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S&U interviews

War & peace

30 March 2023

5 min read

After the anniversary

Ukrainian musician Lyuba Reznichenko reflects on the war’s anniversary and on the aid given in so many ways. Interview by Peter Robertson.

Peter Robertson

Peter Robertson is Christian Aid's senior humanitarian journalist.

A woman sits on a chair in a field holding a large stringed musical instrument.

Lyuba Reznichenko playing her bandura.

Christian Aid.

Christian Aid first met Lyuba Reznichenko in July 2022 after the then-25-year-old had fled her home, and her studies at the music academy in Dnipro, for a remote village in western Ukraine. She was sharing a bungalow with three families, including a friend from her church in Dnipro.

Her parents, brother and three sisters were still in Kherson, under Russian occupation - they were safe but Lyuba could not get to them. She spoke about her worries and said she missed playing music but was enjoying the nature around her.

I caught up with Lyuba, in Lviv, via a Zoom interview. She updated us on the liberation of Kherson but explained her parents were under constant shelling from the Russians.

Lyuba plays the bandura – the national instrument of Ukraine. Her father advised her to take her bandura with her when she escaped, so if she ended up with nothing, she could still busk. She has since staged performances in Lviv city centre to raise people’s spirits and talked about how emotional people get: “They all want peace and victory,” she said.

She also spoke about her faith, the work she has been doing helping refugees and the support she received from Christian Aid’s partner, Hungarian Interchurch Aid.

Lyuba said when she looks back at the past year, she gets frustrated:

“It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.”

What was your life like before the war?

I was studying at the Music Academy in Dnipro. Before that, I went to see my parents in Kherson during the New Year holidays… I was planning to go visit them again in March, but 24 Feb changed everything. I was in Dnipro and my entire family was in Kherson.

What did you feel when you learnt about the Russian invasion on 24 Feb?

Like the majority of Ukrainians, I started getting phone calls at 4am from my friends who were saying: “get up, the war has started.” It was horrible, I was very scared as we heard the first air raids and explosions. Horror is the only thing I remember about that day.

What happened next?

I stayed in Dnipro until mid-March. To avoid plunging into panic and depression and as a believer, I will be honest with you, I prayed a lot. I do believe that God supports, protects and helps. The church I used to go to opened a centre for the first wave of refugees from Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya regions. As my own family was in the area under occupation and I could not do anything to help them, I decided to start helping those refugees.

Then I learnt of an opportunity to evacuate to western Ukraine in March, I grabbed it. This is how I ended up in Transcarpathian Region.

What’s your experience of interaction with Christian Aid?

I stayed with a very kind and hospitable family in a village there. They have many children and helped other refugees and I helped them every time I could. Then, in May I learnt of the Hungarian charity HIA, Christian Aid partner, and registered with them…

They supported me financially. As a student, I did not have any means. I could not ask my parents for helps as they were living under occupation and banks did not work there…

How did you stay in touch with your family?

It was a very difficult situation. There have been protracted periods, like a week, two weeks and a half, when I could not get in touch with them as there was no phone connection, no internet in Kherson. I was horrified by the news I read: a strike here, an explosion there. I was thinking about my family all the time.

But there were moments when I could reach them on a chat app. The connection was bad, but still, and when you hear the voice of your nearest and dearest, that’s a great relief…

How is your family now?

Kherson was liberated on 11 November… But then the situation only deteriorated because the Russians were shelling it from the right bank almost non-stop. My parents tell me that it is going on almost without interruptions.

When did you move to Lviv and return to Dnipro?

At the end of August, I moved to Lviv where I met other believers who were actively involved in charity work. I worked with them, too. We staged performances in the city centre. I played bandura and sang patriotic songs to raise people’s morale.

Then I returned to Dnipro to complete my studies… I continued cooperation with this organisation there… We were quite active there, too. We toured the region with performances, I played bandura a lot.

What is people’s reaction to your performances?

The reaction is abundant. People do react to my songs. They cry, too. They become very emotional. They all want peace and victory.

What do you feel about the first anniversary of the war?

It is all very difficult. When it all started, there was hope that it would end in a week or two. And then a month passed, another… Still there was hope that it will just come to an end.

When I look back at the year, I just become frustrated. It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.

What do you think about the UK charity organisations helping Ukrainians?

First, I want to thank you from the bottom of heart for supporting us all this time. This is an awful situation and many Ukrainians need help. Especially those living in eastern Ukraine, in hot spots, which have seen fierce fighting, the newly liberated territories where people have no place to live, where they lost loved one… Those people need more support.

I would like to say that more aid is directed there. Still, it is impossible to live there. It is not safe at all because of the non-stop raids and explosions. Those people who evacuated to the west of Ukraine need help. But they sometimes cannot get it because all the attention is focused on the east.

So if you can it would be good to distribute all the assistance among those staying in the east and those who moved here, to the west.

Article

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Race

3 July 2023

5 min read

Equiano: How an ex-captive became the voice of abolition

How did a formerly enslaved person think about their faith, freedom, and vocation? Luke Bretherton explores the politics and theology of Olaudah Equiano, whose story was central to the abolitionist movement and continues to resonate today.

Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is a Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano from the frontispiece of his biography

The most significant political revolution of the modern era was not that of America, France, Haiti, Russia, or China. It was the longer lasting, deeper rooted, and more pervasive revolution that is “humanitarianism.” Rather than a change in one form of political order, it was a revolution of moral sentiment that affects all political orders. The fruit of this revolution is that the acme of moral action is no longer love for a proximate “brother” but love for a remote “other.”

A foundational text in this revolution is Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789). Equiano, a formerly enslaved person, was a key activist in the movement to abolish slavery. Published on the eve of the Parliamentary enquiry into the slave trade and three months before the French Revolution, his autobiography was hugely popular, running to nine editions and numerous printings during his lifetime.

His autobiography is vital reading because the abolition movement in which he played such a key part is widely understood by historians as foundational to the birth of humanitarianism. It is also seen as providing the template for other, subsequent movements for social justice.

Equiano’s work and its impact needs situating within what is called the Second Great Awakening, a moment of religious fervour on both sides of the Atlantic. Dated as beginning in 1790, the Second Great Awakening represented a huge revival in popular Christianity. Out of it came modern evangelicalism. However, unlike its contemporary expression, the evangelicalism of the late 18th and early 19th century was a key influence on a number of movements for social reform, including the abolition movement.

In his narrative, he portrays himself as the true Christian and the true human. When he encounters the European slave traders on their slave ships, they are the real savages, and despite what they say, they are not Christians.

At the heart of Equiano’s Narrative are two stories of conversion. The first is his conversion to Christianity. The second is his conversion to abolitionism. These two conversions are interrelated. Through his conversion to Christianity, he discovers an understanding of what it means to be human that leads him to see all forms of slavery as wrong. This judgment against slavery includes not just the industrial scale form of slavery driven by the plantation economy, but also what some see as the more benign forms of his own Eboe society in West Africa.

Through his conversion narrative he gains possession of himself, his history, and his people as historical subjects able to speak and act for themselves. He becomes a political actor contributing to and a leading figure within a new political form – the social movement – that contested a dominant feature of the political economy – slavery. Crucially, he refuses and refutes the racialized ways in which Africans are negatively portrayed. Rather than a chattel, he is a Christian and a citizen with a story to tell. He is not merely biology to be exploited. He has a biography. And he is one whose testimony stands as evidence in the case against slavery. In staging this claim he reverses the order of who listens and who speaks – he speaks and English readers listen and take instruction from him.

In his narrative, he portrays himself as the true Christian and the true human. When he encounters the European slave traders on their slave ships, they are the real savages, and despite what they say, they are not Christians. He also represents himself in the text as a new St Paul. He’s an apostle calling others to discover both Christ and their humanity in their encounter with him through reading his story.

Equiano’s is a profound and original work that constantly draws on Biblical frames of reference to both denounce the world as it is and announce a new world. The Bible for him is simultaneously a means of demanding recognition and offering critique.

In the frontispiece of the book he is pictured as holding a Bible which is open at the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Acts chronicles the adventures of the apostles after Christ's death and resurrection. The frontispiece is the key to understanding the story Equiano tells. He is not Odysseus who returns home after many trials and tribulations. Rather, he is St Paul: one who becomes an apostle, taking on a new name and identity in the process. Like St Paul, Equiano suffers whipping, imprisonment (in the hold of a ship), storms, and travels in chains all for the sake of preaching the Gospel. And like St Paul, who ends his journey in Acts in Rome, Equiano’s journey leads him finally to London, the centre of his imperial world. From there he writes an epistle addressed to the churches who are failing to be faithful to the Gospel. In doing so, he appeals, like St Paul, to a universal humanity now available in Christ, in whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

The most significant political revolution of the modern era was not that of America, France, Haiti, Russia, or China. It was the longer lasting, deeper rooted, and more pervasive revolution that is “humanitarianism.”

There are those who read Equiano as simply a stooge for colonialism and capitalism. Yet they fail to convince. Such readings deny any connection to the abolition movement. And rather than being someone who is reclaiming his voice and agency, they turn him into a faceless and voiceless subject of forces beyond his control.

To dismiss Equiano is to fail to see the truly revolutionary nature of the text he wrote. In his autobiography, Equiano describes the Christian masters who brutally tortured their slaves for the slightest offense, the ubiquitous rape of women, including very young girls, and the theft from slaves who had little or nothing. Alongside and in stark contrast to this brutality, exploitation, and alienation, Equiano narrates an alternative world, one characterized by intimacy and connection. In this world, he becomes friends with women and children, and forms equal partnerships with white men. The vision of freedom he presents does not entail violently taking control of the state (as was the pattern set by the French revolution). That vision of revolution simply changes who is in control of the state and the economy but does not change the basic form and character of relations between people.

The freedom Equiano portrays is neither structural nor economic. Rather, he bears witness to a revolution of intimacy and sentiment. His life story embodies a changed structure of feeling, one where in place of the rape, whipping, chains, fear, disgust, and disdain that rules relations between blacks and whites there is the possibility of mutuality and respect. Equiano’s autobiography continues to reverberate as it calls us to a conversion of our hearts and mind so that we encounter others––no matter who they are or where they come from––as neither objects to exploit nor enemies to be feared but as neighbours in need of care. Such neighbour love may well be a fragile basis for hope in a world of carnage and desolation still living in the after lives of slavery. Nevertheless, it is as revolutionary now as it was in Equiano’s day.