What do Presbyterians believe?
At the 225th General Assembly (2022) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the overture “On Expanding Mission Engagement and Education with Eastern Europe” was adopted. The text of it reads:
Direct the Presbyterian Mission Agency to strengthen our accompaniment in the region impacted by the war in Russia and Ukraine and listen deeply and broadly to the many voices in the region, through the following actions:
Direct World Mission’s Office of the Middle East and Europe, in collaboration with the Office of Compassion, Peace, and Justice, and including the International Peacemaking Program, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and the Office of Public Witness, to:
a. continue communication with church and civil society organizations, including Orthodox and Protestant churches and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).
b. publish articles that help Presbyterians understand the complexities within the region and our own country’s engagement.
c. develop and promote a reading list and study guide/tool kit in cooperation with the Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia Mission (BURM) Network for churches and individuals interested in learning more.
d. identify opportunities for youth engagement across the region and include youth from the United States.
e. prayerfully consider and take action to stay engaged with the ongoing refugee and humanitarian crises and offer other practical responses.
Within the Eastern Europe Partnership Network (EEPN), we engage with Christian partners in Eastern Europe to come along beside them, encourage them, pray with them and for them, and to learn and be encouraged by them. We want to approach people we may not understand boldly but humbly to learn who they are, how they think and how they pray. We want to lead with love and not labels. We can be motivated by the Holy Spirit to follow the example of Christ, to plant seeds, to water and to let God provide the harvest.
Description of the region
The area that we in the United States refer to as Eastern Europe has a very long and interesting history. It is interesting to see the maps of the area in just the past 400 years.
Current state of society in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
In the United States, we may think of all the countries shown in this map as “Eastern Europe.” To people living in these countries, however, this term may not be one they embrace. Just as North Carolina was one of the original colonies in America, to describe it as a colony now would show ignorance of its origin homeland to Native Americans and its evolution in the past 400 years. Likewise, we acknowledge that we refer to these countries as “Eastern Europe,” but they are diverse in ethnicity and history.
The Baltic nations area Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
East Europe is comprised of Belarus, Czechia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, (Transylvanian) Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and western Russia.
The Balkan nations include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, (northern) Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, (lower) Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.
The Romani (Roma) people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group that primarily lives in Europe. They do not identify with a territory, but their identity is bound up with the freedom expressed, in part, by having no ties to a homeland. Their language and genetic evidence point to Indian origin. Currently, the United Nations identifies them as one of the world’s most populous marginalized communities. They have been persecuted for hundreds of years, and during World War II, hundreds of thousands were murdered by the Nazis.
The distance from north to south (Tallinn, Estonia, to Thessaloniki, Greece) is 1,300 miles, approximately half the distance from New York to San Francisco. The distance from Prague, Czechia, to Luhansk, Ukraine, is approximately 1,140 miles. The Eastern Europe time zone is UTC+2 (i.e., seven hours later than EST, which is UTC-5). Kiev, Ukraine, is UTC+3.
The countries that are predominantly Orthodox Christians are Moldova (92%), Greece (90%), Serbia (88%), Romania (86%), Ukraine (78%), Bulgaria (75%), Belarus (73%) and Russia (71%).
The predominantly Roman Catholic nations are Poland (87%), Croatia (84%), Lithuania (75%) and Hungary (56%).
The countries that are religiously mixed are Bosnia and Herzegovina (52% Muslim and 35% Orthodox), Estonia (25% Orthodox, 25% Protestant and 45% unaffiliated), and Latvia (31% Orthodox, 23% Roman Catholic, 23% Protestant and 21 % unaffiliated).
Czechia is a country with the majority population religiously unaffiliated (72%) and 21% Roman Catholic.
History
In 1054, the political East-West schism bisected East Europe between Roman Catholic and Orthodox church influence. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) and swiftly took over the Balkan peninsula. The Ottomans defeated Hungary in 1526 and, in 1683, besieged Vienna.
The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was formed in 1569. It covered about 400,000 square miles with a multiethnic population of roughly 12 million people. It ruled until its dissolution in 1797. It was responsible for breaking the Ottomans’ 1683 siege of Vienna.
