Preaching to the Wrong Choir

July 17, 2008

By Sergei Balashov
Russia Profile

Mormons fall victim to new Russian laws

One of the world’s fastest growing churches has never managed to establish a solid presence in Russia, acquiring just 19,000 members over the past 17 years of its official operations in this country. Now the Mormon Church has decided to stop sending North American missionaries to Russia altogether citing the new visa restrictions which have made it very hard for missionaries to stay in the country and do their work. Despite the Church’s official position denouncing any discrimination by the Russian government, concerns about the strong religious intolerance have been voiced by the public, putting into question Russia’s willingness to accept a different sermon.

According to Russia’s new laws, humanitarian workers will be able to stay for no longer than 90 days without going out of the country and renewing their visa, and be in Russia for no more than 180 days a year. Mormon missionaries have to spend two years on a mission, usually going to a foreign country to take their best effort to spread the religion and get as many people as possible to convert and join the Church. The changes to the legislation effectively make it impossible for Mormons to serve their missions.

According to Russia’s new laws, humanitarian workers will be able to stay for no longer than 90 days without going out of the country and renewing their visa, and be in Russia for no more than 180 days a year. Mormon missionaries have to spend two years on a mission, usually going to a foreign country to take their best effort to spread the religion and get as many people as possible to convert and join the Church. The changes to the legislation effectively make it impossible for Mormons to serve their missions.“This has been a tradition in the Church for over 150 years,” said head of the public relations department of the church in Eastern Europe Elena Nechiporova. “The missionaries use their own money to travel overseas to serve, and trips back and forth to renew their visas could be very costly. They save up for their missions their whole lives, and their families usually have five or six children, which stretches their budgets thin.”

“We’re going to abide by the laws as we always do, this new legislation is not directed against us,” added Nechiporova.

Proceed with caution

Even before the legislation came into effect, Mormons, along with other religious missionaries representing religions that have been perceived as non-traditional and treated with caution in Russia, had enough on their hands to deal with. “We’ve had to face certain problems in Russia,” said LDS outside legal counsel Lev Simkin. “Our missionaries have been accused of implementing some mind-control practices, which is not what we do. What harm could these boys do other than cleaning parks and doing other humanitarian work?”

The harassment goes further than just these accusations. “Down in Novocherkassk, our missionaries which are predominantly American were helping the locals practice English just by holding different discussions with them,” continued Simkin. “It wasn’t even about faith. Those who wanted to learn more had the choice to stay and talk about the real purpose why these men came over to Russia.” These missionaries ended up getting accused of teaching without a license and faced visa revocation. “It was ridiculous as they weren’t really teaching anybody anything,” said Simkin. “Then there was another case in Shakhty where local immigration put forward accusations that our missionaries weren’t staying where they were registered and made them leave the country. We had to go to court to overturn this decision and get them back.”

“All of these were prejudicial and mostly initiated by the local authorities and we encounter this kind of treatment mostly in Southern cities such as Novocherkassk, Krasnodar and Rostov,” Simkin said. “The courts, however, were very objective.”

Not just some of the local authorities, but also the public hasn’t always been very friendly and willing to accept the foreign preachers. “We’ve encountered various forms of harassment over the years,” Nechiporova said. “People were throwing anti-Mormon leaflets at our meeting house in Tomsk; there were other cases when they threw stones at our windows. We could do little but just clean up the mess and keep on doing our thing.”

Compared to the start of the church’s operations in Russia, the nature of the protests has been changing. “Back in the day, we had the so-called anticultists protesting against the church; however, most of the public rage was directed at Protestant minorities such as Baptists, Pentecostals and Seventh Day Adventists,” Simkin explained. “Today any such protests are politically motivated. In Lipetsk, youths from the Young Guard all of a sudden decided to fight against cults and sent people to hold demonstrations and acts of protest against the Mormon Church. I guess they were doing it just because they had nothing else to protest against at the moment.”

“Generally, the public has been more or less tolerable to the church; it’s growing friendlier and is not usually prejudiced against non-traditional religions,” Simkin added.

Preaching a different sermon

The first reports of the news in Utahan newspapers sparked discussions of whether Russia deliberately imposed the restrictions to prevent Mormons from coming and if the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the country’s dominating religious organization known for its mostly critical approach toward religious minorities, could be behind this.

“The state doesn’t impose any official religion,” Nechiporova said. “The Russian Orthodox Church doesn’t intrude into our operations or place any hurdles on our way.”

