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.
Orangizers 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 percent of 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.
“Authorities granting official permission for the Festival of Hope is unlikely to represent a broader shift,” Asif Mahmood, vice chair for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told CT in a written response. “Belarus generally has not liberalized its position on religious activity—it has only tightened control.”
Under Belarusian law, religious groups are informally stratified, with the Orthodox church occupying a privileged position, followed by Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and evangelical Lutherans, according to USCIRF. Other Protestant groups, including Baptists and Pentecostals, face strict limitations on proselytization and are often unable to hold events outside their premises.
Belarus remains one of Europe’s most tightly controlled religious environments, according to reports from USCIRF. Since the 2020 and 2021 protests and mass political demonstrations that followed the disputed reelection of President Alexander Lukashenka, authorities tightened their control of registered religious groups. Under the country’s law on freedom of conscience, all registered religious communities had to undergo compulsory, rigorous reregistration in 2024 and 2025. They faced harsher oversight, further restrictions of public activities, and heightened surveillance of foreign influence.
In recent years, the Belarus government has raided churches it claims meet illegally. In 2023, authorities bulldozed New Life Church, a Pentecostal church on the outskirts of Minsk with about 1,500 members. Authorities targeted the church after its pastor, Vyacheslav Goncharenko, spoke against the 2020 elections and participated in prayer events for Ukraine. In 2024, the Supreme Court liquidated the church, calling it “extremist.” Authorities have also arrested pastors involved in protests.
Still, Mikhovich said, evangelicals have expanded their institutional capacity over the past two decades, particularly in the realms of education, church planting, and youth ministry programs. “We have theological education. We can teach our children. We have worship. We can do almost everything,” he said.
The number of evangelical congregations has more than doubled since the 1990s. In recent years, this growth has translated into improved relations between evangelicals and the state’s religious affairs apparatus.
In the lead-up to this event, organizers have met multiple times with officials, including Aleksandr Rumak, whom Lukashenko appointed as commissioner for religious and ethnic affairs in 2020. Mikhovich said Rumak has taken a more collaborative approach to dealing with the country’s religious minorities.
His approval was key in securing the Chizhovka Arena as the festival venue. Belarusian evangelical leaders will lead Friday evening’s event, and on Saturday and Sunday, Graham will speak alongside longtime interpreter and evangelist Viktor Hamm.
Within Belarusian evangelical circles, Graham’s attendance carries symbolic weight tied to earlier evangelistic gatherings led by his father, Billy Graham, in cities like Moscow; Tallinn, Estonia; and Kiev, Ukraine. Hamm has long been associated with BGEA’s work in the region and is well-known among local churches.
But Graham’s presence—and Hamm’s work behind the scenes—carries additional resonance given the current state of Belarusian politics, its strained relationship with the US, and the international community’s continued scrutiny of its religious freedom record.
Under increased diplomatic engagement with Washington—including prisoner releases and discussions of sanctions relief—the appearance of religious openness can strengthen Belarus’s hand, Mahmood said.
“Approving this event allows Belarus to bolster the appearance of granting religious freedom,” he noted, without more substantive changes to existing laws that impose burdensome requirements for religious groups to hold such events in the first place.
Part of Belarus’s limited diplomatic efforts and increased communication with American intermediaries has included individuals very close to Graham—who may have played a key role in making the Festival of Hope happen.
Multiple reports point to the involvement of John P. Coale, an American attorney appointed as special envoy to Belarus in March 2025. Coale has been engaged in recent backchannel negotiations related to prisoner releases, sanctions, regional security, and human rights.
While his precise role remains unclear, observers suggest Coale may have been key in facilitating the Festival of Hope as part of a broader strategy of engagement.
Coale has long-standing ties to Franklin Graham. Coale and his wife, journalist Greta Van Susteren, have been publicly associated with the humanitarian work of Samaritan’s Purse, led by Graham, who also considers Coale a friend. Coale is also expected to attend the Minsk gathering, though no official program has listed him as a participant.
Neither the BGEA nor Belarusian organizers confirmed Coale’s involvement, and when reached by phone for comment, Coale did not respond.
Despite the scale of the gathering, Mikhovich framed its significance less in political terms than in evangelistic ones. “We believe and trust in God that Franklin Graham will preach the gospel and many people—particularly young people, whom we are baptizing more and more—will listen,” he said.
Among those planning to attend the event is Anna Verenkova, a 29-year-old from the Brest region in southwestern Belarus, an area with some of the country’s densest evangelical networks.
Her congregation, which is part of a Baptist association, is arranging buses for the trip to Minsk, a journey of more than four hours.
“I have been praying for months,” she told CT. “We don’t often have the chance to gather like this, all together in one place.”
Anna said around 40 people from her church plan to travel to the festival, with additional groups joining from neighboring towns and villages. She also hopes to bring a friend who does not regularly attend services. “I invited her because I think this could be a moment for her,” she said. For Verenkova, the significance of the gathering extends beyond the program itself, particularly given the constraints evangelical Christians often navigate in public life.
“It gives us courage,” she said. “When you see believers together, you understand you are not alone.”
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