Sydney Morning Herald

July 26, 1997

[for personal use only]

WHY THE ORTHODOX CHURCH HAS TAKEN TO BIBLE BASHING ITS RIVALS

By ROBYN DIXON, Herald Correspondent in Moscow

WHEN Baptist missionaries invaded a small, conservative village, not far from the communist stronghold of Smolensk, several hundred kilometres west of Moscow, it was too much for the local Orthodox priest.

Watching the slow parade of his competitors handing out their Protestant brochures, he was seized by a hot surge of ungodly rage. He snatched a Bible from one of the Baptists and whacked him over the head with it.

After suffering 74 years of religious persecution in the Soviet Union, something very strange is happening in the Russian Orthodox Church. It has become the new oppressor, trying to hound out foreign churches and missionaries competing to save the souls of Russians.

Harassment of members of foreign religions by Orthodox priests has turned violent on several occasions.

The Hare Krishna organisation claims a Russian Orthodox priest led an attack on one of its temples in the southern Russian town of Rostov-on-Don during a religious meeting in June last year. Ten Hare Krishnas went to hospital after they were beaten with shovels and clubs. One was unconscious for a week. The organisation claims another of its devotees in the town of Nizhny Novogorod was grabbed by a priest after she tried give him a Hare Krishna leaflet.

The group alleges the priest took the young woman to his church, beat her and then took her to the police station, demanding she be punished.

Despite the religious freedoms permitted since perestroika, there is still not much religious tolerance in Russia. In ancient times, the Church was conservative and xenophobic. Today, it remains suspicious of outsiders.

Recently, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist Party formed a strange alliance to try to undermine foreign churches. Both pushed for a law that would restrict the activities of most of the churches operating in Russia.

But the Russian President, Mr Yeltsin, clashed with the Orthodox Church for the first time when he vetoed the law on Wednesday. His decision stunned the Orthodox hierarchy. At Moscow's ancient Danilovsky Monastery, the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church, a team of gardeners manicures the formal garden, spread like a floral eiderdown beneath the glittering golden cupolas of the churches.

Equally measured and formal is the church press conference in response to the veto, held in the luxury hotel in the monastery grounds.

The atmosphere is plush and powerful. Overhead, icons of Christ and the Mother of God hang poised above the debate. On the table stand bottles of Saint Springs mineral water, a handy little earner for the Church. Mr Yeltsin vetoed the law because it undermined the rights of many Russian churches and contradicted the Russian Constitution, which guarantees equality of all religions.

The law, attacked by Pope John Paul II and the United States Senate, gave favoured status to four "traditional" Russian religions - the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism - while all others have to prove they have been operating for more than 15 years or face a 15-year bureaucratic struggle for registration.

Every new branch would have to go through the 15-year registration process and could not proceed without the permission of the "traditional" churches in the area. Those without registration could not own property, preach publicly or distribute literature.

The Catholic administrator of European Russia, Archbishop Thaddaeus Kondrusiewicz, said that although Catholicism in Russia dated back to the 12th century, there were only two Catholic churches left by the 1930s. There are now 23.

The Archbishop fears that under the law, the Catholic Church would be forced to surrender all but the two churches it owned 15 years ago, facing a 15-year delay to register any new church.

The battle over Russia's law on religion is far from over. Communist deputies say the Parliament is likely to overturn Mr Yeltsin's veto.

Mr Victor Ilyushin, chairman of the security committee of the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, said the law was required to limit Western pressure on Russian minds.

"The free and uncontrolled activity of foreign religious confessions in Russia is a threat to state security," he said. One of the law's main advocates in the Duma, the communist deputy Mr Victor Zorkaltsev, attacked the President's veto, saying: "Russia has been trampled underfoot."

In the days of the Soviet Union, members of the Church hierarchy learned to co-exist with communism. Some Orthodox priests were persecuted but others colluded with authorities and survived. And there was, at least, no competition from outside.

The coincidence of the interests of Orthodox faith and orthodox communism reflect where the natural conservatives lie in Russian society today. They are nationalistic, anti-foreigner, against change and opposed to outside competition. The Church and the Communist Party share supporters, with many elderly Russian Orthodox believers also being pro-Communist.

When Mr Yeltsin vetoed the law, he took a principled stand at considerable political peril. It is difficult for a president to win a debate against God and his earthly envoys. And it is risky for a Russian leader to alienate the powerful Russian Orthodox Church with its vast and devout constituency.

Indeed, Mr Yeltsin's stand is unlikely to win him any political friends.

On the day of the last presidential election, the Russian Patriarch, Alexy II, made his preference clear when he blessed Mr Yeltsin, which suggested the President and his people understand the power of the Church.

But now the risk for Mr Yeltsin is that the shared conservative persuasion of the Orthodox Church and the Communists could evolve into a more permanent alliance.

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Johnson's Russia List

#1086

26 July 1997

djohnson@cdi.org (info@cdi.org)