Christian Nationalism Just Got Whitewashed from the Ukraine Arms Deal
Christian Nationalism Just Got Whitewashed from the Ukraine Arms Deal
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Readers of mainstream news may have learned after the fact about the role Christian evangelicals played in passing arms funding for Ukraine, but the reports they saw uniformly omitted a crucial aspect: The plan to shape Ukraine as a bulwark against LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
Instead, sites ranging from Voice of America to the Washington Post described the efforts by Ukrainian evangelicals with no mention of their allies, backers, records or rhetoric. None of these reports included how the Ukrainians pitched their country to U.S. evangelicals: As a European “Bible belt” that Christians can shape, creating “an army of Jesus.”
I first reported on April 10 that Pavlo Unguryan, a Ukrainian evangelical in the U.S. prayer breakfast movement, was conducting shadow diplomacy with both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. One week later, Johnson announced he would allow a vote on the funding, even if it cost him the speakership.
On April 19, two days after Johnson’s announcement, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) revealed that Unguryan had met with Johnson earlier on the same day as the announcement. The same day that CBN broke this news, my original report from April 10 was published by Salon.
A number of mainstream accounts followed in quick succession. None of them included the Christian nationalist aspects of the Ukrainian effort, even though those remarks all remain accessible and verifiable via Christian and Ukrainian outlets.
For instance, as the Baptist Standard reported, Unguryan back in February told an audience of Texas Christians that if Ukraine wins, Christians will have a responsibility and opportunity to help shape its future.
And the same day Johnson made his dramatic announcement of a Ukraine arms vote, Unguryan was interviewed by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. Unguryan told Perkins, whose organization has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, that Ukraine is “to be the Bible Belt for the European continent, such a liberal continent.” Unguryan touted “pro-family, pro-life issues” in Ukraine, even though Ukraine is only 2% evangelical.
“Let’s create strategic partnership,” Unguryan said, “between Christians, evangelicals, conservatives in [the] U.S. and Christians and conservatives in Ukraine to do our missionary ministry, global missionary ministry, and to protect our values.” The context for this was Unguryan’s vision of Ukraine as a wellspring from which Christian missionaries would flow into other European countries.
During his interview on CBN, Unguryan said that he framed the Ukraine war to Johnson as a spiritual battle. “For us, it's a call to action to unite together — to unite together an army of Jesus."
As I and others have reported, Unguryan has spent years as an active political leader opposing LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
Reportedly, he has called gay people pedophiles and homosexuality “a treatable disease.” Right Wing Watch has chronicled Unguryan’s anti-LGBTQ+ track record, including blocking protections against workplace discrimination.
In a 2021 report, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights named Ukraine as a country where “prayer breakfasts, while superficially apolitical … include speakers who echo extremist positions.” Unguryan runs the Ukrainian prayer breakfast.
The report also quotes a document of the far-right European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), which Unguryan joined, discussing its strategy of “co-hosting Prayer Breakfasts throughout Europe with the aim to improve relations between Christian MPs and to form cross-party alliances on Christian values.” ECPM, the report concluded, “socialised political elites onto regressive positions through prayer breakfasts.”
Unguryan’s 2021 breakfast included Ordo Iuris, a far-right Polish group, and former Rep. Bob McEwen (R-OH), executive director of the far-right, theocratic leaning Council for National Policy and a longtime insider of the U.S. group behind the prayer breakfasts, popularly known as The Family. Unguryan’s parliamentary group explicitly described their mission as “organizing the National Prayer Breakfast in Ukraine [and] protection of the institution of family and marriage.”
Both Unguryan and fellow Ukrainian evangelical Valerii Antoniuk described their talk with Johnson in openly theocratic terms. Antoniuk called it a “friendly fraternal conversation between the two Christian nations, because both America and Ukraine are countries that are based on faith in Jesus Christ.” (This is a common canard among right-wing evangelicals, and thoroughly debunked even by Christian authors such as Warren Throckmorton.)
Unguryan reportedly referred to himself and Johnson as “brothers in faith” and, to CBN, called Johnson a “brother in Christ.” Johnson, too, is an active foe of LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, and openly advocates for Christian nationalist causes and leaders.
Soon after becoming speaker, Johnson brought in a Christian nationalist pastor to serve as the House guest chaplain, in violation of House rules. As I revealed before this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, Johnson allowed the event to be held for the first time inside the Capitol building.
Johnson’s meeting with the Ukrainians last month was facilitated in part by Gary Marx, co-founder of the Judicial Crisis Network. I credited CBN with reporting Marx’s involvement. But no one else has even mentioned it. Now known as the Concord Fund, the group has been an active part of the Federalist Society dark-money network reshaping the American judiciary.
