Anti-evangelism law used against simple Christian witness

[Guest Kurt]

WHO FEARS GOD? HOW ORTHODOX CUT OFF DISTRIBUTION OF NEW TESTAMENT
by Roman Lunkin
Religiia i Pravo, 10 November 2016
 
In the mid-2000s, when the Russian State Duma and Russian Ministry of Justice were discussing the necessity for control of missionaries, believers of various confessions said that they will be convicted even for a conversation about God in a train. But at the time this seemed to be a figure of speech, a hysteric hypothetical case. Reality has surpassed expectations: Christians have begun fighting with Christians and the possession of a New Testament has become a reason for suspicions on the part of police. The country has once again adopted the soviet rejection of religion, but it does not now know why it has done this.
 
Eight believers of various protestant churches, carrying New Testaments, were discussing God on an electric train in the Yaroslavl Station on 7 October 2016. While distributing free copies of the New Testament and Psalms, the protestants were arrested by police officers at the instigation of members of the little-known Orthodox Rights Advocacy Analytical Center. Most of the detainees were released without any charges. On 2 November 2016, a police report of an administrative violation of law was composed regarding only one of the distributors of the New Testament—Sergei Korepin. The report was composed by a captain of the railway police directorate in the Moscow-Yaroslavl station, Yu.V. Guseva.
 
The accusation, based on part 4 of article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Violations of law of the RF (which appeared as the result of the Yarovaya package) presented to Korepin, was distribution of the New Testament among passengers and dissemination of information about his religious faith. The essence of Korepin's doctrinal conception was not specified, since he had simply told people about the Gospel that he was distributing. The aggravating circumstance in the police report surely is that the missionary belongs to a specific religious organization, the Gideons Association of Evangelical Christians. The point is that the books of the New Testament and Psalms are published by the Gideons evangelical mission, which has for several decades now printed and distributed these books in Russia (In July 2016 thousands of books were seized at Vyborg customs; the customs agents demanded the conduct of an expert analysis of the New Testament; and all books had to be sent back to Finland).
 
In this case of preachers on electric trains, there appeared a completely new logic and new methods of proving the guilt of a believer. Sergei Korepin did not admit his guilt, since he could distribute Sacred Scripture as a citizen in accordance with the Russian constitution. In addition, he is not a member of the Gideons Association of Evangelical Christians, as the police report noted. Why did police agencies at the time decide for the believer himself which church he attends and to which denomination he belongs?
 
Sergei Korepin's attorney, Inna Zagrebina, emphasizes that for composing the police report some evidence was needed of the fact that it was illegal missionary activity that was being conducted. Therefore it was necessary to attach the believer to an organization, since when acting in the name of a church, a believer is required to have a document for evangelism. The police had conducted an investigation on the Internet in Sergei Korepin's social networks. On the basis of photographs on the social networks of Korepin attending various churches, including the Gideons mission, the unequivocal conclusion was drawn that he was acting in the name of the organization. The attorney's attempts to say that Korepin attends various congregations, and this is evident from the social networks, were to no avail. Now he awaits a fine.
 
It is quite possible that the police personnel simply were confused about the incident. Initially they were misled by activists of the Orthodox Rights Advocacy Analysis  Center. It remains unclear why the Orthodox reacted thus to the distribution of books of the New Testament in the Synodal translation and apparently they did not know the text. In addition, the "doctrine" about which the missionaries were talking was the preaching of the Gospel, and the Orthodox also did not understand that this was something Christian. Moreover, in October, when articles in the press began to appear in the name of this Orthodox center, they called the preachers neo-Pentecostals or Jehovah's Witnesses or simply sectarians.
 
The Orthodox Right Advocacy Center also announced a hunt for the preachers including protestants: "We recall that this legal norm of the administrative code—part 4, article 5.26, of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law of the RF—took effect after the adoption of the so-called 'Yarovaya Package.' Before the appearance of these amendments, members of destructive religious cults could be held accountable only for serious criminal violations of law."
 
In Russia there has developed a certain complex regarding religion, based on an unresolved contradiction. On one hand there is in society the awareness that our country is Orthodox, with its rich spiritual culture, and people living in it are Orthodox in the majority, because we do not have other foundations. On the other hand, there exists a fear of religion and the religious life and of the fact that a church may develop a person with its own "ideology" and force him to change his life. And if there are sectarians around, then nothing needs to change.
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Orthodox zealots exploit anti-evangelism law against non-Orthodox

"ORTHODOX LAWYERS" BETRAY 8 PERSONS TO POLICE FOR PREACHING IN TRAINS AND AT YAROSLAVL STATION IN MOSCOW
Newsru.com, 10 October 2016
 
Activists of the Orthodox Rights Advocacy Analytic Center in Moscow detained and turned over to the police eight persons who were preaching in the electric trains going to Yaroslavl and in the Yaroslavl station, the SOVA Center for News and Analysis reports. Orthodox vigilantes demanded that the detainees be held accountable for illegal missionary activity in violation of the "Yarovaya Law."
 
The incident occurred on 7 October 2016. The detainees were turned over to personnel of the transportation police, but just two were taken to the department of the directorate for internal affairs at the Yaroslavl station. The website of the Orthodox lawyers says that the detainees were "like Jehovah's Witnesses or neo-Pentecostals." The activists complain that the police are concerned only with the two sects.
 
