Ukrainian initiative unites Christians from Baltic and beyond
A father with his daughter in an Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Photo EPA, Sergey Dolzhenko
Eastern Europe
A group of Ukrainians have started a collective to call Christians to protect their spiritual values. The initiative is called “Platform of Christian Unity in the Baltic and Black Sea Region,” and it aims to organise meetups for Christians around Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland.
Its vision has the long-term focus of reviving cultural ties and its traditional Christian values at the regional level.
Chairman of the Lithuanian Christian Union party, Rimantas Joanas Dagys, has been with the initiative since it began this year and has continued to offer guidance in the process. He hopes the platform will be a place for rebuilding Ukraine’s spiritual landscape that will be supported by states with similar cultural and historical backgrounds. He also says that it will be a place to unite against “Russian imperialism” and “values deemed unacceptable to Christians that destroy Western society from the inside.”
Financial support
“It's no secret that the dominant genderism in the EU is trying to establish itself in this state at war with the aggressor. The provision of financial support to a warring country and the process of integration into the EU are often attempted to be informally linked to the genderist ideology unacceptable to the people of Ukraine, they are urged to adopt relevant laws in compliance with these principles,” he said to the Lithuanian publication, Laikmetis.
Dagys also said that such ideologies can have the power to compromise other traditional values, for instance that involve family and marriage. Ukraine currently faces EU pressure to incorporate LGBT values within its school curriculum and eventually adopt a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.
“We already know what the legalisation of such principles really means, but for them it is a new experience. This practice of spreading ideology can seriously undermine the spread of Western societal values in the world, as is already happening in Africa,” he said.
Infancy
Although the initiative is still in its infancy, participating churches and non-profit organisations hope to expand beyond the Baltic. A conference that discussed the platform was recently held in Lviv, Ukraine. Christians from various denominations and those from non-governmental organisations in Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland gathered to share their ideas.
A smaller meeting was held at the beginning of November where the theme, “Family during war” was discussed, according to a news release from the Donetsk Exarchate. Donetsk is in the Russian-occupied region of eastern Ukraine. At the event, participants talked openly about their struggles and learned about potential assistance when loved ones are lost at war or missing in action. It was also an opportunity to talk about family values in the country. Fr. Vladyslav Ignatyuk, a representative from the Catholic-based, Donetsk Exarchate, shared about the status of families in the area. Toward the meeting’s end, the group created a joint resolution of proposals that are aimed at protecting Ukrainian families.
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