” according to a Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative report. By February 2024, more than 3,790 educational facilities had been damaged or destroyed. Human Rights Watch reported that Russian forces pillaged the schools, looted desktop and laptop computers, televisions, and interactive whiteboards, and what was not stolen was usually broken.
Our educational partnerships in Ukraine are largely focused on Protestant seminaries and Bible colleges, while nurturing friendships with the leaders of Ukrainian Catholic University, the country’s premier faith-based university. The strength of Ukraine’s civil society and the high value placed on religious freedom and ecumenical cooperation is truly inspiring. After the first 300 days of the war, a group of Ukrainian seminary educators scheduled meetings to encourage each other and discuss how their faith shapes their response to the war, despite “the sound of air raid sirens” and the missile and drone attacks that took place during Christmas and the New Year.
When many of their male students joined the armed forces, wives and children had to flee to safer parts of the country or into neighboring NATO countries. Some wives without children refused to leave and sought volunteer opportunities to support the elderly, vulnerable orphans, and IDPs (internally displaced persons). Thirteen “hubs” were set up and many seminary students and staff are working in these centers, providing bedding and lodging, preparing bread and food, locating medical supplies, and serving as counselors. Other students and staff are driving refugees to the borders, where they are greeted by Ukraine’s neighbors. Some accompany international students who often have problems leaving Ukraine because of their limited language ability. The trust that is being built in these collaborative refugee care centers is clearly recognized by its leaders as laying a foundation for future institutional cooperation.
Several seminaries that we work with were completely destroyed, heavily damaged, or repurposed by the Russians into facilities for their soldiers. When it became clear that approximately 50% of their faculty and staff had fled the country and would probably not return, discussions began to see how the schools could work together sharing facilities and faculty.
In the beginning of the war in 2022, Ukrainian Christian educators decided to establish a new alliance for theological schools in Ukraine and the surrounding region. In October 2022, 34 schools participated in a Zoom call expressing their interest in this initiative. Working groups were created to define the alliance’s mission and structure: articulating the church’s role in the public arena, supporting institutional health with a focus on faculty development and fundraising, creating collaborative research projects, and setting standards and peer review practices for their theological programs. By November 2023, the newly formed International Evangelical Theological Alliance (IETA) had grown to 44 schools and partner organizations in 10 countries. Its goals are to recruit new faculty members and students, reconstruct their damaged campuses, and consider possible institutional mergers.
Three issues were raised at one of the early meetings of Ukrainian Christian educators, and task forces were organized to conduct collaborative research:
Peace and Reconciliation, especially between Russian and Ukrainian Christian communities. Everyone recognized this will take time, because Russian Christians did not speak out against the invasion of their neighboring country.
Trauma and Resilience, which will require significant research and education on disability, including learning to affirm that wounded, disabled individuals are divine image bearers.
Citizenship and National Identity, which involves exploring the difficult question of how Christian and national identities intersect.
No one knows how long the war will continue. These Christian leaders believe it is their calling to stay committed to their mission as educators and to provide care for those in need. They are also committed to participating with civic associations and government leaders in making decisions about the future of democratic governance and religious freedom in Ukraine. These schools have earned the right to fully participate in Ukraine’s impressive civil society, which has no parallel in Russia.