In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Empire took control of the western half of East Europe, in opposition to Ottoman control in the east. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, ignited the Great War.
The end of the Great War (World War I) in 1918 brought the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires to an end. The national boundaries were realigned.
In 1945, after the end of World War II, expansionist Nazi Germany was defeated and territory divided among the Allies: France, England, Russia and the United States. The Cold War ensued. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was dismantled, and regimes tumbled. The USSR came to an end in 1991.
Here are links to maps that provide important information about the history of countries and people who live in Europe. Moving borders of Europe is an animated presentation of the borders and populations of Europe from 400 B.C. to 2017: visualcapitalist.com/2400-years-of-european-history. The webpage “38 maps that explain Europe,” produced in 2014, shows the changing borders plus economic data and trade alignments: vox.com/2014/9/8/6103453/38-maps-that-explain-europe. See accompanying European Maps.
Major ethnicities of the region have been in place for centuries.
Sociocultural considerations
When working with people from other cultures, consider the differences in perspectives due to their cultural heritage. The following considerations are on a continuum and are not mutually exclusive. The lesson: Lead with love, not labels.
Credit for Description, History and Sociocultural Considerations to Dr. Nicolae Roddy, Ph. D., Professor, Theology Department at Creighton University.
Humanities
Art
Religious icons are important forms of art in the Orthodox church and are used in religious devotion. Throughout years of conquests and occupation, the church served as patron of the arts. Read more about icons and Serbian cultural heritage. Lviv, Ukraine, is home to an experimental school of iconography, where artists are revitalizing the icon as an art form.
The Slavic arts and crafts that are common across all Slavic nations include:
- Embroidery — Often used to decorate clothing, tablecloths and other household items; it varies among the nations. For example, Croatian lace is known for delicate patterns and intricate designs, while Russian lace is often more bold and geometric.
- Wood carving — Often used to create intricate designs on furniture, religious icons and other decorative objects.
- Pottery — known for its intricate designs and vibrant colors, traditional designs feature floral motifs and geometric patterns.
- Folk costumes — these vary from region to region and often feature embroidery and colorful designs.
- Easter eggs — representing the original source of Creation, the symbolism of the Easter egg is a blend of ancient rituals and Christian traditions.
Historic paintings, especially those by Ilya Repin (born in Ukraine; studied in France) and Vasily Surikov, painted life as it was, not traditional European art. During the 1860s, a group called “The Wanderers” was formed. Their goal was to show Russian life as it was — at the time, and in the past — rather than copy from Western subjects as the Academy in St. Petersburg had traditionally done. For more information, read “The 10 Greatest Russian Artists Ever” by Alexandra Guzeva (article dated July 18, 2023).
Music
Classic composers from Russia, largely from the 19th and 20th centuries, included Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (relatively cosmopolitan in his outlook) and the “Mighty Handful,” César Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Moussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Bela Bartok was a seminal 20th-century composer from Hungary who lived through World War I and immigrated to the United States at the beginning of World War II. His work is deeply connected to Hungarian folk music but includes folk music from Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Serbia, and Turkish and Arabic countries. Romanian Folk Dances is a good example of his work.
Polish composers include Frédéric Chopin. Seven classical composers from Ukraine were featured in a recent Colorado Public Radio post.
Literature
Works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anna Akhmatova. For more information, see meettheslavs.com.
Movies
For the “30 best Russian movies of all time,” visit flickside.com for descriptions. See also films about Cheburashka, a little animal with huge ears who accidentally gets shipped to Russia in a crate of oranges. By watching the earliest stories in the series, you can see representations — including some spoofs — of life in the USSR.
Ashes in the Snow is a 2018 movie that tells the story of things that took place in Lithuania during World War II. The film follows the life of a 16-year-old aspiring artist as she and her family are deported to Siberia during the dismantling of the Baltic region by Stalin. Discussion questions can be used for a group study.
Current trusted resources
- Newsletters from our mission co-worker, Ellen Smith
- New Eastern Europe (website, magazine, analysis and think tank)
- Russian Life magazine (life and opinions of everyday people in Russia)
- Johnson’s Russia List (politics from whose perspective?)
- EEPN Facebook page (information that we can share about our partners).