“The country’s threatening to shut down churches that don’t adhere to the majority religion,” said Derek Davis, dean of the College of Humanities. (Eighty-five percent of the population practices Russian Orthodoxy.) “And if you believe in freedom, the right of human beings to choose their own religion and practice it, then this should be a concern.”
On Oct. 15, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced it would close 56 non-Russian Orthodox Churches because of failure to submit proper registration. The cited churches are of the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Seventh-day Adventist, Pentecostal, Protestant and Catholic denominations.
Muslim and Buddhist churches and humanitarian groups like World Vision, Youth With a Mission and the Russian branch of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association are also facing possible orders to cease their operations.
“Churches must apply with the government to open,” said Davis, a longtime professor of religion and political science.
And to continue to exist, according to Ministry regulations, the church must furnish annual reports on revenue from donations and tithes and on extracurricular activities like workshops, seminars and missions. Failure to send in such a report or sending it in past deadline subjects the church to mandatory termination.
Having just returned from his 10th trip to Russia, Davis is disappointed at this displayed lack of religious freedom.
“Religious liberty is a fundamental way of life that all nations should observe and recognize,” Davis said.
Lawyers from the Slavic Center for Law and Justice in Moscow agree. They’re representing the cited churches on the charges filed against them by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
“The punishment is too great,” said attorney Anatoly Pchelintsev. “Liquidation for failure to submit information is like sentencing a jaywalker to the death penalty. Such actions are inconsistent with the policy of the Russian government, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religious confessions for each person. The widespread liquidation of religious associations for petty violations will lead to the crudest infringement of human rights in our country and to the self-isolation of the government.”
Joseph K. Grieboski, president of the American Institute for Religion and Democracy in Washington D.C., echoed Pchelintsev’s assessment.
“This move to liquidate churches is a way to limit and control activity,” Grieboski said. “Despite recent European Court of Human Rights cases against such activities and registration standards, the Russian Government continues its ongoing tightening of religious activity and continues to threaten free exercise of faith in Russia.”
But not everyone thinks the government’s move to liquidate is a threat.
“It may just be a wake-up call,” said Pastor Vitaly Vlasenko, director for external church relations of the Russian Union of Christians-Baptists, suggesting the Ministry of Justice’s motive is only to tidy its church roll call.
Thousands of religious organizations were registered in the 1990s, Vlasenko said, and now, a number of them are defunct. As an example, he referred to a Baptist church that registered in Moscow but moved to Siberia.
But Davis disagrees. He sees the action as a way for the Russian Orthodox Church to regain its former status. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russian Orthodoxy was the government-mandated national religion.
“After the revolution, 90 percent of the Orthodox churches were destroyed, communism fell, and the country had to start from scratch,” Davis said.
So Russia became a secular state that favored no religious group.
“But it didn’t work,” Davis said.
By 1992, the Russian government had issued new religious constrcitions, that were tightened in 1997.
“More than 85 percent of the country identifies with Russian Orthodoxy, so the religion didn’t have a hard time in winning over the politicians,” Davis said. “But this is a scare tactic and intimidation toward the minority religions.”
The dispute over the move to liquidate the churches will continue over the coming months. No resolution between the Russian Ministry of Justice and the Slavic Center for Law and Justice has been made.
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