Revival, but only with state permission: In Belarus, Franklin Graham's Festival of Hope raises questions about religious freedom

For three nights starting Friday, the Chizhovka Arena in Minsk will hold the largest gathering of evangelicals ever in Belarus’s history, according to organizers.

Organizers expect around 9,000 people to enter the indoor sports arena for the Festival of Hope, organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) from May 15 to 17. Franklin Graham is scheduled to preach on the final two nights, and a choir of more than 1,300 singers, as well as musicians from Belarus, Russia, and the United States, will also take the stage.

For Leonid Mikhovich, one of the event’s coordinators, the scale itself marks a significant moment. “We’ve never had anything like this,” he told CT, noting that even in the 1990s, when post-Soviet religious life briefly bloomed, gatherings of this size were unheard of. “We had large activities, maybe up [to] 1,000,” he said, “but nothing like this.”

A coalition of Belarusian evangelical networks, including United Church of Christians of the Evangelical Faith in the Republic of Belarus and the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists of the Republic of Belarus, is facilitating the festival. Mikhovich, who is also the general secretary of the Baptist Union, said that while Belarus’s evangelical churches have long operated in parallel and partnered on outreach programs, this is the first time they are coordinating at a national scale.

Mikhovich believes the event also gives the small evangelical community in Belarus a sense of legitimacy. “For us, to have something like this in an arena of this importance, it’s almost a kind of legalization,” he said.

In a country where the authoritarian government tightly manages the public square and constrains civil society, the festival represents a rare moment of visibility for evangelicals, who make up less than 2 percentof the population. Meanwhile, the Belarusian Orthodox Church, which is under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate, makes up 60 percent.

But while organizers like Mikhovich describe the gathering as a milestone, religious liberty monitors caution it may not bring greater freedoms for evangelicals. Instead, experts warn, the event highlights how authoritarian systems can selectively permit large religious gatherings while maintaining restrictions on everyday religious life.

A church under investigation — or political siege?

Billed as bipartisan gatherings for spiritual reflection and fellowship, national prayer breakfasts are seldom limited to prayer alone. They often serve as platforms where religion becomes a stage for politics dressed in its Sunday best.

And when Armenia hosts its first national prayer breakfast Friday and Saturday (November 14-15), it comes amid one of the most potent confrontations between church and state in the country’s modern history.

In recent months, tensions between the government and the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC), its independent national church, have escalated sharply. Authorities arrested top clergy accused of taking part in a plot to overthrow Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government earlier this year.

Pashinyan, who will deliver the keynote address at the prayer breakfast, has cast the event as part of his broader effort to “renew Armenia’s spiritual foundations” after years of political turbulence and conflict. The organizers invited American Christian leaders like Franklin Graham and former pastor Jim Garlow to the gathering, while rumors surfaced that they also invited Donald Trump Jr. Charlie Kirk had agreed to speak at the event before his assassination, according to Dede Laugensen, president and CEO of Save the Persecuted Christians.

But critics see the breakfast—said to be organized by a group called the Individual Believers Club—as an attempt to give religious legitimacy to a government that is persecuting the church as part of a broader effort to weaken challenges to its authority. Meanwhile, others say AAC is doing the bidding of Moscow due to its close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church, support for the Kremlin’s “traditional values,” and opposition to Armenia’s pursuit of a more democratic, European-oriented path.

In my latest for Christianity Today, I speak to pastors, leaders and politicians about what it means for the South Caucasus country going forward.

Christians in Europe Building their War Chests

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is calling it the “war chest.”

The evangelistic association headed by Franklin Graham started a legal fund with the damages it won in lawsuits against seven venues in the United Kingdom that cancelled BGEA events in 2020. That fund has now grown to $1.25 million, partly due to an influx of cash from Samaritan’s Purse, the humanitarian organization also run by Franklin Graham. The money will go to help conservative Christians in Europe going to court in freedom of speech and freedom of religion cases.

“Considering what is happening in wider Europe,” BGEA general counsel Jonathan Arnot told Christianity Today, “it seemed appropriate to make this assistance available to Christians across the continent.”

Without a war chest and a smart legal strategy, Arnot said Christians are in danger of losing the right to share the gospel in Europe. The BGEA and other conservative groups are afraid that widespread cultural opposition, especially on issues of sexuality and ethics, and new regulation on speech deemed hateful, harmful, or misleading, will erode people’s ability to condemn sin and preach Scripture.

To date, Christians have won a remarkable series of legal victories in Europe.