Revolutions of Hope, Part 7: Faithful Hope

Episode Topic: Faithful Hope: Religion and Resilience in Ukraine

This essential panel explores Ukraine’s religious pluralism, where faith galvanizes democratic resilience rather than division. Experts analyze “hope as a discipline” and interfaith solidarity, revealing how historical resistance weaponized spiritual energy into a powerful civic engine. Discover why Ukraine’s pluralistic landscape provides an indispensable global model for modern democratic endurance.

Featured Speakers:

• Yury Avvakumov, University of Notre Dame
• Anna Bisikalo, Harvard University
• José Casanova, Georgetown University
• Andriy Kurochka, Ukrainian Catholic University
• Catherine Wanner, Penn State University 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/9f8783. 

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Revolutions of Hope.

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Transcript

Panel Welcome and Framing

1 0:06

Welcome to the panel, faithful Hope, religion and Resilience in Ukraine. I'm Yuri Ov. I am teaching here at Notre Dame at the Department of Theology Religion. The topic of religion is, of course indispensable for the understanding of the past and present of Ukraine and, and in a conference such as ours, a conference that aspires to be an inaugural conference for the entire area of, uh, Ukrainian studies. Such a panel is, I think, of particular importance. It's, it's not just religion is not just a footnote in the study of Ukraine, but, uh, one, I think one of the core subjects. And, uh, before, before we, uh, begin with the presentation, so I will be very brief. I just, just have two maybe two questions to consider. Addressing very briefly two areas that have, uh, fascinated me throughout, uh, the time that I've been trying to study these subjects. And the first one is, uh, that Ukraine is a country of religious diversity. It's something that is, uh, really so important for Ukraine, that this diversity is not simply a fact because there are many countries with religious diversity, perhaps. Yeah. Almost all the countries in the world religiously diverse. But, uh, this diversity in Ukraine is respected, respected by the society and by the state also. And in a sense, I think it, it leads to the emergence of religious, of a religious pluralism that theism is perhaps unique because this religious pluralism does not relegate religion into the area of, uh, private sphere. Religion remains in the public sphere. Religion is a partner of the civil society in Ukraine. And in this sense, a question that has fascinated me is what are the main elements of this religious pluralism in Ukraine? What are its roots and its main elements? And how can we learn from it? Because I think that so many in the west, in western Europe, in, uh, the United States, in North America can learn from this unique religious pluralism in Ukraine instead of assuming a of a. Teaching mentoring Ukraine how to deal with issues of, of religion. Ukraine has been doing very good job precisely in this area. And the second question that I think is fascinating is the fact that we know Christianity is the dominating religion in the sense of numbers in Ukraine. And, uh, most of its Christianity belongs to the Byzantine tradition. And in that sense, it shares this tradition with a few neighboring countries, including such countries like Russia and Belarus. And interestingly, and fascinatingly, this Byzantine tradition has led to opposite. Radically opposite results in Ukraine on the one hand and in Russia and Belarus on the other. How did it happen? It's a really, really interesting question for any observer or, and anyone who is, uh, really engaged in the subject. And I think that I just began this, uh, sharing with you these two thoughts because I think that, uh, our distinguished panelists, uh, the topics of, uh, their papers, I'm absolutely sure will. Help us to deal with these questions, with other questions, with many other questions too, but with these two questions, definitely, and could help us to get an insight and deeper insight into Ukraine's religion. So, yeah. I think we there, there are be blurbs of, uh, every participant of this conference and of everyone of our distinguished panelists. So I will not take the time from the presentations themselves and not, uh, read that aloud. I, they're all available on the conferences website. So I encourage you to, to look into that. And lemme just, uh, now announce our first speaker. It is, uh, scholar of modern Eastern European history, PhD candidate at Harvard University. And yeah, the topic is announced. Please join me in welcoming as our first speaker.

3 6:20

Thank you very much.