Despite its lack of open criticism, the Russian Orthodox Church isn’t very welcoming of the Latter-Day Saints, as shunning seems to be the policy it employs in its relations with this religion. The LDS tried sending letters to the Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill with proposals of specific charity projects that the two churches could jointly carry out. However, no response was received. “We were told we’d never get a response,” Nechiporova said.

Religious tolerance has been an issue in Russia, where people are perceived to be conservative and, in a way, religiously and culturally isolationist. So, any new religions are treated with apprehension and skepticism. Recent studies show, however, that the situation isn’t radically different from that in other countries, and is sometimes even better.

According to the latest European Social Survey, only 0.6 percent of Russians consider themselves discriminated against religiously, while over 60 percent say that they tolerate other religions.

“We can’t label those religious organizations that are officially registered in Russia and operate in accordance with the laws as cults,” said academic secretary of the Center for Study of Religion in Contemporary Society of the Institute for Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Maria Mchedlova. “As for various Protestant denominations such as the Seventh Day Adventists, Baptists and Pentecostals, they’ve been here for over 100 years, and I would say that it’s hard to imagine Russian culture without them. Moreover, Protestant Christians are about the most religiously active and church-going group. I don’t see why anyone would be prejudiced against them.”

The religious intolerance that exists is not reasoned by any considerable danger that could be posed by any foreign religions to the society, but rather shares the underlying cause with racism. “The cautiousness the public expresses toward various religious minorities has to do with ignorance, as it usually does not know what these religions are really about,” said Mchedlova.

That might have to do with the general attitude toward religion that many Russians tend to have. “If you look at the numbers, the share of those who do believe in God is lower than of those who consider themselves a member of a certain religious confession,” said Mchedlova. “This means that religion is viewed as a criterion of social and cultural self identification of people rather than some kind of a dogma. For some, religion is more like a part of their culture than their faith. We could say it is a unique situation.”

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LDS Church denies allegations of missionaries' misbehavior in Bulgaria

By Elizabeth Miller
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 06/09/2008 03:59:48 PM MDT

Posted: 3:58 PM- The LDS Church said an Orthodox Christian priest's allegations that Mormon missionaries interrupted a religious service and had to be removed are "erroneous."

"Two missionaries serving in Burgas, Bulgaria, did nothing to disrupt the services of a local church, and when asked to leave, did so immediately," The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement. "The missionaries were invited to attend the church service by a member of the congregation."

Church spokesman Scott Trotter declined Monday to answer questions about the incident reported in Saturday's edition of The Sofia Echo, a newspaper in Sofia, Bulgaria.

According to the report, the Rev. Zahari Dachev of Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in Bourgas, Bulgaria, told Bulgarian media missionaries entered the church Thursday during services for the ascension of Christ and "interrupted the service by talking to people."

Dachev reportedly argued with the missionaries and had them taken out, then later filed a complaint with Bulgarian authorities and asked for the the LDS Church to be banned in the eastern European country, where it claims more than 2,000 members and a single mission.

A representative of the newspaper could not be immediately contacted Monday.

The LDS Church emphasized in its statement that "missionaries and members of the church are brought up to show respect and tolerance to the doctrines and members of other religions."

It added the church is officially registered in Bulgaria and said its missionaries follow all laws.

Missionary comportment has been an issue of late. Earlier this year, a set of published photographs showed four LDS Church missionaries allegedly mocking Catholicism and vandalizing a shrine in San Luis, Colo.

An investigation into the incident ended after members of the Catholic community said they didn't want the missionaries to face criminal charges, but the LDS Church did reportedly discipline the missionaries.

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Christian Orthodox priests want Mormons out of Bulgaria - report

16:00 Fri 06 Jun 2008 - Petar Kostadinov

Bulgarian Orthodox Church priests from the town of Bourgas on the Black Sea have asked the authorities to extradite a number of Mormon ministers, all of whom are foreign citizens.

According to local-based website bourgasinfo.com, the Orthodox priests from SS Cyril and Methodius church in Bourgas wanted the state to ban the preaching of the Mormon religion in Bulgaria.

These requests follow the June 5 2008 incident that happened at the church. During the service for Spassov Den (the day of the Ascension of Christ the Saviour, celebrated on the fortieth day after Easter), the Mormons entered the church and interrupted the service by talking to people, according to the priests.

“This is inadmissible. They started walking around the church talking to people. They have crossed all boundaries because that way they infringed our religious freedom as Orthodox Christians. It was an act of religious hostility,” father Zahari Dachev told Bourgasinfo.com.

