SEATTLE, Washington -- Inside a squat modern building in a suburb south of Seattle, Pastor Stepan Kasyanyuk of the Ukrainian Christian Center leaned against the podium and wept. "Oh Jesus," he called out in Ukrainian, "bless this church. Bless this country. We live in this country. We love this country. Don't permit war. Don't permit any more shedding of blood."
Kasyanyuk's Pentecostal congregation knelt in prayer along with him, weeping almost involuntarily, and praying aloud in long strings of impassioned, but unintelligible words. The church filled with the cacophony of hundreds of Ukrainian immigrants, old and young alike, speaking in tongues.
After the service on the first Sunday after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last month, three teenage girls stood in the parking lot and discussed the tragedy as a possible harbinger of the end of the world. "It's all in God's plan," said Elina Morozov, 15, without sounding too upset. "I think that with the earthquake (in February) and now this, our American friends will believe us when we say that judgment is coming."
Indeed, the Ukrainian and Russian Baptists and Pentecostals were joined in their fervor on this Sunday by many Americans who have turned to churches for comfort and guidance after the attacks. But America's fervor will eventually die down again, and the vast majority will return to the secular lives they have designed for themselves. For the growing Ukrainian and Russian Baptist and Pentecostal communities of Seattle, however, God is not an insurance policy, nor a flag to wave in times of trouble. Rather, God is an ideal for which they were gladly persecuted in the Soviet Union. God is a leader they followed to distant shores. And now that they have arrived, God is the key to maintaining their identity in an America that seems both paradisiacal and godless at the same time.
Western Washington, which includes Seattle and its suburbs, is home to over 60,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 of which are Baptist and Pentecostal refugees from Russia and Ukraine. Aided by laws designed to give refugee status to persecuted Christians from the former Soviet Union, these immigrants have come to the United States primarily in search of religious freedom and economic security, and for a variety of reasons, they have chosen Seattle and its bedroom communities.
In the context of national statistics about Russian immigration, any group measured in the tens of thousands would appear insignificant. After all, Russkaya Reklama, a nationwide Russian-language advertisement publication, claims to serve a client base of 4 million to 5 million Russian speakers in America. While the majority of those millions have been absorbed seamlessly into established Russian enclaves in places like New York and Los Angeles, the Evangelical Christian immigration to the Seattle area has had a noticeable effect. Ever since Protestant pioneers settled the region in the 19th century, the Pacific Northwest has traditionally been overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon, with the exception of occasional East Asian influxes.
The history of Evangelical Christians from Russia and the Ukraine is a long and difficult one. Ukrainian Baptists claim a wandering 18th-century theologian and poet, Hryhorij Skovoroda, as a founder of their faith. But the influence and numbers of Baptists in both Russia and the Ukraine gained steam with the arrival of thousands of German Baptists who were invited by Catherine the Great to farm the steppe. According to Eugene Lemcio, an assistant professor of theology at Seattle Pacific University, this "foreign legacy," the legacy of a religion practiced by Germans who immigrated to the Ukraine, still breeds mistrust in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Pentecostalism, which differs from its Baptist cousin mainly in that its followers believe in "speaking in tongues," has roots even more distant from Ukraine; it began as early as 1901 in Kansas, but it started in earnest in 1906 when a one-eyed, illiterate African-American preacher named William Seymour led a revival from an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles' Azusa Street. Seymour induced the speaking of tongues in thousands of worshippers, who traveled the world convincing others that speaking in tongues was the truest evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The main person responsible for bringing Pentecostalism to Ukraine and Russia is Ivan Voronaev, a Russian-born Baptist preacher who first "received the tongues" in New York in 1919. Through prophecies, he got the calling to move with his family to Odessa in 1922, where he established the first Pentecostal church in the Soviet Union. Although he was arrested, imprisoned and eventually killed in a communist prison in 1943, Voronaev's movement survived more than 60 years of Soviet repression, sowing the seeds of an almost Biblical return to the land in which Pentecostalism was born.
