Written by John A. Bernbaum |
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
There are difficult days ahead for Ukrainians, and the West must not back off from full support of their struggle against the Russians. As Pete Wehner has noted, in this terrible human drama, we are witnessing “ordinary people…acting in extraordinary ways to defend the country they love, against overwhelming odds.”

A number of my family members and friends who know about my involvement in Russia and Ukraine have called me to discuss what is going on in our broken world. I have been encouraged to share some thoughts on the complex issues at stake in this conflict, which I was initially hesitant to do but decided this may be helpful for those who need some advice on how to understand what is happening.
Let me explain how I got so involved in the crisis in Ukraine. From 1995 to 2014, I served as President of the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) in Moscow. When Vladimir Putin’s cronies in the Kremlin decided to close down RACU in 2014, we were able to sell our brand-new campus facility and transfer the net assets to the States. RACU’s Trustees decided to use the assets to support Christian educational ministries in Russia and Ukraine beginning in 2015. Then, when a law was passed in Russia labeling foreign organizations that were supporting institutions in the country as “foreign agencies” and their leaders “foreign agents,” request for grants to Russia from our new private investment fund quickly dried.
The Board of Trustees then decided to focus more of our resources in Ukraine, which was always viewed as the “Bible Belt” in the Soviet Union. Our investments expanded significantly, and we established many partnerships in Ukraine with Christian leaders in educational institutions and in church leadership. I visited numerous campuses, met the top leadership of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches, and fell in love with this amazing country and its vibrant young people. I am getting multiple direct reports from Ukraine every day, and they give me much to celebrate and much to weep about. Joy and pain in equal doses.
The issues involved in this war between Russia and Ukraine are complex and it is easy to get discouraged.  There are so many different opinions being thrown around and the domestic politics in our country make a thoughtful discussion even more difficult. My beginning recommendation, if you want to dig into the issues at stake, is to read a diversity of sources and not rely on any one news source. Even if you only want updates or high-level snapshots, I encourage you to use different news sources – right, left, and moderate. I do not get my information from TV or radio sources, but instead use the internet to access commentary by top scholars from a wide range of political perspectives, which includes various think-tanks and academic centers. I do this because I know people who are involved in these countries, and I care deeply about them and their families. I am not suggesting everyone needs to do this kind of deep research, but it is from these kinds of sources that I will share what I am learning.
Democracy is a fragile system and it requires checks and balances – and compromise (which is not a bad word). Our system of governance involves finding solutions to tough issues through vigorous and honest debate, and this is not easy in a country which has become polarized between Right and Left. It is easy to see how alluring authoritarian governments can be, because under these regimes citizens simply do and believe what their dictator tells them. There are no debates – just follow the leader, especially if he provides a reasonable economy, while often stealing enormous amounts for him and his friends.  This is the case with Russia.
Putin is a serious threat to world peace because he has limited accountability and has built a personalized autocracy which is essentially based on him – not on any ideology, or political party. Unlike previous Soviet leaders, who had at least some accountability to the Politburo (presidential council) of top government leaders, Putin has created a deep state populated by national security and military leaders whom he has made very wealthy – beyond their wildest imagination – and who are as anti-Western and greedy as he is. What is his goal? In short, it is to rebuild Russian power, redo the political structure created after World War II, and make Russia the major power in Europe and Eurasia.
Putin is a pathological liar and has been spitting out a series of false charges against Ukraine to justify Russia’s attack. He has called Ukraine a “junta,” which stole power under the influence of the West, despite the fact that President Voldymyr Zelensky was democratically elected in 2019 after defeating 38 other candidates, something Putin has never done. Putin also claims Ukraine is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, when the reality is that it gave up all the nuclear weapons located in the country after the Soviet Union collapsed. Putin also claims Ukraine is not a real country but simply an appendage of Russia. A quick reminder: Ukraine was one of the fifteen republics that the Communist Party formed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Ukraine declared its independence from Moscow, a decision supported by 92% of its citizens.
It should be clear to Western leaders that Putin’s attack on Ukraine’s democracy will be for him a “forever war,” as long as he is in power in Moscow. He will use Russian military forces, sabotage, disinformation, cyberattacks and bribery, if needed, to prevent Ukraine from existing on Russia’s border as a legitimate independent state. The attack on Ukraine is not about Ukraine’s possible membership in NATO. Putin is threatened by a successful democracy in Ukraine, and he will do whatever it takes to prevent Ukraine from flourishing as a democratic nation on Russia’s border. Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, is correct: “The Kremlin will remain committed to undermining Ukrainian (and Georgian, Moldovan, Armenian, etc.) democracy and sovereignty for as long as Putin remains in power and maybe longer if Russian autocracy continues.”
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God didn’t create another man, he created a woman—and yet she’s taken from the man. So there is a likeness and yet a fundamental difference and distinction. And everything about God’s design in this world must keep in mind this sexual differentiation between men and women, which is not an accident of creation, but from the very beginning, was God’s good, glorious plan.