“We have sent a letter to the state institutions and to the US embassy asking them if this is how their citizens live in our country by breaking our rights and freedoms,” he said. “Bulgarians' tolerance is being taking advantage of.”

Dachev entered into an argument with the Mormons, who were physically removed out of the church in the end, reports in Bulgarian media said. Dachev has filed a complaint with the police.

According to him, this was not the first time that the Mormons have come to the church. At Tsvetnitsa (Palm Sunday), they were handing out flyers about Mormon religion to 9 people waiting to enter the church.

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Mormons Rush into Orthodox Church in Bulgaria's Burgas, Interrupt Service

5 June 2008, Thursday

Two mormon preachers rushed Thursday into "Saints Cyril and Methodius" orthodox church in Bulgaria's coastal city of Burgas to interrupt the morning service, held to mark the Ascension of Jesus.

The missionaries entered the temple and announced in Bulgarian before the people inside they were going to preach.

The young men refused to leave even after priest Zahari asked them to. The scandal lasted for about half an hour before the mormons were taken out of the church almost by force.

"Such an incident happened for the first time and that aggressive behaviour was a precedent," father Zahari said.

"I have ceased all responsible institutions and will insist on removing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Bulgaria's creed register as well as extraditing of its missionaries," he added.

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Russian unorthodox

Alternative sects face discrimination in a post-Soviet system that was supposed to ensure religious freedom

JANE ARMSTRONG
From Friday's Globe and Mail
February 8, 2008 at 4:22 AM EST

MOSCOW — Lena and Roman Nabatnikov were newlyweds when they were approached on a Moscow street in 1991 by two clean-cut men in suits and ties who asked if they wanted to attend a meeting of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The couple liked the wholesome look of the missionaries so they went and ended up staying for hours at the meeting in a simple hall. They were drawn in by the simplicity of the language, a far cry from the symbol-laden liturgy of their own Russian Orthodox faith, and they liked how the missionaries took a keen interest in their day-to-day lives. They all spoke of their personal feelings about God. Ms. Nabatnikov, then 21, was impressed with the Mormon focus on family life. She wanted lots of kids.

The Nabatnikovs would become among the first Russian converts to the Mormon Church. Like millions of other Russians during the perestroika era, they were hungering for a spiritual life, which was officially forbidden during 70 years of Communist rule.

Seventeen years later, the couple has four children and their faith is as strong as ever. But Russia's religious freedoms aren't.

The Latter-Day Saints, like a raft of other non-Orthodox faiths, including Jehovah's Witnesses, have been labelled "totalitarian sects" by the Russian Orthodox Church, whose criticism is frequently tinged with nationalism. In the past decade, the Russian government has severely restricted the activities of these churches, whose followers routinely face harassment, discrimination and even detention.

"In Russia, it's a given that you must be Orthodox," Mr. Nabatnikov, 39, said in an interview at his family's rambling, toy-laden house in the woods outside Moscow. Each night at dusk, the Nabatnikovs sing hymns around the piano, then pray together aloud before dinner.

When the couple first converted, friends and family were opposed, describing their decision as anti-Russian. Today, Mr. Nabatnikov does not discuss his faith with people he doesn't know or trust. Most people react negatively, he said, and he doesn't want to provoke an argument.

Despite Russia's secular status, with a constitution guaranteeing religious freedom, the government has clamped down on many non-Orthodox faiths, denying permits to build churches, refusing to register them and storming worship services.

The Orthodox Church has encouraged the restrictions and has forged a cozy alliance with the Kremlin, reminiscent of pre-revolutionary czarist times. In today's Russia, church and state share tandem visions for their country, characterized by a distrust for Western democratic traditions and a resurgent nationalism.

An unspoken rule for anyone with government or military ambitions is to be a practising Russian Orthodox churchgoer.

Moscow's Jehovah's Witnesses have tussled for nearly a decade with local authorities since they attempted to shut them down. That case is now before the European Court. The sect, in particular, has touched a nerve with Russian officials, who dislike their aggressive proselytizing, opposition to military service and ban on blood transfusions.

"It's not a Stalinist era, but there are elements in the authorities that try to link us to an extremist organization," said Paul Gillies, a London-based spokesman for the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Last year, Russian prosecutors launched more than 100 investigations against Jehovah's Witness congregations, more than double the previous year. Some followers were also detained, but Mr. Gillies said no charges were laid.