"Representatives of the sect, two of whom had earlier been convicted for selling drugs, flatly refused to acknowledge which organization they are from, inasmuch as in the case of admission of the religious organization's responsibility for conducting missionary activity in the absence of a license they face a fine of up to one million rubles. In addition, the detainees appealed to the fact that they were distributing exclusively the New Testament in the synodal translation of the RPTs," the activists' website says.
 
Oleg Vladimirtsev, the coordinator of the Orthodox Rights Advocacy Center, who operates with the Orthodox monarchist association "For faith and Fatherland," told Life that two of the detainees were men of 40 to 50 years of age who had previously been convicted of selling drugs. It was explained that the preachers had not heard of accountability for illegal missionary activity.
 
What is more, representatives of law enforcement agencies said that this is the first instance in their practice of holding accountable on this article. The detainees face a fine of up to 50,000 rubles.
 
The Orthodox activists wrote up a petition for holding the detainees accountable on part 4 of article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Violations of Law (conducting missionary activity with violation of the requirements of legislation on freedom of conscience and freedom of religious confession and on religious associations). This standard of the administrative code took effect after the adoption of the so-called Yarovaya Law, which regulates, among other things, missionary activity, restricting the possibility of preaching outside of church buildings, and prohibits preaching in residences and recategorizing residences as nonresidential in order to conduct religious activity.
 
The Orthodox rights advocacy analytic center, judging by the website and accounts in social networks, is occupied specifically with "Orthodox jurisprudence." "Brothers and Sisters! If you encounter a difficult situation and need legal support, Orthodox lawyers can render all forms of legal aid. . . . Please repost. God help us," the advertisement of the center says. In comments on the website, visitors write denunciations with advice about where it is best to catch Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow province.
 
In response to the action of the Orthodox advocacy center, an article was published on the "Orthodoxy and the World" website by the theologian publicist Sergei Khudinev, in which "forays" by Orthodox "vigilantes" or "activists" against "sectarians" were condemned.: "This is generally clear. A person who joins himself to some group (tribe, palace gang, fans of a certain team, etc.) tries to fit in and to show his loyalty, expressing hostility to the other group (the alien tribe, gang from neighboring court, fans of another team). It is also clear that this has nothing to do with faith, Orthodox or otherwise."
 
"Moreover, this has nothing to do with faith, the church, or the salvation of souls, except harm. Attacks on sectarians with the aid of police, attempts to somehow frighten them and display hostility to them, are not a testimony to Orthodoxy. They are testimony against it," Khudiev explains.
 
In the opinion of the writer, "the struggle with sects look like a lack of faith and not its manifestation." "The church's ministry, including ministry to people who have been deceived, is a ministry of love. If you still cannot relate to it, that means you cannot. But in no case should you yield to xenophobia and aggression in zeal for the true faith," he is sure.
 
In the account of the Orthodox center in the social network VKontakte on Monday, 10 October, "Orthodox lawyers" published a rebuke: "And what will the gentlemen say theoretically about the thousands of people of broken fates; about the victims whose lives were trampled by these wolves in sheep's clothing, concealing their evil and violence against people by Christian symbols and quotations from Sacred Scripture? One should not be deceived by Jehovists or Baptists, Pentecostals or Scientologists, Mormons or Adventists. These are sects (although with various degrees of danger) who are conducting on Russia territory destructive and subversive activity in all directions, penetrating into all spheres of the life of society and the state, trying to legalize themselves by all means under the guise of "simply Christian," and the main thing is they make claims on the lives and souls of our fellow citizens. And our obligation as Christians and simply honest citizens is to inform and defend our neighbors from this plague that is vigorously penetrating our country."
 
The first person whom they tried to hold administratively accountable under the Yarovaya Law was a Krishnaite from Dzerzhinsk, Vadim Sibirev, who discussed his faith in the city of Cherkessk (Karachay-Cherkessia) and gave out religious literature to two passers-by, although the Cherkessk magistrate court on 15 August put an end to his case for lack of evidence of a crime.
 
In August, in St. Petersburg, an archbishop of the illegal Ukrainian Reformed Orthodox Church of Christ the Savior, Sergei Zhuravlev, was fined for preaching to prostitutes and drug addicts.
 
In September, a Baptist pastor of the church in Orenburg province was accused of organizing an unsanctioned children's picket.
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Another case of banned literature planted on Jehovah's Witnesses

JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES FOUND WITH FORBIDDEN LITERATURE IN NIZHNY NOVGOROD PROVINCE
SOVA Center for News and Analysis, 10 November 2016
 
In Dzerzhinsk, under the pretext of a fire inspection, siloviki and personnel of the Ministry of Emergency Situations seized extremist literature in the toilet of a Jehovah's Witnesses' building. Believers declare that the literature had been planted on them.
 
On 8 November 2016, in Dzerzhinsk of Nizhny Novgorod province, an inspector of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, a senior assistant city prosecutor, a squad of police, and several other persons arrived at the building of the Jehovah's Witnesses before the start of a worship service. The reason for their visit was a verification of compliance with the requirements of fire safety.
 
During the inspection, religious literature that is included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials was found in a toilet. The worship service was cancelled.
 
The believers declare that the literature that was discovered had been planted on them, since members of the religious organization take care that literature ruled to be extreme is not on their premises.