It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.
First came visits from agents of the F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B., who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.
There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin.
Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.
This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure, a mutually reinforcing choreography that is usually described here as working “in symphony.”
This is a very sad situation, especially after what all Christians went through under the Soviet Union.
[url=http://tomrosson.blogspot.com/2008/04/prayer-request-for-gorbachevs.html]A specific–and ongoing–example of what non-Orthodox Christians face is here[/url].
[url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=595]My own plea to the Orthodox about this is here[/url].
As an Anglican presbyter and a former Orthodox priest, what Westerners need to bear in mind is that the Orthodox Church is the Established Church of Russia. That is the way that the government and the vast majority of the population view it, whether anyone else likes it or not.
Russian Orthodox leaders should remember that alliances like this sap one’s integrity and spiritual vitality.
State-enforced protectionism is a recipe for ecclesiastical stagnation.
The Russian Orthodox unfortunately paint Anglicans with a single brush also, and it ain’t pretty. They seem oblivious to the millions of faithful Anglicans and focused on TEC and New Westminster.
Unfortunately these days most people are ignorant of the fact that there ever were cordial relations between the Orthodox and Anglicans. The late Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic of the the Serbian Orthodox Church was educated at Oxford and there was even the Society of St. Alban and St. Sergius that both Churches participated in. It has a lot more to do with theological innovations that have generally permeated worldwide Anglicanism than just the current events of the General Convention Church. I personally feel that for the Russians Anglicanism, as a whole, lost its credibility with the ordination of women. For the Orthodox this is a non-negotiable. Perhaps once/if things are ever settled within the Anglican Communion they may become more open, but as long as there is women’s ordination you might as well forget it. Under Czarism Russia was very much a theocratic state, I cannot comment on the current state of affairs, I’m just sharing my own knowledge of how, generally, Russians think about these things. I wish that the Church of England had not gone astray and that it could properly be the Established Church, but sadly those days are waning. Ecumenism has never made a good impression with the Orthodox, their own representatives in the ecumenical movement have often been suspect. In fact many Orthodox view ecumenism as a pan-heresy, or to paraphrase the former dictator if Iraq, the mother of all heresies. You are comparing a Church which is entirely settled in its own doctrines, traditions and history to one which is very unsettled. Let’s get our own act together first and then see what happens.
Americans who want to understand Orthodoxy in Russia could do much worse than to start with Anthony Ugolnik. [i] The Illuminating Icon [/i] Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989.
Father Dean A. Einerson
Rhinelander, Wisconsin
.
Fr. Dean,
Good suggestion. The books by Bp. Kallistos Ware, himself a former Anglican, are also good primers to understanding Orthodoxy; but nothing replaces direct experience. Having studied in two Orhtodox seminaries and living for three years in one Russian Monastery and then two years on Mount Athos that is really the only way to begin
to understand them. The Russians in particular have tended since Peter the Great towards a much more bureacratic structure which complicates matters even more. It is rather complicated. I don’t mean to throw cold water on those who would like everyone to join hands and break into a chorus of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”, but that is reality. For the Orthodox women’s ordination = the six hundred pound gorilla in the parlor, there’s no getting around that.
I sat in an Orthodox seminar once when a Russian priest was incensed that the Methodists had done such good work in a small village. The people of the village were so taken with spiritual fresh air that they named a street after John Wesley – an Anglican of note. The priest jibed the village for naming a street after a non-Russian. I asked, “In a nation with 11 Time Zones, can you tell me what the harm is in 1 street named for another Christian?” No answer. He only lamented that the Russian Orthodox Church was disadvantaged after the fall of Communism because its strength had been sapped. Sounds instead like the people made a choice to find a Church not whoring after state approval.
I think that if you will examine the practice of proselytism which many Protestant denominations conduct within Russia, you will find an appalling lack of cultural sensitivity and common sense. I have met well meaning but misguided individuals who thought that it was their God-given duty to evangelize people who had a Christian history of more than one thousand years. Pentecostals are particularly prone to this kind of missionary activity. Very often they are not attempting to evangelize the unchurched or atheists, what they are trying to do is gain converts from amongst the Orthodox themselves. Such activities will always put Slavs on the defensive. I feel as though in commenting further I am belabouring the point as my Father said “you can tell a farmer, but not a hell of a lot.”
It’s hard to respond to everything, but as a part of a Pentecostal church which has tried very hard to “do things right” in the Russian Federation through legal registration and proper preparation of our clergy, I feel I must try.
First: the connection between Anglican and Orthodox is closer than some might think. Peter the Great was very impressed with the way the Crown had brought the Church of England under its control, so he abolished the Patriarchate. He and his successors directed the affairs of the church through the Most Holy Synod, and this state of affair was only ended by the Russian Revolution.
Second, the event that really made evangelisation in Russia an imperative was seventy years of atheism. And that is, IMHO, the core of the tragedy of the situation. The ROC hasn’t learned anything from their first loss of power other than that they want it back the way they had it before.
I’m as aware as anyone that Orthodoxy is deeply embedded in Russian culture. You can see that in non-Orthodox Russian and Ukrainian Christians, and I’ve known my share of them over the years, just as you can see the Anglican undertow in West Indian Pentecostals. But today we have Islam on the move, and it’s foolish for Christian churches, in Russia, the Middle East, or anywhere else, to expend so much energy on each other when we have more important “fish to fry” to use another old country expression.
In his inimitable style, Avvakum said that “They (the ROC of his day) think it to establish the faith by fire or the knout and gallows tree! Which of the Apostles taught them that? I know not. My Christ did not teach his Apostles that fire and knout and gallows tree should lead to the faith.” The ROC and other Christians suffered this and worse at the hands of those who would impose unbelief (and they’re still active today, even in our own sociey.) Although we’re not quite to that point, the idea isn’t as far as one would like to admit.
It’s time to break the cycle in Russia. But breaking cycles in Russia is no easy task.