А double minority: Ukrainian Pentecostalisms in Poland

Ganna Tregub

doi:10.32798/zl.1667

Published: 2025-12-29

Vol. 62 No. 1 (2025)

А double minority: Ukrainian Pentecostalisms in Poland

Ganna Tregub

Zeszyty Łużyckie

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1667

Abstract

Ukrainian Pentecostal refugees, migrants, and missionaries constitute an ethnicand religious minority in Poland. Considering the minority character of Polish Evangelicalism (0.2%), they have to operate in the context of multiple marginalizations, navigating not only the majority position of the Polish Roman Catholic church but also challenges inherent in finding their place and fitting into the Polish Evangelical and Pentecostal networks.

Ukrainian Pentecostalism has historically been neither monolithic nor homogeneous; thus, the most adequate frame would rather be Ukrainian Pentecostalisms. Ukrainian churches active in Poland, both classical and Charismatic, often grew in Ukraine as part of large religious institutions. The communities encountered in Poland have to be understood as particular religious expressions and glocal nodes in transnational Ukrainian religious networks. In contrast to Poland, in modern Ukraine, the Pentecostal movement exists in its all-inclusive context of religious pluralism, with a much higher public and mediatic profile. This impacts the auto-definition and the image of Ukrainian Pentecostals in Poland. Finally, several communities in Poland make sense of their activities framing them as a new type of Ukrainian Pentecostal mission directed toward the West, contradicting the previous practice of directing missionary mobilizations to Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Despite Ukrainian Pentecostalism’s strong position in the context of East European countries, Ukrainian Pentecostal Christians have neither a ready-made answer to their condition in Poland today, nor solutions for the range of challenges they face while engrafting themselves into the Polish spiritual, religious, and social landscape.

Supporting Agencies

The research for this article was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, under the grant SONATA 17, number 2021/43/D/HS6/02274.

Keywords:

Pentecostalism, Ukraine, minority, Poland, forced migration

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Tregub, G. (2025). А double minority: Ukrainian Pentecostalisms in Poland. Zeszyty Łużyckie, 62(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1667

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Ganna Tregub

ganna.tregub@uj.edu.pl
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1156-7171

Affiliation:

Jagiellonian University Poland

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Ganna Tregub holds a Ph.D. in religious studies, and works an assistant professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She is a post-doctoral researcher in the PENTACTORS project: Missionaries, migrants, and hosts. Pentecostalism, the “Other” and activism in contemporary Poland.