"We definitely believe that God brought us here," said Oleg Pynda, 40, a pastor and community leader at the Ukrainian Christian Center. Indeed, the United States immigrants are trying to change the tide of history in their religion's favor, using their newly earned resources to help countless other churches and congregations survive back home.
A look at the far-reaching network of missionary work and financial support provided by individual American-based churches, themselves no more than a decade old, hints at the young community's impact. Nearly every church has a bulletin board with pictures and information about the latest works abroad; every service is punctuated by multiple collections for brethren who have asked for things -- a roof, a door, a new altar -- for their churches back home.
In suburban Renton, Washington, the First Ukrainian Pentecostal Church collects money to support its 32 missionaries in Ukraine. Sixteen kilometers south, at the Ukrainian Christian Center in Kent, the wall of Oleg Pynda's office features pictures of church-funded supplies being delivered to Pentecostal churches in Zakarpatia, a region in southwestern Ukraine, after heavy flooding there.
"It was a difficult time being Christian in the Soviet Union. We did not have many opportunities," Pynda said. "Now that the regime has fallen, we finally have the opportunity to spread the word of God." He said that the Evangelical Faith Christian Fellowship of Washington State, an umbrella group of Slavic churches, supports over 100 churches from Western Ukraine to Siberia.
Those networks aren't limited to overseas work. The story of Evangelical immigrants in the Seattle area is in large part the story of how the community has begun learning how to take care of itself. According to Pynda, the fellowship arose partly out of glaring need for the Christian immigrant community to support itself and provide advocacy for its members.
The first lesson for many of the immigrants is that life in America is not cheap. Michael Kitsak, a Baptist from Ukraine who works as a medical records administrator, has converted the first floor of his home into a small nursing home in order to make ends meet. "My wife takes care of the people and I do the books. Things work out."
It doesn't help that the community tends to be largely working-class, the sector of American society that is the first to feel the brunt of the economic downturns that have bookended the last 10 years. The lack of higher education is an immediate legacy of the Soviet policy to deny Christians -- who by faith refused to join the Communist Party -- admission to good universities or jobs. But this policy has, according to some, been internalized by the newer generations, who often don't seek out educational opportunities here.
Cal Uomoto, 52, the Western Washington Director for World Relief, one of America's largest immigrant resettlement agency, said that Pentecostals and Baptists are industrious and honest, but lack the "thirst for education" seen in other immigrant groups. They still need to grasp that "the freedom here is not just religious freedom -- it's the freedom to achieve, to go to college."
There is additional controversy about the community's heavy reliance on public assistance. The state of Washington is widely known as a welfare- rich state, where a family of five can receive up to $750 a month to live on, as opposed to as little as $300 in other states. Even when so-called welfare reforms were introduced in 1996, Washington helped immigrants find loopholes in the rules.
Occasional abuse of the loose welfare and immigration laws in Washington State and the rest of the nation have led some to accuse Russians and Ukrainians of saying they're Pentecostal or Baptist as a "password" for admission to the United States. Oleg Pynda conceded that such fraud exists: he pointed to reports that there are "Pentecostal schools" set up on the outskirts of Moscow that will coach anyone with $50 on how to pass the test that the Immigration and Naturalization Service field officer gives each applicant who claims to be a religious refugee.
But Republican-driven welfare reforms in the United States have hurt the legitimate Pentecostal and Baptist communities' efforts to support a professional class of clergymen. Despite the proliferation of churches and burgeoning congregations, there are only a handful of Pentecostal and Baptist preachers who are fully supported by their churches. In the early 1990s most of the pastors were on welfare, and could afford to dedicate huge amounts of time to their congregations. Now most of the pastors have full-time jobs, in addition to typically large families to look after.
