19th May, 2005

DAVID ADAMS

The world watched in amazement late last year as the so-called “Orange Revolution” swept across the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, transforming the country’s political landscape and ushering in a new wave of democratic reforms.

Yet it seems the events of last year have also helped to boost changes occurring in the country’s spiritual climate with reports emerging of a renewed interest in Christianity.

In a recent report published by Joel News (www.joelnews.org) Pastor Sunday Adelaja of one of the largest, if not the largest, church in Kiev - the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations - writes of the transformation taking place in Ukraine.

Adelaja, whose church has some 20,000 members, says that not only has the new President Viktor Yushchenko appointed Christians to key positions within government - including the Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko - “what shocked the whole country was the fact that he took a clear and unprecedented stand against corruption”, telling his countrymen and women that his government would not steal, receive bribes of buy votes.

Adelaja goes on to quote Tymoshenko as saying that the government had come to the conclusion that “Ukraine can never rise on her feet until she bows down her knees before the Almighty God”.

He describes her six point program for the nation - which is based upon principles including faith in God, the nation and individuals, justice, harmony, security - as reflecting a “Biblical concept of transformation”.

Other key government appointments made since Yushchenko’s rise to power include that of Alexander Turchinov as head of the Ukraine security service, the SBU - a man grew up in a Baptist family during the rule of the country’s former communist regime and is now reported to be an evanglical Christian who preaches in his local church.

“Now the head of this dreaded organisation is a man who believe in the very thing they tried to destroy,” he says. “Yes, God has a sense of humour!”

The political reforms taking place in Ukraine have included the removal of the State Committee on Religious Affairs - a move which has been hailed by some leading academics and Christian leaders as a key part of the democratic awakening within the state which declared its independence from the former USSR in 1991.

In an article published in March this year, Myroslav Marynovych of the Ukrainian Catholic University wrote that Yuschenko’s move to “end state meddling in religious affairs is a powerful signal to the entire region”.

He described “the general feeling that the former communist model of church-state relations has finally been left behind” as “perhaps the Orange Revolution’s main gain in the sphere of religion”.

Australia’s Dr Mark Tronson, who was recently in Ukraine visiting missions for Jewish people run by Israel-based organisation Bridges for Peace, says that “if ever there was a time for a country ready and the harvest ripe, as Jesus challenged, now is such a time in the Ukraine”.

Pastor Adelaja, meanwhile, writes that “we know that the changes taking place here in the Ukraine are born from above...”

“May you rejoice with us as we keep believing God for total transformation. Nothing is impossible for the Lord!”

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