Baptists in Ukraine

The Baptist Church in Ukraine is one of the oldest and most widespreadProtestant Christian denominations in the country. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, over half the 1.5 million acknowledged Baptists and Pentecostals in the USSR lived in Soviet Ukraine. Prior to independence in 1991, Ukraine was home to the second largest Baptist community in the world, after the United States, and was called the “Bible Belt” of the Soviet Union.

The predecessors of today's Baptists, the Anabaptists, were in Ukraine in the 16th century.

The first Baptist baptism (or "baptism by faith" of adult people) in Ukraine took place in 1864 on the river Inhul in the Yelizavetgrad region (now Kropyvnytskyi region), in a German settlement. In 1867, the first Baptist communities were organized in that area. From there, the denomination spread to the south of Ukraine and then to other regions as well. One of the first Baptist communities was registered in Kiev in 1907, and in 1908 the First All-Russian Convention of Baptists was held there. The All-Russian Union of Baptists was established in the town of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro). At the end of the 19th century, estimates are that there were from 100,000 to 300,000 Baptists in Ukraine.

During the 1920s, Evangelical Christians and Baptists were prohibited in Soviet Ukraine; they were, to some extent, revived during and after World War II in a Soviet effort to weaken the cultural influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1944, Baptists and Evangelical Christians united in the Church of Evangelical Christian Baptists (ECB). They were later joined by other smaller Baptist and Evangelical trends. At the end of the 1950s, 75% of the believers of the All-USSR Council of ECB lived in Ukraine. Baptists in Ukraine experienced a revival in the 1970s, and are now among the most active Christian denominations in the country.

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