According to Uomoto, the communities' growing self-reliance makes the Pentecostals and Baptists unique among immigrant groups he deals with. "[In the early '90s], we had to house them with American families and teach them everything from how to go shopping to how to use a can opener." But the community has reached a size where they can "take care of new arrivals themselves," he said.
But the support network occasionally rallies to do more than simply provide airport shuttles for new arrivals and quick lessons in consumerism. In one notorious case, an immigrant named Oleg Mychko was charged with third-degree child assault after his 6-year-old son arrived at school with a cut on his tongue. The boy, who spoke only limited English, had been asked by overzealous school administrators if his father had cut his tongue with scissors. The boy said yes, and local law enforcement succeeded in having Mychko barred from his home while awaiting trial. When Mychko finally contacted Ukrainian leaders about the case, hundreds of Ukrainians rallied at his various hearings until the judge finally threw the charges out.
But everyday life in American schools still causes friction. Pentecostals have been known to object vigorously when hip-hop or rap music is incorporated into any mandatory school function. It's corrupting music, church leaders say, and their children shouldn't be forced to listen to it.
In the tight-knit Ukrainian Christian community, these episodes only confirm suspicions of the local and federal government. It's a suspicion that many Russian and Ukrainian Christians, whose history is defined by their antagonism to the Soviet regime, have carried with them to America.
Uomoto said the Russian and Ukrainian Christians have an innate tendency to "circle the wagons and feel like this is us against the whole world." After all, he said, "that's how they survived in the Soviet Union."
Others see a more sinister strain in the community's reluctance to work with authorities. Greg Gourley, a Seattle-area immigration lawyer, points to allegations that Ukrainians were unhelpful during the recent manhunt for Nikolai Soltys, a Ukrainian immigrant in Sacramento, California, accused of slaying six members of his family. "The communities are really clannish," said Gourley. "They were in danger, and yet they didn't tell the police anything. They need to understand that the police are not their enemies."
If they carry old-world grudges against law enforcement and government agencies, the Pentecostals and Baptists are also suspicious, at least initially, of speaking with the media. After the Soltys killings, local television news stations ran a report on Seattle-area Ukrainian Christians that many saw as misleading and unflattering. In the wake of that, the fellowship decided that it would no longer speak to the media without the council agreeing to it on a case-by-case basis. Interviewing members for a newspaper back in Russia presented its own challenges; as one person who declined to speak on the record noted, "I know The Moscow Times -- it's a Communist newspaper, right?"
The editor of Mir Vam, or Peace Be With You, a locally produced newsletter featuring teachings from the Bible, Christian announcements and guest columnists that is shipped to Russian-speaking communities throughout Australia, Canada, Germany and to former Soviet republics, was likewise adamant about not having his name used. "The word of God is unchangeable," he said by way of explanation, "but my words can be twisted for whatever the devil wants. It's not safe to give your name."
The mistrust is not limited to outsiders, said Oleg Pynda. As the target of Soviet internal intelligence, the Pentecostal community back in Russia and Ukraine was infiltrated by informers . Its members therefore tend to be wary of each other even today. "People were tortured, jailed, fined, and denied education," Pynda said, "That system ruined trust with government and with each other."
The results of that can be readily seen in the Pacific Northwest: there are over 40 different churches which tend to be quite insular, most founded around a small core of families who knew each other in the old country. The provinciality of the churches is sometimes reflected in their names: Lvivskaya, Rovanskaya, Valinskaya -- all named after the regions and towns that the members emigrated from.
Their innate sense of isolation from the world has also dictated their evolution within the United States: They have built their communities up largely independent of American Baptist and Pentecostal communities. Kent Mayor Jim White, himself a Pentecostal, recalls that the members of the Ukrainian Christian Center first started worshipping in rented space at his Assembly of God church. "We'd meet every once in a while," he said, "but not too often." Language barriers contribute to the apparent estrangement between the American churches and their Russian counterparts, but more important is the fact that, although the roots of their religion lie in America, the Evangelists brought a fully developed church culture with them from Ukraine and Russia. Beyond renting space from area churches and generally being affable with their American Pentecostal and Baptist brethren, the immigrants didn't need more spiritual support.
