We invite you to see the research report on the study of religious coping strategies among the believers of Ukraine.
The research was conducted within the project “Faith-based peacebuilding: researching religious coping and developing restorative practices in Protestant seminaries” with the support of the international foundation "Kerk in Actie" (Netherlands) together with the research on hospitality practices in partnership with the Scholar Leaders Foundation.
During March-November 2024, 208 quantitative questionnaires were collected through face-to-face interviews in six regions of Ukraine (Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kyiv, Lviv and Rivne regions) and two cities in Poland (Warsaw and Gdansk). The second stage consisted of 27 qualitative interviews to understand how people interpret their priority strategies for overcoming trauma and suffering.
Respondents were believers from different Christian denominations (Orthodox, Greek Catholics and Protestants of various directions) and secular people who sought support in churches and faith-based organizations.
The reason for choosing religious coping as the main subject of research in our pilot project was the role of faith-based organizations in providing social and humanitarian assistance. Possessing a high mobilization potential, an extensive network of donors and extensive ties with co-religionists abroad, many Ukrainian religious organizations (primarily Protestant churches) were able to quickly deploy humanitarian aid distribution points, organize the evacuation of victims from the combat zone and even occupied territories, build a system of psychological assistance and carry out other forms of humanitarian activity. At the same time, taking into account the presence of a religious component in the social activities of many faith-based organizations, it is religious coping, in our opinion, that can be most effectively included in the social service of religious organizations in wartime.
The report is publicly available in Ukrainian and English.
