The Battle for Russia’s Souls
Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls
John Witte, Jr., and Michael Bourdeaux, editors.
New York: Maryknoll, 1999.
(353 pages; $25.00, paper)
by Kent R. Hill
The end of the cold war was greeted with a mixture of surprise, relief, and anticipation both in the West and in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Not only did the specter of nuclear war and totalitarian oppression perceptibly recede, but there were also widespread hopes that prosperous, free economies, democracy, and religious freedom would fill the vacuum left by failed Marxism.
History, however, is messy and complex. The hopes of ten years ago have been tempered by an unpleasant encounter with post-Soviet realities—economic, political, and spiritual. There is rarely, if ever, a smooth transition to a free and democratic society.
Initially, there were signs of great religious freedom in the former Soviet Union. New laws guaranteed full religious freedom in ways that fully met the highest international standards of human rights agreements and Western practice. However, beneath the surface all was not well.
The Russian Orthodox Church deeply resented what it considered to be a “flood” of religious rivals with which it now was forced to contend. There were growing demands for the Russian government to enact considerably more restrictive legislation designed to discriminate against the nontraditional religious entities, including other Christian groups. On September 26, 1997, after initially resisting, President Boris Yeltsin finally succumbed to the pressures and signed a new law—“On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations.” The law grants special privileges to “religious organizations” that have existed in Russia for not less than 15 years. “Religious groups,” in contrast, find themselves without the right to own property, receive tax privileges, own or operate educational institutions, conduct charitable activities, or to acquire, import, or give out religious literature. There are serious new restrictions on the activities of foreign missionaries. Non-Orthodox Christians are, at best, second-class citizens.
Excitement about the departure of the anti-religious Communists has given way to serious bickering between religious groups, and within the Christian family of communions as well. Perhaps no issue so crystallizes the differences between the Russian Orthodox Church and other Christians (Catholics and evangelical Protestants) as does the disagreement over “proselytism and evangelism.” Evangelicals insist that they are mainly engaged in evangelism, that is, sharing the Good News with those who are not believers or are not active members of any church. They contend that the great majority of foreign missionaries are not “proselytizing” among the active and seriously Orthodox.
However, the Russian Orthodox do not accept this “evangelical” distinction between proselytism and evangelism. Russian Orthodox leaders insist that virtually everything the evangelical Protestants and Catholics do among native Russians is “proselytism,” since Russian Orthodoxy is the historic faith of the Russian people and most have at least been baptized as infants. Survey data in 1996 indicated, however, that 67 percent of the Russian men and 38 percent of the women did not identify themselves as believers. As late as 1996, the percentage of the population that identified itself as Orthodox was only 50 percent, and the majority of these are non-observant (p. 213).
The Russian Orthodox Church believes that in light of the more than seven decades of Communist oppression, and the resulting weakened state of the Russian Orthodox Church, the truly civil and Christian thing for non-Orthodox foreign Christians to do would be to support the Orthodox materially or at least stand aside and let the Orthodox Church regain its strength. Many Evangelicals respond that the needs of those without a “saving knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ” are simply too great to ignore, despite the demands of the Orthodox to leave Russia to the historic Russian Orthodox Church.
The Russian Orthodox contend that it is really quite unfair for the “well-financed” foreign Evangelicals to compete with the Orthodox Church, weakened materially by decades of struggle with the Communists. In fact, evangelical gains are relatively modest. Though the number of Russian Protestant churches doubled from 1993 to 1996 (from 1,002 to 2,280) (p. 5), the number of churches within the Moscow patriarchate rose from 4,566 to 7,195 (p. 86). Dr. Mark Elliott estimates that in 1997 there may have been a total foreign missionary force of 5,606 in the former Soviet Union (of whom approximately 1,962 may have been career missionaries). Against a population backdrop of 287 million people, this does not, in Elliott’s judgment, represent “a disproportionate share of the worldwide Protestant missionary effort” (p. 200). (Protestants have, proportionate to the population, higher missionary percentages in Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, Kenya, and Papua New Guinea.) And yet Patriarch Aleksii II has spoken of a “massive influx” (p. 7) of foreign missionaries, and Metropolitan Kirill has interpreted Protestant intentions in highly uncomplimentary ways.
In most cases the intention was not to preach Christ and the Gospel, but to tear the faithful away from their traditional churches and recruit them into their own communities. . . . Missionaries from abroad came with dollars, buying people with so-called humanitarian aid. . . . All this has led to an almost complete rupture of the ecumenical relations developed during the previous decades. (p. 8)
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Orthodox from the online archives
more from the online archives
36.1—Jan/Feb 2023
A History of the Protestant Debate over Contraception by James A. Altena
24.1—January/February 2011
Ruminations on the Monstrous Envy of the Soul-Devouring State by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