Three Success Factors

Reclaiming Churches and Moscow

4 6:25

Thank you for this opportunity to speak today, um, and to learn from so many others at this critical inflection point for Ukraine today. Today, I'd like to speak about a revolutionary form of hope from a historical example that remains very relevant today. The time I have, unfortunately, cannot do justice to this remarkable story in its entirety and all of its participants. So please forgive any omissions. When Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, met with the first Slavic Pope, John Paul ii, they talked about the city of D ViiV, Western Ukraine. At the historic meeting on December 1st in 1989 in the Vatican, the Soviet leader remarked in connection with well-known events. The leadership is finding itself in a tight spot in Aviv. The situation became so acute that they did not know how to normalize it. We need the passions to die down in order to regulate the situation. The well-known events and passions he spoke of were massive public demonstrations, processions and open air liturgies led by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church regularly drawing tens of thousands. In 1989, Ukrainian Catholic clergy, laypeople and human rights activists physically led the church out from its clandestine illegal existence. Why had this community been underground? In 1946, after Western Ukraine was added to the Soviet Union, the Greek Catholic church was banned and forcibly reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church. For over 40 years, the church community existed in two parallel, those sometimes overlapping forms. The first, the church within a church, which operated out of nominally orthodox churches, but tried to maintain original Greek Catholic rights as much as possible. And the clandestine or catacomb church made up of people who gathered in private homes served by semi itinerant illegal priests. Over half a century of violence, repression, incarceration, and discursive attacks, members of the church body evolved into a formidable political force that finally achieved its main goal legalization. The day before Gorbachev's meeting with the Pope, the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs finally declared that the Greek Catholic faithful could legally register and create church communities like other recognized religious groups in the Soviet Union. Greek Catholic communities in Ukraine were part of the broader movements, nationalist, democratic, and environmental. That transformed communist citizens and contributed to the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and central Europe. Ukrainian Catholics boldly took charge of public space and physically contested the legitimacy of communist authority. I contend that three factors facilitated the Greek Catholic's success in this moment. First was an inspiration from a legacy of post-war anti-authoritarian activism in the USSR and the solidarity movement in neighboring Poland that began in 1980, supported by Pope John Paul. The second. Second was the domestic and international political scenes including Gorbachev's policy of gloss and public pressure from anti-communist leaders like Ronald Reagan and the Pope. Third was emotional and material support from outside the USSR Greek Catholics in Poland, Rome, and the global diaspora funneled money and tools for Sam that printing into Ukraine and Greek Catholics were encouraged by listening to radio Vatican. In the end, activists from outside the church joined their cause, and together this coalition mobilized local, national, and international ties by drawing on the vernacular of human rights activism, Catholic doctrine, communist jurisprudence, and Ukrainian nationalism. Greek Catholics were never silent about the treatment of their church and leadership, but those who experienced repression in the 1940s and 1950s were harshly punished by the full strength of the Soviet carceral system. As discussed in oral histories, recorded at Ukrainian Catholic Universities Institute of Church history in the 1990s and two thousands, many of whom which, which which were conducted by Archbishop Za. This generation's actions and hopes were oriented towards the bare survival of the church body by the late 1970s, a new cohort of Ukrainian Catholics born after World War ii. Had grown up in an atheist state, felt socially and politically excluded from the Soviet project, but did not have to endure the same asphyxiating degree of terror as their elders. As this cohort came of age, these reluctant Soviet citizens had a different embodied experience of their rights and of state violence, and thus had a more expansive imagination of political possibility. By the mid 1980s, external and internal shifts compelled many Ukrainian Catholics to openly advocate for their church. While some members of the hierarchy were understandably very afraid of overstepping, it was impossible to know at that time whether bold tactics could bring success or trigger dangerous retaliation. I see here an evolution from hope as a faithful certainty that one day beyond the visible horizon, liberation would arrive to hope as a tool for transformative change, for pulling that horizon closer. Both were necessary. This story allows us to contemplate the necessary conditions for galvanizing this inherited hope into successful action. And I offer one formula here that perhaps can be generalized to other situations, though great Catholic activism took off in the late 1970s and far earlier with petition writing. Today I will focus on 1988 to 89. The peak of public protest late 1980s presented an opportune moment for the coalition to take radical action to secure a miraculous victory decades in the making. The Greek Catholic Church irreversibly raised the stakes for its campaign. On August 4th, 1987, clandestine bishops, Pablo Basilic and Ivan Eddi, along with 23 priests and 187 monks and nuns openly declared their exit from the Catacomb Church to Pope John Paul II and to Gorbachev. In connection with Troika in the SSR and with the millennium of the baptism in Ukraine, we consider it impractical to continue to exist in the underground. And I really love that phrasing. This audacious maneuver was not widely supported among Greek Catholics. The acting head of the church, Archbishop Vlad did not approve, nor did the Ukrainian Catholic delegation in Rome worrying that this tactic would reveal the underground nature of the church, or this underground structure of the church and lead to arrests. In May of 1988, the Committee for the Defense of the Church led by freed political prisoner, Yvan hid, had a major success when its members met with US President Ronald Reagan in Moscow. He met with dozens of Soviet dissidents and human rights activists, including defenders of the Greek Catholics, uh, Ivan and his wife Oja. Reagan's meeting with the activists and Gorbachev himself added this needed external momentum to the legalization movement in her recollections. Re admits that such a meeting seemed impossible until it was actually taking place. A sentiment that echoes across personal stories about the legalization of the church and broadly about the dissolution of the USSR, all Greek Catholic from IV named V recalled, the effective atmosphere of the burgeoning movement in the late 1980s and the hesitant psychological shifts he experienced at the first meetings. He says, fears shackled people. People came to the meetings and they were afraid. They were beaten and dispersed by police, but right away there was this hope. It can't even be called hope, but a feeling and understanding that everything is moving in one direction and there is no going back. Even the clergy seemed like they changed slightly. Even the clandestine ones and the meetings felt different. Explained the origins of this fear. Certainly the propaganda was working. It broke people. I felt a certain stiffness. I kept looking around to see was anyone watching me at the tipping point, these forces could not stop the swelling, actions, swelling, collective actions, and the personal transformations they engendered. On July 10th, a few weeks later, Ukrainian Catholics celebrated the millennium of Christianity in Rous. They gathered in two villages outside of iv, hundreds of KGB officials and police were dispatched to control the crowd of 5,000, but there was nothing the police could do. That day in the venerated village of Za in Les Laypeople carried a movable altar and jubilee crucifix in a three kilometer procession. Police blockaded the entrance to the village, but the procession audaciously continued walking until the police were forced to scatter and allow their passage. Father Tara Sanky, who organized this service was fine and punished. By the largest event held by this coalition, fighting for legalization took place on September 17th, 1989. A quarter of a million people gathered in ViiV for a massive protest and liturgy. Greek Catholic priests, COIST Haas, repels people lining the path with flowers for us all the way through the procession. According to Ivan Hay, the September 17th procession was a turning point. After that, no one was afraid. Um, and you can see him in the front with the loudspeaker. The event was hugely successful, but according to some could have been potentially more powerful. Father Mikhail Ian, who took part in the mass expressed regret that clandestine leader Archbishop did not. According to Ian's view, if Archbishop had led the clergy, he could have reclaimed the Church of St. George that very day. Father Ian's sentiment speaks to this generational divergence in tactics. Just over a month later. Members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church took back the Church of the Transfiguration Sister, MUA Anan went to the church the morning of October 29th. I, I thought this would be muted, but this is worth hearing for a few seconds. Okay. I know. I think it's muted. Sister Muon saw our fighters for Ukraine and the church, Mr. Hell and others. As soon as the priest said his holiness Pope John Paul ii, which hadn't been spoken in this church in four decades. Over four decades, we all started crying. Then our priests from the underground conducted the liturgy with tears in their eyes. After this triumphant moment, parishioners spent over a week inhabiting the church, praying, singing, listening to sermons. Far away from IV in the union's core Greek Catholic clergy and believers spent May through November publicly praying and hunger striking on the Arba in Moscow. Their strategy turned the Greek Catholic issue from a regional annoyance to one that Soviet leaders could no longer ignore. The final week of November, 1989 brought the victory Greek Catholics hoped, prayed and worked for. On November 21st, 210 members of US Congress sent a letter to Gorbachev, urging him to use the occasion of his Vatican visit to legalize the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The legalization movement movement in the USSR and the diaspora had successfully brought this issue to the highest levels of international politics. On November 29th, Ivan Head declared that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church was aware of Gorbachev's upcoming trip to Rome and warned authorities that quote, the people are not on their knees, they're rising and not willing to wait long. The very next day, November 30th, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church was finally granted legal status, albeit with no acknowledgement of 40 years of repression and no plans for reparations or church repossession. The Greek Catholics had acquired a dejure legal status, but the reality was highly ambiguous and would take years to work out. To conclude. Between 1978 and 1989, clergy and laypeople of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church transitioned and transformed from a community who was making risky, but pragmatic adaptations to the Soviet system to eek out survival into an active oppositional group. I'd like to end on this note from a different context, from American grassroots organizer, Mariama Kaba, who believes that hope is a discipline. We have to practice it every day. Greek Catholic predecessors who made their hope into a regular spiritual practice. With no assurance that they would see its fruits in their lifetime to echo chu's speech this morning. They passed on this discipline through the generations until it could be leveraged for unprecedented change. Thank you.