We all recognize, if we have our eyes open or pull up the internet on our phones, that we live in a day where there is great confusion about men and women—confusion down to the very foundations. Is there such a thing as a man and a woman? And you’ve probably seen the clips that get passed around. High ranking, very intelligent people don’t know how—or at least they pretend not to know how—to answer the question, “What is a woman?” And as Christians, we have the Bible and we have what the world needs to hear, whether it wants to hear it or not. And we, of course, want to present it in a way that is most robust in truth, and also so that people can hear and can listen. But it’s really important that we’re clear about “What are men and women?”

What are Men and Women?

I mean, the etymology actually helps us in English. And in Hebrew, it’s ishah, for she comes out of ish. Even there in the Hebrew, the two words are connected. And it’s like that in English: A “womb man,” that a woman, biologically, is the person of God’s design in creation who—if all of the the plumbing, shall we say, is working correctly—gives birth to human life. That’s the latent possibility. Of course, we know that some people are are called to singleness and sometimes our bodies, because of the fall, don’t work in the ways that we would like. But there are those latent possibilities, that a woman is that person whom God has designed to incubate, to nurture, to nourish, and to give birth to life.

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Written by Forrest L. Marion |
Monday, October 25, 2021
James I “transmitted the Declaration to his bishops with an order that it be read from pulpits, but resistance was immediately forthcoming. Some clergy, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, determined to refuse compliance, while a few bold spirits preached against the royal proclamation.” The king withdrew the order, but the declaration’s impact upon England was felt for decades, if not longer, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Readers may already know that last week a Canadian pastor, Artur Pawlowski, was arrested again for holding worship services in Calgary, in the Province of Alberta. Previously, Pastor Pawlowski had been charged with civil contempt and jailed for holding church services in violation of a court order forbidding the organizing or attending an “illegal public gathering.” Following the most recent incident, Pawlowski was sanctioned by a judge to 18 months of probation. As Fox News reported, in addition to the hefty court costs and fines, one of the conditions of Pawlowski’s probation requires him “to parrot ‘the majority of medical experts in Alberta’ regarding social distancing, mask wearing and vaccines, even when he speaks in church.”[1]
The purpose of this short piece is not to take sides in the legal matters at hand nor delve into the technicalities of Pastor Pawlowski’s dealings with the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta; the October 13, 2021, citation of which is available online. Neither is it to argue the merits or demerits of various COVID-19 developments or responses to it, in Alberta, Canada, nor anywhere else. Rather, the focus here is on the citation’s “requirement that whenever [Pastor Pawlowski or his brother] are opposing the AHS [Alberta Health Services] Health Orders in any public forum, (including social media forums), they must also place the other side of the argument on the record.” Moreover, the court directed exactly what “the other side of the argument” entailed. Artur Pawlowski “must indicate in his communications” the following:
I am also aware that the views I am expressing to you on this occasion may not be views held by the majority of medical experts in Alberta. While I may disagree with them, I am obliged to inform you that the majority of medical experts favour social distancing, mask wearing, and avoiding large crowds to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Most medical experts also support participation in a vaccination program unless for a valid religious or medical reason you cannot be vaccinated….[2]
Pawlowski’s attorney and Fox News note that the court’s directive does not exclude the worship services of the church. So, a Canadian pastor has been told the very words he must speak to his congregation in order to comply with the law. Sobering, but not without precedent.
