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Jen Thomson sits with Kazakh students in Astana. (Courtesy Stevens)

A team from the Hosanna Baptist Church in Lviv, Ukraine, prepares to found a new church. (Courtesy Miller)

A ninth-century Georgian Orthodox cathedral in Uplistsikhe, Georgia. (Blackwood/TYG)

A few years ago, Oksana started to attend the local services of the Boston Church of Christ and Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. These experiences, however, were more social than religious, she said. “I never believed in God. I was raised in a family where nobody did.”

Oksana later became involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through free English classes offered by Mormon missionaries in Yekaterinburg. After more than two years of debating and discussing her spirituality with the missionaries, Oksana converted to Mormonism in 2006—but her religious experimentation has still not come to an end. “Being a Mormon was a huge step in my personal growth,” she said. “But at the moment I feel that my progress there has stopped. I hear the same things over and over again all the time, but I want to go ahead—I just don’t know where yet.”

The fall of the Soviet Union has brought a resurgence of religious activity to nearly all of the former Soviet countries. The officially atheist Soviet government heavily restricted major religions like Orthodox Christianity and Islam while quashing others, like Protestant Christianity, outright. Now that the Soviet Union is gone, traditional religions are reconnecting with latent beliefs, while Protestant evangelists are hoping their faiths will take root. Oksana’s story is just one example of the religious diversity that, today, characterizes the post-Soviet world from Yekaterinburg to Moscow, from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. The evangelists who have come to the former Soviet Union often stress individual Bible study and the importance of a highly personal relationship with God. These beliefs are a far cry from those of traditional Orthodoxy Christianity or even Islam, whose expressions in the countries of the former Soviet Union have long emphasized ritual and tradition instead.

But these differences are more than simple disagreements about doctrine. They have led to misunderstandings, tensions, and bitter feelings as different groups compete to draw in and hold onto new believers. Although missionaries have at times been met with curiosity and hospitality, leaders of traditional religions have had no shortage of resentment.

Knowing God

In Tbilisi, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, overt displays of religion are part of everyday life: people stop to cross themselves whenever they pass a church or religious monument, and churches are filled with the faithful even on weekday afternoons. In a city brimming with religious devotion, it is difficult to imagine that only 20 years ago, religion was almost entirely absent from daily life.

In western Ukraine, the fall of the USS R has given new life to the dominant religious tradition—that of the Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church. The church was legally abolished in 1946, and much of its hierarchy was killed or exiled, leaving Russian Orthodoxy the only officially sanctioned religion. Largely thanks to its connections with the Vatican, the Uniate Church was able to survive abroad for decades and mount a remarkable resurgence in the 1990s. Today, the Church numbers about five million members in Ukraine.

“Because the Soviet Union came here later than it did to Russia, not as many generations were born under the atheist regime, so the memory of what it’s like to live religiously is very much alive,” said Lea Oksman, TC ‘06, who works for the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. It was among members of the Greek Catholic Church that Ukraine’s religious revival of the early 1990s was the strongest. “Because there were so many people who remembered very, very well what it’s like to be in the church—people who prayed for some 70 years for their church to be re-established—as soon as the Soviet Union left and Ukraine became independent, the church was back immediately, and it was back very strongly,” Oksman explained.

For some foreign missionaries, however, the rebirth of traditional churches does not constitute a true “religious revival.” Dennis Holt, along with his wife Korinne, heads the Tbilisi branch of Youth with a Mission (YWAM), an international, multi-denominational organization with about 17,000 volunteer staff members in 149 countries worldwide.

Holt believes that the Christianity of the Georgian Orthodox Church, despite its 17 centuries of history, is misconceived. “Unfortunately their whole idea of religion is to build churches,” he said, “rather than knowing God personally.” For evangelicals like Holt, the liturgy-oriented Orthodox tradition clashes with their own scripturally-centered concepts of spirituality and Christ. In Tbilisi, Church cupolas do in fact dominate the skyline and, though some structures date as far back as the sixth century, many are new, reflecting the importance with which Georgians perceive their places of worship.

“Knowing Jesus personally and being a missionary and telling people about the Lord is kind of a new concept for them in this part of the world,” Holt said. Through their YWAM Discipleship Training School, the Holts and their staff members—an American, three Georgians, and one Azeri—are working to change local perceptions, preparing students from Georgia as well as Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan for missionary work in Georgia and neighboring countries.