1 19:16

Thanks. Our next speaker is, uh, Jose Kava senior Fellow and Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University. Please join me in welcoming Professor Kava.

Pluralism in Politics

5 19:39

Thank you to the Vic Institute Clemens. You've put a great, great uh, theater, a great performance here for all of us. It's a great pleasure for me. I'm married to, so I'm an old man, and it's a great pleasure to see so many young faces and to hear and to listen to them. And there is a lot of hope in Ukraine studies for the future in Ukraine. So there is no doubt about it. And I'm very glad that I'm following after the war of, uh, Anna because it has prepared the ground for what I'm gonna say, which is I'm gonna take off a sociological miracle. I'm a sociologist. I studied the dynamics of, of church, state, nation, civil society. I've been visiting Ukraine since 1989 regularly, and for me it was a gold mine, a new state being created, a new nation being born or reborn, a new civil society emerging, and you could study it. So you could really, really, it was a gold mine for a sociologist, but I had no idea that the story was going to turn the way it turn. I was always optimistic. But I had no idea that the foundations were so strong and that it is going to survive the way and, and, and basically phrase the way it has. So I'm going to point out to what I consider to be the religious foundations, religious and civic foundations of theological miracle, pointing to three things. One, the one we already uh, listened to, namely the explosion of religious purism that follow the emergence of glasnow in Ukraine. Glas came very late in Ukraine, 89, 5 years after it had already been basically in place in Russia, in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe. Only when Ky finally the, the Secretary of the Communist Party died. Finally, glass arrived, and when it arrive, you have two explosions. One is explosion of religious brutalism, the other is explosion of, and these are the two fundamental foundations. And both of them have their, their, uh, uh. Foundation in the gula, both of them. It was the experience in the gula of being together. Greek Catholics and Orthodox and Jewish Refuseniks and Baptist and evangelicals and all of them learning to live with one another as fellow Christians. I mean, for Greek Catholics and Orthodox calling themselves fellow Christians was a big thing. And it happened in the gulag happened. You have to follow the frenzy between one of the founders of Ku, me, Marinovich and Johanne to lay people with a very, very profound uh, Christian, uh, uh, faith and commitment. And it was their friendship as Christian brothers that was unique. But the same you could say about the friendship with Jewish and with Muslims that happened there. The same goes for the secular version of the many dissidents from Nationalist Band, band like Valenti Mors to Ex Mar, and, uh, the other ones that have been mentioned of I and with, with Lena, et cetera. And again, they also learn to accept their differences and that the new nation, the new nation, Ukrainian nation, will have to be a Pist one pist, ethnically, linguistically, ideologically pist. And this also the experience that they, uh, uh, uh, basically established in the underground. And so when Ru, when Ru uh, uh, uh, emerged, it emerged precise. This project. Inclusive of civic nationalism for anybody who simply wanted to be a citizen of Ukraine and were to live in Ukraine. Lemme go back to the explosion of it was Leki obl. That was really, really the, the, the, the, it's kind of the, the, the forefront. Uh, we must understand LeBla in the 17th century, right after the urine of breast, was the stronghold of orthodoxy against unionism, what they call unionism today. Then, uh, LeBla Ola became the stronghold of the Greek Catholic church under the Austro-Hungarian empire. Then, of course, briefly became because of the population transference after World War II and ethnically, basically for the first time, a relatively um, homogeneous ethnic uh, society. And for the first time also religiously homogeneous when everybody was forced to become a, a Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate. And it was the possibility to go back from the Bosco patriarchy back to what 50% of Kyla decide to go back to the Greek Catholic church, but 30% remain Orthodox in three different versions of the three Orthodox churches. Then they were immersed in Ukraine. And we have here with us the great historian of 20th century Orthodoxy who has documented the birth or the attempt to create an pha Orthodox Ukrainian church in the Soviet Revolution, the Bic Revolution, then again in World War ii, and then finally after G SMUs. So. Professor Deen thank you for being here and for the work you've done in telling us the, the story of the, uh, uh, Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is again, the story of these two historical churches. They were liquidated by the Stalin regime with the support of the Moscow Patriarchate and that were reborn and that made possible then the religious brutalism for, for everybody else. So, uh, LeBla became very soon the most religiously realistic bla of all of Ukraine. And then the movement moved beyond, uh, and beyond to the rest of Ukraine. So this is one aspect I would say that again, it was mentioned. It is the fusion or the connection between the gula. The underground church and the diaspora church, these three things together, the same thing for the PHA church. It was important for the PHAs Historical Church to be able to return and to reestablish itself, uh, let's say in, in Ukraine. But the same goes we have here. I mean, after me, Catherine Vanner is of course the great historian of, uh, Ukrainian Evangelical Christianity. And we also know that there are very, very long roots of Ukrainian Baptist and other Ukrainian evangelicals going back to the 19th century and throughout 20th century. And they also emerge from the GUL with the new hope, with new, with new energies that have transformed also many aspects of Ukrainian society. And the same you would say for, for Muslims, Bo Tatas, but also Muslims from the other parts of the Soviet Union. So this one aspect, ru again, this is the second aspect, uh, to understand the pluralism and how it works politically. Think after Myan, you have the four highest offices of the land in Ukraine. President Senco, a member of the, uh, Ukraine Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate prime Minister Arsen Arsen, a member of the Greek Catholic Church, uh, uh, Erman uh, uh, the Speaker of Parliament, Jewish and Torino, uh, uh, uh, Alexander a Baptist, the Secretary of the Defense council under War had been before the Speaker of Parliament. So here you have a Jew, a Baptist, a Greek Catholic, and a mosque. Not even nobody from the Ukraine, Orthodox Church, ku or, or, or pha. So here you have now, those were not representing ethnic religious groups. They were elected. And chosen many of them run for mayor. I mean, Roisman was the mayor of Benicia, and he was not elected, he was Jew. He was elected because in the spite of the fact of being, and this is what is important thing, when, when 73% of the population of Ukraine elected, uh, uh, Jewish president, when the time the Prime Minister was also Jewish, it was not because they were Jewish. It never became an issue in the inte intellectual politics. Nobody even talked about it. It was not an electoral issue. So this is the important thing. It's in the public sphere, but it's not used politically for mobilization purposes. So there was never a, of course, there was dormant antisemitism in Ukraine given the history of Jewish Ukraine ions, the very, very difficult history. But it was very clear that the politicians that came out of RU made clear that they would not use. Antisemitic uh, uh, discourse in the public sphere. And this was crucial. Finally, the generational continuity that links the diaspora, the underground, and the younger generations into probably the almost miraculous education Institute of Ukraine, uh, in post-Soviet Ukraine. First, the ELA Academy, again, an attempt to go back to the, to the memory of Petro Mo and what it had meant for the, for the Ukrainian then Reformation. Ukraine is the only country that had an orthodox reformation parallel to the Catholic and the Protestant Reformation. No other orthodox society in the world had an Orthodox reformation. Uh, Ukraine had it. And this is the, the, the, the memory of Petro Mo Frank Session has, has, has, has, uh, studied this issue well, and it is this. That have been transmitted, and it is these two. What is miraculous about Ukraine in the year uh, 19, the year 2000. Kuzma tried to do what Luca did in Belarus and what basically put in the did later in Russia to be elected president for life to change the Constitution. And for the first time you had the mobilization of Ukraine civil society against Kuzma and against the political oligarchs. Then came four year later when the same attempt by a new COVID and you have the orange revolution again, in the first case, it's not so clear that the students of, of mohin, academia and play a role, but in the, in the Orange Revolution, they were the ones that started it to a certain extent, the same way they were the first that they started, they myan to a certain extent as here you have generations, these. Young students educated. Again, we are here, and once again, we, we thanks so much, uh, Kore for the work. Uh, uh, you've done you have the generations. I mean, I see me, Marine Novi, Jack uh, Tara Doco. There are the three generations that link, and this the kind of generational continuity that has happened both in the families during the Soviet uh, uh, period and in the diaspora. So, uh, I dunno, how much time do I have? 60 seconds. Okay. So, very good. Perfect. Perfect. So again, uh, I, I am uh, uh, privileged to have had the chance both to observe and to, to assess, to witness both as a sociologist and as a Ukrainian by marriage. You can say. Um, these revolutions of hope, and I have a lot of hope they're going to continue until again, there is no doubt that, uh, Ukraine will be a great nation among European nation. So thank you so much for