"We taught ourselves the Bible," said Michael Kitsak. "We didn't need anyone to tell us what it meant."
There are some examples of fruitful coexistence, however. In the building owned by the Ukrainian Christian Center, a smaller, predominantly African-American Pentecostal fellowship rents an office and conducts services as well.
From outside the world of religion, however, the ineluctable forces of American culture constantly threaten to change the fabric of the community. In the midst of a sea of traditional headscarves at the First Ukrainian Pentecostal Church in Renton, signs of encroaching American life were easily found on a recent Sunday morning. A young mother in the back row placated her restless son by giving him a toy tank to play with -- an odd choice of toys for Pentecostals, whose religious teachings dictate that they not serve in the armed forces. In the lobby just outside the hall where a pastor was launching into a plea for God's mercy, a slim, blond teenager nudged the boy next to him and asked in accentless English: "Hey Oleg, you gonna go play football after this?"
There is, of course, a greater threat posed to the religious life of the community than war toys and football. "It's not easy living in freedom," said Peter Mirgorodsky, 49, a pastor who came to America 10 years ago. "The devil is everywhere. Some of our children go to drugs and alcohol, and we need to show them love, authentic God's love, to bring them back."
Alla Solovyova, an Adventist from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, whose daughter Anastasia was murdered here last year in a case that made international headlines, agreed that Satan has "many forms in the United States." However, she cautioned, "If God is the same in every country, then so is the devil." The particulars of the spiritual war in individuals may be different in America, but the war itself is the same.
The editor of Mir Vam made a harsher comparison. "Satanism is very strong in America. In my country, kids were never taught about Satan like they are here." Saying that Satan is alive in the violent and sex-focused popular culture, he said that one drawback of a diverse democracy is that "America wants to give its freedom to Satanists, too."
These conservative morals clash even with many popular brands of Protestantism in the United States. Pynda's Pentecostal faith forbids drinking and smoking and frowns on dancing, and he was succinct about American hybrids of religion and popular culture: "We don't believe that there is such a thing as Christian rock." American Pentecostals have noted their East European counterparts' conservatism. According to Mayor White of Kent, the Ukrainians are "a bit subdued" during their services, particularly in contrast to the exuberant singing at Assembly of God services.
Balking against the encroachment of American society, many churches keep their youth busy almost every day of the week with church activities. To an average American, it would seem perhaps like a grueling schedule: all day Sunday in church, Monday choir, Tuesday prayer sessions, Wednesday service, Thursday Bible study, Friday choir, Saturday off.
There are Pentecostal summer camps in Oregon, weekend Sunday schools taught in English, and even Ukrainian language classes now being offered on Saturdays to teach children how to read and write their parents' language.
The Russian and Ukrainian youth seem for the most part to rally around their church, language and culture. At a placid lake north of Seattle, 11 teenagers belonging to the Slavic Baptist Church of Everett were baptized recently at a joint ceremony and clearly enjoyed the occasion. After changing out of their wet clothes from the baptism, the teenagers eagerly gathered around to profess their love for Jesus. "Today changes everything," gushed Yury Gorbunov, 18, a recent high school graduate who emigrated from Krasnodar seven years ago. "We just made a promise, a commitment to God. It's all about loving God."
It's a stark contrast to what Gorbunov has seen in his American friends from school. "Sure, they go to church, but it's because their parents tell them to." Although he pointed out not all Americans are the same, he said that most teenagers are interested in "smoking, drinking, swearing, using their girlfriends -- whatever makes them feel good."
Gorbunov's own extended family includes several relatives born in the United States. To help them stay close to the church and its culture, he says that the family holds Russian-language Bible study sessions at home. It's a tradition he will strive to continue when he has a family of his own.
