Lyubomir Guzar, The Head of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church tells about politics, charismatic churches and Orthodoxy, Mazepa and the State Committee for Moral-related issues

How do you explain the fact that despite the high level of the people’s trust to the church, traditional churches are losing their influence? For instance, in Kiev Sunday Adelaja’s “Lord’s Embassy” became the most powerful church because of its cooperation with businessmen and the local authorities. This contradicts with the thesis that cooperation between the church and the state makes church weaker …
- Why are organizations like “the Lord’s Embassy” growing? That’s because our traditional churches aren’t doing their work well. It is we who should be blamed and I feel sorry telling this. We try to serve honestly with our mind, soul and body to the church if we believe that it is the true Christ’s church. State can never protect the church. It can make some restrictions considering if the organization can be treated as a religious one by the state or not. There are cases when a group of people calls itself a church, yet in fact is a commercial project.
The state should carry out serious expert research before registering some organization. The reason is that a church is quite different from a commercial enterprise. But church cannot make people worship some religion by the law. There were cases like that and in some states churches are quite happy about its privileged position in some countries, but this isn’t very good. These connections have a malicious influence on the church, as it becomes politically loaded. Church must serve both God and people, and if it really does, it is the best response to various organizations like “the Lord’s Embassy” which come and do whatever they want to. But if we don’t work hard regardless to whether it gives us power and wealth, various fishy organizations would appear, which are very far from what the church is meant to be.

Mikhailina Skorik, «Levy Bereg»