1 32:04

Our next speaker is Andre Roka, head of the development department and director of Art Projects at the at Ukrainian Catholic University. Welcome pan.

Priests and Practical Aid

Meaning and Burnout Guardrails

2 32:25

It's great privilege for me to address such an esteemed audience. I wanna talk about something close to my heart, how face and volunteering have become the backbone of Ukraine's trends in these challenging times. The 24th of February, 20 2022. Market turning point in the world history, fundamental change in international relations, security systems, and humanitarians response models In recent weeks, as we have entered the force here of this brutal confrontation, I have been reminded of those first months, and as longtime sports fan, the image of marathon runner came to mind. An athlete who starts his run from a back position and is considered an outsider in the race that has started. Most people don't believe that he will reach the finish line. Few people are even willing to hand him water. A athlete does not expect that this race is not a sprint, but at least a marathon, and it's not known where the end of this distance is, but he runs against all odds and is not ready to leave the course. In 2022, few outside observers believed that the nation would, would withstand their onslaught. Yes. Like the athlete mentioned about Ukraine's society demonstrated remarkable preparedness. Not in military might, but in something far more powerful, the collective will of its people fortified by face and an unwavering volunteer spirit. At the heart of Ukraine's resilience lies its wide network of volunteers, which became the basis or the nation's resistance. According to sociological surveys, 71% of Ukrainians have volunteered since the beginning of Russia's invasion 2022, by supporting our military, helping people who had to flee their homes, or caring for those affected by the war volunteer movement that proved so crucial in the early months of the war, providing everything from technical gear to medical supplies. When formal institutions were overwhelmed, was not a spontaneous reaction, but rather the culmination on nearly a decade of civil evolution. This evolution began during the 2004, 2005 Orange Revolution and developed even more during the 2013 2014 Revolution of Dignity when Ukrainian civil society demonstrated its capacity for self organization and collective action in the face of authoritarian pressure. This dynamic of volunteerism, which peaked in 2014, did not dissolve in the following years. According to a study by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation in thousand 15, 47, Ukrainians financially supported a volunteer or charitable event, and 13 of Ukrainians continued to volunteer according to a survey conducted by the call center in March, 2019. The level of trust in volunteer organizations among Ukrainians reached 68.1%. In recent years, there have been dozens of studies of volunteering in Ukraine, but unfortunately they say a little about the role of the church and face. However, in my opinion, the tradition of social service of the church can be considered one of the defining components of the civic transformation of Ukrainian society. Of that period. The role of Saint Michael Golden Don Monastery in KU during the Madan protest 2013 2014. Sir, as a powerful symbol of this connection, when students protesters faced violent persecution from Vienna COVID, security forces, the monastery open its doors more than just physical shelter, it provided spiritual comfort to prayer and confession, showing how civic action and phase could work together. Ukrainian way. During these protests, the church response demonstrated how deeply interrelated faith and social action are. Priests were among the first to appear on the setting up prayer tense, speaking to protestors, providing them with spiritual support. Particularly important part was the way they combined religious practice with practical assistance. Priests easily moved from serving the liturgy to organizing medical aid stations or coordinating food distribution. Thousands of Ukrainians who joined the volunteer movement were able to boss, see and practice the combination of selfless service with spiritual practice and beliefs. One team volunteering for a believer is a unique combination of spiritual care and practical humanitarian assistance. Serving others is not just about providing help. But a form of spiritual practice that transform both the one who helps and the one who is helped practical service becomes a form of prayer in action. The strengths of faith-based volunteering is that it's central object is the human being with his or her pain a need. Lemme share a concrete example between thousand 14 and thousand 22, the cooperation between the Ukrainian Catholic Church and one of the leading charitable NGOs. The Ukrainian educational platform produced 184 successful project in the Western Ukraine alone. Many of them were response to the problems caused by Russian invasion in 2014. These includes the creation, kindergarten, summer camps for IDP children, psychological support groups, a youth leadership school, and work with children in frontline areas among others. Throughout this projects like these have strengthened our volunteer culture and developed a volunteer network that has become the foundation of our resilience and the response to the international communities. Initial skepticism in late 2022 s of examples of volunteer projects from 2014 till now, a worthy of separate books and risks turning my speech into a one-man show, but I cannot but focus on the example of my university whose motto is witnessing, serving, communicating. To understand the role of Ukrainian Catholic University, we must first recognize its special character as the only Catholic university in the post space. Founded on the principles of Catholic social teaching, deeply rooted in Ukrainian cultural tradition and the dependent of the state who was uniquely prepared to help in times of crisis. In recent months, I have made it in a, in a practice, as soon as a negative news begin to prevail to conduct another interview. As part of my research on the volunteer movement in the last four weeks after the, in the US in a, I already conducted four of them. You understand why? And all of them I was graduates of our university, university where Christian service is the basis of the most processes and decisions. These interviews always fill me with optimism and renewed phase in myself, in Ukraine and in God's race. Let me tell you about some these amazing people. ULA is an y Maan activist founder of Build Ukraine together organization in 2014, an NGO, whose members helped create use spaces in different cities of Ukraine and rebuilt homes for families in need since thousand 23. Yuri and his wife. Parents of three young boys from Eastern Ukraine whom they adopted. Mariana K is the director of UK educational platform with a team of 200 employees in the region, in the regions, and mother of two who lost her husband in the war. Maki assistant to director, OGCU, head of the UCU Volunteer Center. Over the years, the center has involved hundreds of students in volunteer activities, collecting and delivering tens of tones of human turn aid to the military and those in need since the beginning 2024. SAP is a soldier of the armed forces of Ukraine, and yesterday he became a happy father of his first child. Their stories are all different, but they share something important, the role face plays in their service. What's interesting is. That when I ask them about all they have done for others, they talk instead of what they have received. They say volunteering gives them their lives, meaning through serving others. For them, it's not about one-time emotional actions, it's a chosen path or growth. As believers, UCU gives them the framework to develop their ministry, creating a community where God is at the center and whose genetic cut is serving others. All of my inter recruiters are convinced that the volunteer movement in Ukraine is evolving, acquiring features of consistency and professionalism and faith is meant to be its safeguard against burnout and super superficiality. Ukraine's story is not just about military resistance, its testament to how faith and how and voluntarism can transform a society's response. Existential threats like the marathon runner who perseveres despite exhaustion, Ukraine continues. Its its course sustained by the conviction that victory is not just about military might, but about the unbreakable spirit of people united in faith and purpose. This is not the race Ukrainians choose, but it's one they run with unwavering determination. The finish line may still lie beyond the horizon, but Ukrainians continue forward sustained by the knowledge that they run, not just for themselves, but for the preservation of its values, identity for the principles of seren and freedom that the world holds dear. And when the finish line of this crown comes, they'll indeed cross it with hand raised high, not just in triumph, but as a testament to the indomitable spirit of a nation that refused to fall. And they will be able to say was the words of Saint Paul. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the face. Second Timothy four, seven, verse seven. Thank you.

1 43:36

Thank you so much. An Brillo. Our final speaker is Katherine Warner. Edwin Earl Sparks, professor of history, anthropology, and religious studies at Penn State University. Please give a warm welcome to Professor Warner.