It has traditionally been difficult for many groups to maintain their own unique identity when faced with the larger forces of American acculturation over generations. But for now, with the population booming across the area, an infrastructure of Ukrainian and Russian services is steadily growing.
Inside a Kent supermarket, a Russian food, book and record store called "Taste of Europe" is doing booming business. The shelves are stuffed with tins of imported smoked fish, Laima chocolates and dozens of books about Christ. The meat display features a hundred East European cuts of pork and sausage, often with clumsily translated signs in English, like the one for "Smoked Butt" at $4.99 a pound. At the register, there's Perspectiva, a free 150-page community bulletin that advertises dentists, realtors, missionaries, long distance companies and more.
The woman behind the register, who declined to give her name, said that homesickness is what drives the steady business at the store. Herself a Pentecostal who recently arrived from Ukraine, she added that the religious items are among the store's most popular. "The Americans shop here for the cheese and candy," she said, "but our taste is for Bibles, too."
As Christian Russian and Ukrainian-language radio shows and television stations are joining the airwaves, even academia is looking to commemorate the growing importance of the community: A $1.5 million endowment for a chair of Ukrainian Studies is currently being raised at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Local leaders like Mayor White of Kent are very aware of the Ukrainians and Russians in their cities. According to White, they are "incredibly hard-working and industrious people. They fill a real need for entry-level service workers in this community, and they have the drive to move to higher positions as well."
And indeed, the community appears to be here to stay. The critics who argue that religious immigrants are not technically refugees because they have a choice in where they go may not realize that because Slavic Evangelicals consciously sought out America, they are often unusually committed to staying here.
Although missionary work is going strong from Kiev to Kamchatka, many immigrants say they would face certain persecution if they returned home. Evangelical churches are growing rapidly, and Ukraine nominally protects religious freedom for all, but in reality, Ukraine is torn asunder by disputes between the faiths. Alexy II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, is infamous for having declared a "religious war" against incursions of Greek Catholics. Greek Catholicism, meanwhile, is often an aggressive vehicle for Ukrainian nationalism, leaving Evangelical Christians caught in between.
Oleg Pynda described how his son attended the same school in Lviv that he had: "When I went there, it was communist; when my son went there, it had changed to Greek Catholic. And when my son refused to cross himself in the Catholic style after prayers, the teacher called him out and yelled 'Shame! Shame!' in front of the other students. It's like it used to be."
Pynda said that this everyday intolerance can override Ukraine's nominal religious freedom, particularly when local authorities are active in the Orthodox or Catholic churches. Local bureaucrats are infamous for denying building permits or levying fines against churches from competing faiths. As economic hardship grinds on in Russia and Ukraine, however, Evangelicals believe persecution will become more entrenched and even legislated. In Russia, that has already happened to some extent. In 1997, Boris Yeltsin signed a law denying official recognition to any religion that hadn't already been registered 15 years before. The Baptist faith had thrived in Russia for over 100 years, but because it wasn't recognized by the Soviet government, modern-day Russia gave it second-class status.
Other immigrants have seen examples of what happened to their Christian friends back home as examples of the demands that economic desperation can make on faith. Yury Gorbunov said quite sadly that of his old church friends in Russia, themselves all in their late teens like him, "some are OK, but a lot of them are doing very badly." Although he left when he was 11, Gorbunov seems very aware that in some ways, being a believer in Russia is "very difficult now."
For Gorbunov and other Evangelical immigrants, the trick of living in America is to accept the religious freedoms while rejecting the myriad of other freedoms of an unruly democracy.
It is while driving down a modest street in a heavily Ukrainian neighborhood in Kent, however, that one gets a true sense that the Pentecostals and Baptists are slowly reconciling their God with their new country: In the weeks after the Sept. 11 tragedy, nearly every home was flying an American flag.