Nearly four centuries ago, in the third week of October, 1633, King Charles I reissued a declaration that his father, James I, had first announced in 1618, known as The Book of Sports or Declaration of Sports. The declaration encouraged various forms of “lawful recreation” during the afternoon following divine service. Activities included dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, “. . . or any other such harmless recreation.” While James appeared mainly concerned with encouraging his male subjects to engage in “such exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, whenever we or our successors shall have occasion to use them,” the decree became entangled in the religious controversy in England regarding the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath, or Lord’s Day, which itself was integral to the social-economic disequilibrium involved in the transition from premodern England to a modern nation-state.[3]
As historian Winton Solberg wrote four decades ago, James I “transmitted the Declaration to his bishops with an order that it be read from pulpits, but resistance was immediately forthcoming. Some clergy, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, determined to refuse compliance, while a few bold spirits preached against the royal proclamation.” The king withdrew the order, but the declaration’s impact upon England was felt for decades, if not longer, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.[4]
James died in 1625, bringing his son, Charles I, to the throne. Under his arbitrary rule which included dissolving Parliament in 1629, Sabbath-related issues between Anglicans and Puritans and their allies – the king and Parliament, respectively – grew even more divisive. On October 18, 1633, Charles reissued his father’s Book of Sports, adding his own preface. Bishops were to ensure that the document was read, and published, in all parish churches. In fairness, however, Solberg wrote that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, “. . . does not seem to have punished refusals to read the Declaration with particular severity.” But some bishops “enforced the requirement vigorously.”[5]
While the Puritans’ Great Migration to New England from 1620 to 1640 – the vast majority arriving during the second decade – is well known, it is noteworthy that the Declaration of Sports, including its reissuance, was influential. Solberg wrote, “Emigration to New England greatly quickened as a result of the Book of Sports. Many clergymen, including John Cotton, John Davenport, Thomas Hooker, and Thomas Shepard, fled at this time.” Solberg’s book is highly regarded, and I confess I found it quite useful in my own studies in graduate school in the 1990s. If his conclusion on this point was basically correct, then the fact that such a momentous decision on the part of pastors and parishioners was made to some degree because of the interference of the state upon matters of the church and her worship – to the extent of compelling the speech of pastors – should grab our attention today. It strikes at the all-important issue of who is the rightful head of the church: Jesus Christ, or anyone else. If a pastor in England in the 1630s, or one in Canada in the 2020s, can be compelled to speak certain messages at the state’s command, then religious liberties are at risk. Christians must think, pray, and plan for the issue coming to a church near you.[6]
Forrest Marion is a ruling elder in Eastwood Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Montgomery, Ala.

[1] Jon Brown, “Canadian pastor defiant as judge orders him to parrot ‘medical experts’ from pulpit: ‘I will not obey,’” Fox News, Oct. 15, 2021, including quotes. See also Jon Brown, “Jailed Alberta Pastor Alleges Abuse In Prison But Remains Hopeful; Lawyer Condemns ‘Bizarre’ Detention,” The Daily Wire, May 10, 2021; Dewey Roberts, “Former ARP Canadian Pastor, Steve Richardson, Under Attack and Needs Our Help,” The Aquila Report, Jul. 8, 2021.
[2] “Citation: Alberta Health Services v Pawlowski, 2021 ABQB 813,” Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, Oct. 13, 2021, pp. 8-10, including quotes (filed on Oct. 15, 2021), pdf accessed at the Fox News article above.
[3] Winton U. Solberg, Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 71-72, including quotes.
[4] Solberg, Redeem the Time, pp. 73-74, including quote.

[5] Solberg, Redeem the Time, pp. 75-77, including quotes.
[6] Solberg, Redeem the Time, pp. 77-78, including quote.