Dispossession and Ritual Change

3 43:56

Hello, everyone. First I, I wanna offer my thanks to the organizers. This has been a wonderful event so far and really, um, congratulations on that. It's a gift to all of us. I wanted to preface my remarks by recasting, perhaps, uh, two of the key concepts of this conference, hope and resilience. About once a month in America, we have a school shooting and children die and people offer thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. Then next month we have another one. I'd like to see hope, avoid that kind of hollowing out. And to do so, I would like to go back to Tara's words, uh, from last night, which I think you brilliantly said it. You can't say Nadia without, you can't speak of hope without action. Hope is essential and needed, but what is really needed is hope that inspires action. In terms of resilience, I have to say that I personally don't describe Ukrainians as resilient, and that's not because I, I don't think they're resilient. I think they have demonstrated tremendous agility, 10 tenacity and inventiveness in responding to this war. And you just heard many, many examples of that from Andre. But. Resilience has become an adjective used to marvel at a particular community's capacity for overcoming adversity and their ability to recover from trauma, oppression, and war. It's an, it carries an analytical framework that draws on psychopathology that measures success in the face of adversity. But in doing so, it's very much embedded in a linear narrative leading to betterment. But labeling a community or an, or individuals as resilient hides the suffering, injustice, or harm that mandated the victims' needs to marshal resilience in the first place. Just think we frequently hear about how resilient abused children are. They're able to endure abuse and even overcome it, but the act of surviving mistakenly equates overcoming. By supporting the status quo and suggesting that doing nothing to prevent the abuse in the first place is okay because kids are resilient. It also strikes me to play a role when we speak about environmental issues. The idea of the resiliency of nature allows and, and the ability of ecosystems to mitigate and even rebound from human, uh, uh, inflicted, uh, damage lets us off the hook. When it comes to climate change. I think it also begins to explain why it, uh, it's only now that we're beginning to discuss eco side as a war crime. The idea that nature is resilient allows us to think about the damage that has been inflicted onto air, water, soil, flora and fauna of Ukraine, for example. Will rebound. It will be resilient. And it's one of the reasons why up until now we haven't been able to, uh, demand restorative justice for war induced environmental damage when hopes that will change. It's not my intention dismantle resiliency's theory framework for assessing the capacity to overcome oppression, adversity, or, or hardship because resiliency is a laudable quality worth cultivating, and one that Ukrainians have amply demonstrated. Nor do I seek to discount the transformative power of hope. But I do want to recast the importance of hope and resilience. And in a recent book that I edited, I offered the concept of dispossession and I draw on ritual theory to do so, to sketch out how Ukrainians have responded to this war. And I might add, I never imagined at the time that the concept of dispossession would also have relevance for the us, but I think it does. So the concept of dispossession. Refers to the process of loss, of taking away either by denying access or through destruction. And Van Kane's ritual theory proposes that inducing change involves a tripartite process. The first is breaking down the status quo or the norms of behavior, and the second is to place those individuals or communities in a liminal, betwixt in between phase. And the third finally is the ritual concludes through reemergence, but with a new status. And in some ways we can think of war as a liminal phase, but then we also see that some get trapped in this liminal state. And it results in an ongoing liminal state of non-being. But you have to also see then that those who are resilient and hopeful having experienced dispossession and the breakdown of the status quo. Also are able to recognize that the barriers to change have also been destroyed in the process of being dispossessed. And this is where hopeful resilience is an essential element to induce positive transformation on the heels of destructive, dispossession, religiosity and religious actors can play a vital role in cultivating that hopeful resilience. It takes hopeful resilience to reemerge after being subjected to forceful adversity that dispossesses and disorients a community and an or an individual. So given the words of caution, I offer as to how a narrative that focuses on hope and resilience might serve to cultivate the, uh, the potential for masking suffering and adversity. What in fact is needed to thwart the possibility of passivity and to, uh, inspire change and action? I think we need more than hope and resilience if we're going to refuse to accept a world where some people's suffering matters and the suffering of others doesn't. Where some deaths, merit, outrage, and others are merely statistics where some refugees deserve compassion, especially if they have$5 million and others should be held in suspicion as illegal criminal aliens, we should focus on hope and resilience in conjunction with action, and specifically action that delivers a truthful acknowledgement of the suffering that has been inflicted. And the need for restorative justice actions that are sparked by hope can ideally lead to more hope and more resilience such that they put in place a positive reinforcing, dynamic of hopeful resilience that could yield positive, uh, transformation as a result of experiencing adversity. So what role might religion and religious actors play in this process? So, at this moment of heightened polarization and quivering trust, we can increase the incidence, the incidence of basic social interaction. And I say this based on my work with an NGO dedicated to working cooperatively with religious actors to mediate conflicts on the local level. And now we've been increasingly on the transnational level by fostering a culture of dialogue to address problems. So the final remarks I wanna make focus on how this has unfolded in an interfaith context with the participation of religious actors broadly defined and has been