Although none of the big mainstream outlets noted my April 10 report initially flagging Unguryan’s involvement, others did. Wonkette did. SiriusXM’s Michelangelo Signorile did. And both Wonkette and Signorile zeroed in on my account of Unguryan’s opposition to LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights.
I didn’t know at the time that Unguryan has also, since Russia’s invasion, received financial support from Jim Garlow, but it’s consistent with Unguryan’s record. Garlow is a theocratic opponent of LGBTQ+ rights, who supports Donald Trump and leads the movement of churches that refuse to pay taxes despite conducting partisan political operations.
Despite all of this, all the mainstream references to Unguryan have been anodyne, with no acknowledgment of the potential implications if U.S. evangelical leaders are going into this with expectations Unguryan fed them about Ukraine’s future.
According to a Google search, the names “Mike Johnson” and “Unguryan” appeared on just over 40 pages online in the month prior to today.
Of those, only a handful were established journalism outlets:
The Atlantic Council had a piece, as well, as did numerous Christian news and advocacy sites.
What the big outlets had in common was that none of them portrayed Unguryan accurately. According to the Washington Post, he’s a minister and an evangelical leader. The Atlantic Council says Unguryan’s a pastor.
The Post first mentioned Unguryan on April 21: “Johnson met with Pavlo Unguryan, a Ukrainian evangelical leader, who had been pushing for U.S. support.”
Then, last week, the Post referred to Unguryan as “a Ukrainian minister who helped arrange the [April 17] meeting.” Unguryan is, in fact, a former member of parliament and former deputy minister.
Here’s the rest of that article’s reporting on Unguryan:
“‘It was a very emotional meeting,’ Unguryan said.
“A photo posted on social media showed the three men standing together, holding a box of chocolates with Ukrainian scenes on it.
“Unguryan has known Johnson for more than a year — ‘a deep relationship,’ he said. In January, he attended a ‘day of prayer and repentance’ at the Museum of the Bible in D.C., where Johnson was a featured guest and Unguryan was invited to deliver a prayer for Ukraine.
“Unguryan and Johnson had time for only ‘a handshake and to hug each other,’ he said. ‘I asked everyone, including congressmen, to please pray about Ukraine.’”
The Washington Post doesn’t mention that the day of prayer and repentance is a right-wing event friendly to Christian nationalism or that the Museum of the Bible was created by the family that owns Hobby Lobby and got the Supreme Court to let company health-care plans discriminate against employees on religious grounds.
Here’s the Financial Times, from April 24:
“Unguryan, the evangelical leader, declined to comment on the specifics of his private conversations with Johnson, saying only that his ‘brother in Christ’ had prayed for the Ukrainian people.
“‘Speaker Johnson was staying on his knees and praying for Almighty God to give him the wisdom to do this very important decision to make a right decision,’ he said.”
Again, no mention of Unguryan’s background or associations.
HuffPost got the closest, on April 26, speaking with Unguryan and getting new, specific details about the Johnson meeting, seven to ten minutes long. Unguryan told them he has known Johnson “from the prayer breakfast movement.” HuffPost identifies the “movement” as “a project of The International Foundation, a secretive group of conservative evangelicals better known as ‘The Family’.”
Every mainstream account omitted Unguryan’s ties to Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. There was no mention of his prayer breakfast site. Or his ties to ECPM and Ordo Iuris. No citation of the European parliamentary report on prayer breakfasts and other anti-LGBTQ+ networks.
The reports are, instead, uniformly anodyne, feel-good accounts dappled with religious signifiers that many readers lack the context to see for what they are.
For instance, just because Unguryan takes it upon himself to “minister” to people in power, doesn’t mean a religious institution ever ordained the man. And there’s no indication from years of Ukrainian media that he’s ever been a pastor. Unguryan’s official bio from his time as a deputy minister in Ukraine’s government shows no signs he ever even pursued theological study, let alone worked in the clergy.
As for being an evangelical leader, Unguryan is a political evangelical leader. He led the parliamentary prayer group…as a member of parliament.
On April 26, The Atlantic Council referred to Unguryan only fleetingly, as an “evangelical pastor” who met with Johnson. That account came from Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe, who notes that he read the “fascinating” report in the Post. His article is headlined “The US at its best brings new hope to Europe, Middle East.”
But even if they read the full article, the Atlantic Council’s power-player readers — like the rest of the mainstream news audience — were left with no idea that Ukraine’s new hope had its genesis in U.S. Christian nationalism.
Jonathan Larsen is a veteran reporter and TV news producer, having worked at MSNBC, CNN, and TYT. You can support his independent reporting by becoming a paid subscriber.
Hopefully, Zelensky was just doing whatever it took to get the fanatical elf to bring the vote. He doesn’t seem like a crazy person.
Jon's reporting is so solid that I'm sharing it with a Presby former clergy friend.