Religion

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A recent comment by one person reflects to a degree the spiritual climate in Ukraine: “I am an atheist of the Orthodox persuasion.” People are open to talking about faith, religion and God but the decision to come to God is seen as a journey that may take years or even an entire lifetime. The main religion in eastern Ukraine is Russian/Ukrainian Orthodoxy with approximately 25% of the populate claiming to be aetheists. Less than three percent of the population is protestant. Ukrainians recently celebrated 1,000 years of Orthodoxy and many believe that Ukrainian/Russian identity is closely linked to being Orthodox.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been the dominant religion in Russia and Ukraine for 1,000 years, since the end of the 10th century when missionaries converted the ruler of Kievan Rus to Christianity. Although the Church was repressed during the Soviet Era, it has been quickly regaining religious and political influence since the early 1990s. The second largest religion in Russia is Islam, followed by a number of other non-Orthodox Christian denominations and a declining Jewish population.

The Soviet Union was home to a large number of people who were not followers of the Russian Orthodox Church, but rather the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church (also called the Armenian Orthodox Church), and the Ukrainian and Belorussian autocephalous Orthodox church. These churches, like the Russian Orthodox Church, were rooted in Byzantine, rather than Roman Christianity.

There were also a large number of Protestants of various denominations who resided in the Soviet Union. But, because the majority of these non-Orthodox Christians were concentrated in the Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the representation of non-Orthodox groups in post-Soviet Russia is much less today than it was in the Soviet Union. All of the Christians of these faiths likewise endured persecution by the Soviet state.