an and I think can continue to be beneficial, uh, especially at this pivotal moment for Ukraine. And I might add for the US too. So since 2016 I've been working with dialogue and action a Ukraine based NGO specializing in conflict mediation. Um, that aims to build so social cohesion by addressing problems of everyday life through dialogue. So the arc of conflict that I've seen has rapidly changed under the draconian conditions of war. Um, and in thinking about what I've witnessed in Ukraine, I draw on Chantelle Mo's work on pluralism and agnostic pile politics that accepts conflict as a normal, even beneficial, uh, aspect of democratic politics because it fosters deliberation or can foster deliberation and even tolerance, but in a very kind of engaged, plural list way. So prior to the full scale invasion of 2022 conflicts were primarily of an agonistic nature. That is to say that they involved disputes between adversaries rather than antagonistic conflicts between groups. The most frequent adversary was the state. Those dis disputes, by and large refre reflected grievances stemming from economic struggle rather than any kind of hostility among religious, among groups, religious actors, regardless of their confession, played a very positive role in the stimulation of nonviolent collective action to transform those tensions and build social solidarity and social cohesion. And now I'd like to offer two examples of this. So first, in a town in, uh, Western Ukraine near the Polish border in 2018, 2019 I worked through a series of conflict mediation sessions. Um, this project was funded by the, uh, Mennonite Central Committee of Canada, I might add in terms of pluralism. And so we staged they asked different communities to apply for, uh, mediators to come in to help them resolve issues that they were facing. This particular community had this, the town administration had hand over the renovations and the repurposing of a to this, to the members of this community. And this was meant to be a good thing to stimulate a hub of activity. But in, unfortunately, it led to, uh, conflicts in and of itself because it opened up a can of worms in terms of what's the phrase, uh, what do we owe each other? Um, in other words for whom, and, uh, to whom should this, uh, you know, who should this, uh, center serve? So, although it was meant to foster cohesion, it ended up indirectly creating some conflicts. So in trying to resolve that overarching issue, what we did was we, of course, looked at smaller issues first and tried to resolve them. And, uh, inevitably these smaller issues are very banal, like trash. There's not enough trash collection. Everybody, uh, complains about that roads, they're not renovated. And there was a need to prioritize which roads would get renovated. And in sort of resolving those kinds of conflicts, we, uh, we were able over time to broach the issue of how should this building be renovated, what kinds of services should be offered there, uh, and who should they serve, perhaps. Most importantly of all these kinds of sessions over time created the habit. There was a particular time and a particular place to discuss problems in the course of, uh, uh, of doing so. It also identified certain people that rose as local leaders. The, uh, initial initiator was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest. But with him, we're also a woman who was a librarian and another woman who was a mother of two children. And she was also disabled in a wheelchair, but they were really very much the leaders of these kinds of sessions. And fortuitously, all of this happened prior to the war because once 2022 after the full scale invasion, the librarian in particular had run for public office and, uh, was in a position after 2022 to begin to coordinate all kinds of programs to distribute humanitarian assistance. And of course, the Nadim was a key center for that. Another, uh, e example was, uh, also once again funded by the Mennonites. And it was in response to an appeal from an Imam, uh, who led, uh, a fairly large Muslim community in hun. He had two goals in mind. Uh, the community was largely made up of many Muslims who were immigrants from elsewhere. Either Turkey or the caucuses or some, uh, comforts, uh, within Ukraine as well as increasingly over time, Korean tartars. Um, so he wanted to help improve the co cohesion within his own community. And subsequently he also wished to improve relations with, uh, the surrounding communities, obviously primarily Ukrainians. And so in working with them they instituted turned a, a balcony area into a, a tea solan as they called it, and offered then Friday evening tea to the members of the community and subsequently built also a playground and places to sit and congregate, thereby allowing multi-generational groups to congregate and speak with one another. And over time, they then began involving inviting their Ukrainian neighbors to join them. And that sort of Friday evening habit of bringing neighbors into the mosque. Also then eventually led to sharing holiday celebrations. It's Ramadan now. And then of course, uh, Eid is, a very important Muslim holiday. And there was very significant Ukrainian participation, uh, of non-Muslims in, in that holiday celebration. And similar, similarly, this Muslim community then together with their Ukrainian neighbors were part of celebrating various civic holidays within Ukraine. So in this, those two instances, religious actors were very helpful in terms of addressing tensions. But we also know that the possibility exists for religion to become, uh, to enhance conflicts. And so now increasingly we're more working on dialogues uh, among orthodox leaders in, in wrapping up, i, I wanna sort of assess what's at stake in the success or failure of these initiatives to create a culture of dialogue to mediate social tension tensions, and especially within the context of war. It's important to ask whether people in positions of leadership will bless the powerful or protect the vulnerable. Will they speak truth to power or provide convenient truths that serve power? Speaking for myself silence has become unbearable. Uh, we certainly need dialogue and interaction with each other, but when we speak of hope we should speak Ukrainian. We should remind everyone that we can't have Nadia without dia. Hope means engagement with others. And so this is what I wish for all of you. And I do believe this conference is, uh, an example of just that. Thank you to everyone.