Two years ago, Moscow city officials refused to register the Salvation Army's Moscow branch, labelling the organization a "paramilitary army" that threatened the state. The Salvation Army took its case to the European Court and won.

Elena Nechiporova, a spokeswoman for the Morman Church in Russia, described its attempt to establish congregations as "an uphill battle." In meetings with authorities, the term "totalitarian" is often used by officials, she said.

"We have our own perception of who we are and we try to explain this," said Ms. Nechiporova. "It isn't easy."

The Russian Orthodox Church makes no apologies for its distrust of non-Orthodox faith, claiming most are Western-based and undermine Russian values. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II frequently appears on television denouncing these faiths as harmful to Russian society.

Russia's move to tighten controls on non-Orthodox faiths is in part a reaction to the stampede of religions that entered Russia after the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse. Some were bona fide faiths eager to establish a foothold in the newly freed country. Others were simply con artists, questionable healers and cult leaders.

One of the most distasteful was Grigory Grabovoi, a self-proclaimed healer who arrived in Beslan a year after the hostage debacle in which more than 300 people were killed, including 189 children. Mr. Grabovoi told victims' parents he could raise their children from the dead. Many paid for interviews with Mr. Grabovoi before he was arrested.

The Russian Orthodox Church lobbied the government of then-president Boris Yeltsin to rein in non-Orthodox faiths, singling out Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, Baha'i, Krishna and the Unification Church.

In 1997, Russia passed a law that required all religions not associated with its four main faiths - Orthodox, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism - to register their congregations and accept tighter controls.

Alexander Dvorkin, an academic at Moscow's St. Tikhon's Orthodox University, defended the hard-line position, saying Russian society was unprepared for the wave of new faiths that arrived in the 1990s. "People in Russia were far more vulnerable than in other societies," which he said have "built-in immunities," to proselytizing. And he insisted the Jehovah's Witnesses are a cult. "Just ask them the next time they come to your door what happens to you if you attempt to leave."

Mr. Gillies said Jehovah's Witness followers are free to leave the church if they choose.

Meanwhile, in Zelenengrad, the Nabanikovs try to keep a low profile, saying they aren't political people. They were drawn to the Mormon Church because of its wholesome values, such as bans on smoking and alcohol.

Recalling her first Mormon service, Ms. Nabatnikov, 37, said she liked how church leaders spoke directly to the congregation using simple language. The Book of Mormon also used parables she could understand. "I prayed to God to ask whether this was true," she said. "I felt ... the book was something I had been looking for."

For its part, the Russian Orthodox Church said it will continue its campaign against foreign-based faiths. "The Orthodox Church will always challenge the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the likes because they have no connection with the real history of the [Russian Orthodox] Church," said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations. "They all divert a believer from the truth."

When asked to define a "totalitarian sect," Father Chaplin explained it as a "movement that harms the personalities of its believers, destroys families and takes their property away."

Critics say Russian officials, at the urging of the Orthodox Church, have gone too far.

Anatoly Pchelintsev, a lawyer with Moscow's Slavic Centre for Law and Justice, agreed that Russia was a breeding ground for questionable faiths during the 1990s, but the religious landscape has stabilized and the vast majority of Russians, as many as 75 per cent, identify themselves as Orthodox. However, only a tiny percentage, fewer than 5 per cent, say they attend regular services, according to Russian census statistics.

Mr. Pchelintsev, who became a Baptist 15 years ago, said many Russians are looking for modern spiritual messages. They also resent the church's close relationship with the Kremlin. He said his own conversion exacted a professional price. Once a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Russian Army, he was told his military career was over not long after he joined the Baptist Church.

Mr. Pchelintsev, who represents churches who encounter legal problems with authorities, urged the Russian church and government to restrain their criticism, warning the tight restrictions could backfire, propelling more Russians into the churches and meeting halls of non-traditional faiths.

"The Russian Orthodox Church is engaged in politics too much and ordinary people understand this," he said.

With a report from Nadia Popova

*****

The faithful

A breakdown of Russian denominations, by number of worshippers. The Russian population is 142 million.

Orthodox: 113,600,000

Muslim: 14,500,000

Catholic: 600,000

New Pentecostal: 300,000

Jehovah's Witnesses: 150,000

Mormon: 18,000

Source: The Russian Federal State Statistics Service, October, 2007.

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ILLUMINATI FREEMASON CARTOON OF MORMONS SATANISM EXPOSED

Mormonism has nothing in common with Orthodoxy. Observe.