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Religion and State After 2000 in Putin’s Era: The Legislation and the Reasons of the Discrimination of Believers
July 7, 2010
Roman Lunkin
After 2000, the
integration of the Russian
Orthodox Church into the current
political and ideological agenda
became evident. Also, a
particular understanding of
“spiritual security” was
introduced for the purpose of
fighting against missionary
activity and a number of
religious minorities.
The
toughened policies introduced
under President Vladimir Putin
led to many social and
humanitarian programs being shut
down (and the procedures
required to clear humanitarian
aid shipments were also
toughened), especially those
conducted by or involving
Protestant churches. For many
non-orthodox Christians and new
religious movements, it became
difficult to rent space for
worship services, obtain land
plots or build Houses of Prayer.
At the same time, in many
regions, there were explicit
attempts to hamper all existing
construction works commenced by
the local religious groups.
Muslim groups, more than any
other non-Christian religious
group, received the most
monitoring and special attention
from the authorities. The
official Muslim communities that
belonged to the unions already
recognized by the government
began to receive more
governmental supervision, while
the members of independent
Muslim groups felt more pressure
from law enforcement agencies,
which began conducting repeated
audits.
The clamping down
on foreign influences and
“sects” effectively set the tone
for the Kremlin’s policy and
became one of the main phobias
during Putin’s presidential
term, although these ideas had
been voiced before he came to
power and are still in place now
that he has left office. The
Concept of National Security of
Russia, adopted in 2000 under
Putin’s presidency, listed
fighting against sectarian and
missionary activity among the
State’s measures to counteract
foreign threats. It reads as
follows:
“In order to
enhance the national security of
the Russian Federation, we must
protect our cultural and
spiritual legacy, morals,
historical traditions and social
standards … form state policies
on the spiritual nurturing and
moral education of our people,
ban the use of airtime and
electronic media for
broadcasting programs that
promote violence and the
exploitation of base and immoral
subjects, as well as counteract
the negative influence of
foreign religious organizations
and missionaries.” The
Concept of 1997 contained a more
defined statement on the
“crucial role of the Russian
Orthodox Church and churches of
other denominations in the
maintenance and preservation of
our spiritual values.” In 1997,
a statement heavily influenced
by the Moscow Patriarchate was
introduced to the Concept. It
reads as follows: “It is
important to consider the
destructive role played by
various religious sects and the
damage that they cause to the
spiritual life of our society,
thereby posing a direct threat
to the lives and health of the
citizens of Russia, which is
often used to conceal illegal
activities.”
In the
course of Putin’s presidential
term, a trend of taking
administrative measures in
relation to missionaries and
religious minorities began to
take form. In 2002, the campaign
to deport all foreign preachers
from Russia reached its peak
with a record-high number of 18
religious figures deported.
Between 2000 and 2008, there
were about 100 missionaries
deported from Russia for various
reasons or without being given
any reason at all. Most of the
deportees, apart from the
Catholics, Mormons, Muslims and
Buddhists, were members of
evangelical Christian
associations and missions. Most
active clergy also tended to be
deported, often without being
given any explanation. Among the
deportees were such prominent
religious figures as Father
Stefano Caprio, the rector of a
Catholic parish in the city of
Vladimir; and the
missionary-evangelist Leo
Mårtensson, who was an employee
of the mission "The Light of the
East" and the author of the
translation of the Gospel into
the Adyg language (he carried
out his work in the Republic of
Adygea and the Krasnodar
region). Paul Kim, a
Korean-American citizen of the
USA whose visa was revoked by
the authorities in February
2002, was also amongst those
deported (he was the founder of
the National Kalmyk Church of
Evangelical Christian Missionary
Union). Talipov Tahir, a citizen
of Latvia, who is a Baptist and
the founder of an independent
Tatar evangelical community, was
deported in late November 2003.
He had served as the leader of
the Church in Tatarstan since
the beginning of the 1990s. The
accusation made against Talipov
was that the views upheld by his
church “do not correspond with
the interests of the country and
are of an extremist nature,
thereby undermining the
stability of interfaith
relations and the interethnic
situation in Russia.”