1 58:06

We have time for questions or comments, please.

7 58:14

I get lucky. Um, I'm at Polly, Michigan State University. So I wanna return to the, this really provocative idea that Professor Warner raised about resiliency and overplaying resiliency. In overplaying it, we tend to remove the onus of the original crime, don't we? And I think that's a really interesting idea to raise in conversation with the idea of hope. So I, my question is for Anna. Uh, as a fellow historian, so I'm not a historian of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a young embassy officer, was privileged to do some reporting in advance of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine in June of 2001. But that's the extent really of my knowledge, although it seems like history, history now. So I, I would like to invite you to say a little bit more, maybe pick up on what Professor Casanova was saying about the way in which spiritual spirituality was tested in the Gula and in Soviet prison, in the Soviet prison system, and how that informed the movement for legalization, right. What it was particularly spiritual about that movement, and maybe also something. Well, you can tell me, honestly, you know, way more than me, but about a particular notion of the dignity of the human being. That that is in foremost, certainly by uh, Ukrainian Greek Catholicism. Thank you. Oh, maybe also, sorry, briefly I have one more note to myself. The way in which spirituality also informed somewhat more controversial topic, but ecumenical relations post 1991. Thank you.

1 1:00:03

Would you like to start?

4 1:00:05

Sure. Thank you so much for giving me a, a lot to chew on, and I'll try to respond to a few of your points. Certainly in the, in the gulag in the Soviet prison system where Greek Catholic priests, found themselves in the forties and fifties I think something crucial about that moment was the, the. Decision to transform sacraments from their kind of original from how they're traditionally done in a church, uh, with all of the, the trappings into kind of the, the pure, the purest distillation of what a sacrament can mean, which is finding a way to commune with God. And so I think in, in the Gulag was where priests were forced to make the most radical adaptations they could to, to use soaked raisins instead of wine to represent the blood of Christ to use whatever kind of means they could. Um, and to understand that while it's, it's important and necessary to have a, a church building and a kind of traditional church that's not the true meaning of what communion between oneself and God means. And I think to, to Professor Casanova's point, it was also a space where they were really forced to rely on one another. They, they couldn't rely on the, the people who put them there. Um, they had to rely on one another to maintain faith and to kind of, and to find ways of maintaining that. So I, I, I do really think that legacy, as I tried to indicate in my talk was passed down to the people who, as, as decades went on and as generations went on, were able to kind of make make bigger claims on public space, make bigger claims on what what they can and should be allowed to do in the service of their faith. And so I think to your question about the dignity of the human in, in my research, I think it's, it's interesting like looking at oral histories of Greek Catholics who were coming of age in the seventies and eighties they really saw the hypocrisy of the Soviet system for what it was, and, and. They, they saw the, the great Gulf between you know, what's promised in the Soviet constitution and the reality of their repressed, illegal existence. And I think that the tradition of their church forefathers from the forties, fifties, and even earlier and great leaders like, like, uh, yo Su and, and Ky allowed them to kind of maintain that dignity in the face of, of being lied to basically by the system they were living in. I'll stop there, but thank you very much for your question.

5 1:02:29

Something I condemnations. Oh, yes,

4 1:02:31

yes.

5 1:02:32

Important to understand that there are no ecumenical relations in the sense we think in the West, these theological discussions, my faith versus your faith, my belief, this is not what is happening is again, a miracle. Ukraine has this, or Council of Ukraine, council of Churches and Religiou organizations, which all the Christian churches and the Jews and the Muslims are represented. And they work together simply on common issues for the common good of Ukraine society and the citizens. And they don't lobby for their own interest religious group, but they go together and they discuss with parliament whichever legislation, but they have to first gain a consensus among themselves on the moral political issues which are relevant to all of them. So they can present a united front vis-a-vis the secular politicians. And this is unique. This is unique in the same way that what I said of the four highest officer of the land belonging to fourish denominations, you could not find it in any European society. I can guarantee you that. So this miracle.

