Professional photograph of Maksym Balaklytskyi in a gray suit and purple shirt and tie, standing in front of a stone church building.

About

Maksym Balaklytskyi holds a PhD in Ukrainian Literature (2003) and is a Doctor of Sciences in Social Communications (2014) received from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. He had internships in the UK (Cambridge University), Germany, and Poland. He started his career in media as a production team member of a news and opinion TV weekly, made video reports from the Ukrainian Parliament and served as a news editor at the Hope Media Group, Ukraine. Now he is a news editor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church of Ukraine website and a YouTube blogger.

He reports in Ukrainian and Russian.

There are limits of rational perception of the world. A human being’s value exceeds their abilities to function. Life is to be lived, not just objectivised and utilised. For that, humans need stories, rituals, traditions and memory. Religion is still the heart of any culture. European secular culture is a Christian secular culture. Silencing that fact robs us of an important part of our and others’ life experiences. That is why we need stories on beliefs, convictions, worldviews and cultures.