Another example of this
happening, which took place in
2005-2006, involved four groups
of American citizens invited by
the “Resurrection” Church of
Evangelical Christian Baptists
(the Church is part of the
Russian Union of Evangelical
Christians-Baptists), who were
deported from the city of
Ivanovo. They were detained
while attending a religious
meeting with local church
members directly in the church
building, at which time they
were presented with a
deportation order. At the same
time, the local television
channel ran coverage of the
situation in the news, showing
film footage accompanied by
commentaries that the detained
American missionaries and church
members (one of them a former
U.S. Senator) used their
religious visas to come to
Russia and lure children into
their church. Local newspapers
printed a press release from the
regional Office of the Federal
Security Service (FSB) regarding
the deportation of the group of
missionaries, claiming that they
had violated visa regulations.
Work on a new draft law
aimed at restricting missionary
activity also began during the
presidency of Vladimir Putin and
marked a continuation of the
anti-missionary policies. The
road to creating this draft law
began in 2000 when Putin adopted
the Concept of National Security
of Russia, which contained a
chapter on “spiritual security”
and the necessity to retain
control and monitoring of
missionary activity within the
country. Following the adoption
of the Concept, the Government
of the Russian Federation
charged the Ministry of Justice
of the Russian Federation (MOJ
RF) with the responsibility of
drafting the bill. In 2006, the
Ministry of Justice presented
the draft law “On amendments to
a number of federal laws to
counter illegal missionary
activity” for the consideration
of and approval by numerous
religious organizations. This
draft was immediately and
unanimously rejected by all
religious groups, including
Orthodox Christians, Muslims,
Protestants, Jews and other
groups, at the session of a
government Commission on
religious associations, which
was being supervised by the
current president of the Russian
Federation Dmitry Medvedev at
that time.
The draft bill
of 2006 proposed amending the
Law “On the freedom of
conscience and religious
organizations” with an Article
17(1) (Article 18(1) at
present), which states, in
particular (in clause 3), that
missionary activity may be
conducted by the ministers of
religious organizations and the
members of its governing bodies.
The ministers and the members of
the governing body must carry a
document certifying their
status, and “other persons” must
carry a written permit issued by
the governing body of the
respective organizations and
evidence of their permission to
preach. In addition, all
missionaries must submit a
number of documents to the
respective territorial agencies
of the federal state
registration body. Namely, these
documents include a notice of
intention to conduct missionary
activity, personal
identification documents, and a
document issued by the governing
body of the religious
organization. Foreign nationals
are required to submit a visa or
proof of their registration. The
draft bill of 2006 also states
that any form of preaching
within 100 meters of a building
belonging to a religious
organization of a different
denomination is prohibited. The
prohibition of missionary
activity “directed at people who
are experiencing difficult life
situations and involving any
promise to help them resolve
such a situation” was one of the
most unique precedents in
Russian legislation.
The
increasing expression of state
support for Orthodox
Christianity along with the
constant exertion of pressure on
religious minorities became the
main staples in the rhetoric of
government officials. During the
term of Vladimir Putin’s
presidency, the authorities
nevertheless failed in their
attempts to fully abolish
religious freedom in Russia. In
the end, the law on missionary
work was not adopted and the
Russian Orthodox Church did not
become the official state
church. Also, no serious
restrictions at the legislative
level were imposed on the rights
of religious minorities.
Moreover, religious groups (e.g.
Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists,
Pentecostals, etc.) that held
their registration and property
since the 1990s have retained
their legal status since that
time. As the second largest
congregation after the Orthodox
Christians, Protestants marked a
significant event in 2006 when
one of their members – Sergei
Ryakhovsky, a member of the
Pentecostal Church – was
selected as a member of the
Public Chamber of Russia (an
arms-length high-profile
advisory body composed of public
figures). To this day, he
continues to represent the
Church there. The authoritarian
trends seen in the Putin era
proved to be somewhat weak, and
the government's actions were
inconsistent and contradictory.
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