8 1:03:36

I wanna thank the panel for informative and a thoughtful, reflective session. That is a good, excellent conversation starter. I'm, uh, Nicholas Deko from Valparaiso University. I want to fuse together a couple of things that Professor Weiner said in your presentation. Um, the first is the importance of ritual theory and understanding the capacity for people to emerge from how whatever adjective we would might use to describe this. And the reading that I've been doing lately, I'm thinking of trauma and the power of sacraments to help people cope with trauma and find solidarity with Christ. And that is an interesting connection to the, to the latter part of your presentation where you talk about religious actors playing a role. And so my question is a practical one because parishioners are familiar. With pastors, assisting them through liminal spaces, whether that be marriage or baptism, oration. What are you finding, and I'm, I'm thinking here in broader religious terms on, in terms of reliable information in turn, is there a sense that we have of the kind of trust that people ordinary people lay people have in religious actors to help them to dialogue, to cope with this situation, to cope with the perception and the information that is circulating globally that might lead to a group feeling that much more embattled and persecuted and isolated? Um, and without complicating the situation further, I'll let you answer the question.

3 1:05:26

Well, it's a, it's a good question. I don't think this is working, but, uh, I'll just project it is. Okay. It's a good question. And on, uh, trust is really important. That came out in an earlier panel today. And I, in broad brush strokes, uh, although of course I think levels of trust have fallen off for religious institutions. At, at one point of course it was the most trusted institution. And of course, under conditions of war, um, trust has catapulted for all kinds of uh, political, uh, and state-based organizations. I spoke about, you know, pre 2022, you know, you had adversaries and the adversary was almost always the state. That has all turned around. Um, I would also add that one thing about the Council of Religious Organizations, one hopes that that kind of independence that they have had in the past that that will not be a a casualty of this war, that they will able, that they are not going to be a sort of religious rubber stamping of certain state policies. But that trust, I think comes from, there is still a projection that religious actors nonetheless serve the common good and as opposed to certain parties, the interests of some o over others. Um, and to the extent that there is trust for religious actors, I think that's where it stems from. I've seen in this work that I've done with, uh, conflict mediation irrespective of whether a, uh, the religious actor is from an Orthodox church or a Greek Catholic church or, or an imam. They have the ability to incur, there's a certain degree of respect for them, precisely because they are religious actors. And I do think that rests on a projection, whether it's correct or incorrect, that there's a trust that they're, they're, they're, they are serving the common good. I think that's the kernel of it. And I, one can only hope that that that trust remains. And the idea hopefully is through, for example, these kinds of dialogue sessions, that there is a much more open discussion of the common good, and that involves, uh, a variety of different actors. These might be, uh, these sessions might be facilitated by religious actors, but they draw in then political actors, local civic activists and, and the like, and broadens the, and broadens the base of trust.

1 1:07:41

Yep.

6 1:07:43

Father and Abha doctoral student in theology here at Notre Dame. Thank you to everyone for your presentations in the panel. I hope my question isn't merely semantic, but you can tell me if you think it is. In both the Soviet period, I'm thinking of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church and also in the current time of an invasion and a war. It seems like we can speak about religion in terms of resistance, maybe mirror survival. Right? Uh, so a form of resistance against totalitarian forces or repressive forces. But also today we're speaking about religion as a source of resiliency. And to me, resiliency as opposed to resistance seems to imply some ideas of growth or development and not mere survival. And it seems to be that part of what we're saying is that religion in Ukraine today is part of a certain kind of growth or maturation in Ukraine. It's part of the story of the madans, it's part of the story of the current resistance of the Russian invasion. So. What is it about the current situation in Ukraine and religion's role in Ukrainian society that makes it a source of resiliency that is ordered toward a maturation or growth and not mere survival? And are those, you know about civil society? Is it about the relationship between politics and religion in Ukraine? But I'm curious, yeah, if that's more than a semantic difference. And what about the Ukrainian situation would make it something that promotes growth? Thank you.

1 1:09:01

Would someone like to

3 1:09:02

respond? I can offer briefly. I would, I would not separate resiliency and resistance. I think in fact the resiliency often comes from the resistance. I mean, in other words,'cause resistance implies collective action. And I think from that comes, you know, a sort of a trust building as well as an identification of certain forms of commonality. And it creates cohesion. And I think resisting, whether you're talking about resisting a state that's seen as unjust or actions by certain political actors as, as unjust or that, that that has the potential. And I think in Ukraine, it remarkably to a remarkable extent, has actually served as a path to generate resiliency. And I, I would attribute the kind of tremendous volunteering that we see in Western Ukraine. And, um, you know, the very success of KU on multiple levels. Um, it's not surprising to me and to many others that it's the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church that is behind that.

5 1:10:01

If I may add something, I would add, uh, solidarity, the experience. I think my dad would experience that the different religious groups that had been acting but not together, that they found themselves together, praying together basically celebrating funerals together, irrespective of, so they were nondenominational religious practices in which all the religious groups were participating together. And this experience has continued with s in the military in which any Lan chaplain is for anybody, not just for your own community. So this, this, uh, element of solidarity among the different religious groups that they understand that they're serving the entire citizenship, that entire citizenry of Ukraine, not only their own religious group. And I think this is an important element. That goes beyond resilience and builds to the formation of a collective that goes beyond your own denominational group.

4 1:11:06

And just, just very briefly, I think a part of the transformation from, or, or the continuation of growth in Ukraine is the visibility and knowledge and information about what Ukrainians have gone through and what they have survived, which in the Soviet period and earlier periods of Ukrainian oppression by imperial forces, uh, individuals were so siloed and, and knowledge about these kinds of stories were suppressed. So I think the fact that in the contemporary situation, every Ukrainian can see and hear and know very deeply that what they've survived and, and what they can move towards is incredibly powerful.

1 1:11:43

I think this is a wonderful conclusion to our panel. Many thanks to all the panelists and to. Thank you very much.