The Anti-Manichaeist

I had the chance to interview a young Ukrainian male who is an accounting student and participated in the Orange Revolution. He is an independent Baptist and quite an interesting fellow, very much interested in Economics and History and what-not.

He described how the different Churches in Ukraine played a huge role in the Orange Revolution organization. They were praying 24-7 for the events and for the future elections. This was in part because Yanukovych wanted to reassert the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church over Ukraine.

He also described how relatively cheap it is to buy a person’s vote here in Ukraine. But he does have hope and believes that the most important part of the Orange Revolution here in Ukraine was that it provided them hope.

I lent him my copy of John Yoder’s “The Politics of Jesus” and he was quite eager to read it. I hope that a simpler version of the biblical case for how Jesus was nonviolently political in his day can be translated into Ukrainian in the not so distant future.

more to come…
dlw