Even as persecution climbs for Protestants in Russia, most of its evangelicals continue to support President Vladimir Putin, who won his fourth six-year term in last week’s election.
The incumbent Russian president drew in 75 percent of the vote last Sunday, soundly beating out Communist millionaire entrepreneur Pavel Grudinin, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and former TV host Ksenia Sobchak.
For Protestant voters, who make up only about 1 percent of the heavily Orthodox nation, their support for Putin would be only a bit below the national average, according to William Yoder, spokesman for the Russia Evangelical Alliance.
“They would not vote for a communist or a nationalist like Zhirinovsky, and not for a movie-starlet like Sobchak.”
Like their Orthodox neighbours, Russian evangelicals prioritize family values such as traditional marriage, said Yoder. But leaders do not often speak out to address politics—especially not from the pulpit.
Pastor Alexei Smirnov, chairman of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, did post a statement this week to congratulate Putin on his victory.
Still, Protestants and other non-Orthodox faiths continue to face a crackdown on their practice as a result of anti-evangelism laws proposed by lawmaker Irina Yarovaya and passed by Putin in 2016. The restrictions limit religious activities and proselytization that occurs anywhere outside church buildings registered with the government.
Evangelicals have been directly impacted by these measures, as well as other efforts that appear to target those outside of the Russian Orthodox church.
Just this week, media reported that a Pentecostal congregation located in central Russia, north of Kazakhstan, the Church of Evangelical Christians of the Gospel House in Chelyabinsk, was fined for “illegal missionary work” since the full name of the church was not posted on the rented room where they met. When Gospel House opted to pray in a different location, the court also forbid the move “because of violations of the norms of anti-terrorist security.”
“Christian Protestants—Baptists, Pentecostals, and Seventh-day Adventists—also regularly face harassment in the press and pressure from the Russian bureaucratic machine. They have difficulties in obtaining land plots for their liturgical buildings; they are visited with inspections, and so on.”
the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) wrote in a report released in January, which noted Pentecostals as a particular target under the 2016 legislation.
The land and space issue has become particularly costly, as government officials are increasingly fining churches that meet in private homes or buildings for violating property use laws, Forum 18 reported. The number of such fines levied against religious groups more than tripled in 2017, up to 23 incidents.
Around 90 percent of Protestant places of worship occur on property designated for residential use, estimated Adventist lawyer Vasily Nichik, since laws restrict the ability of churches to lease or buy land for themselves.
World Evangelical Alliance global ambassador Brian C. Stiller recently wrote, The Exchange, that despite the opposition, the Russian Pentecostal Union has founded 1,000 new churches over the past six years.
USCIRF, which last year named Russia a Tier 1 “country of particular concern” in its religious freedom report, urged the US State Department to persuade Russia to drop the anti-evangelism laws, registration requirements, and other discriminatory means of government review for religious groups so that the country could better foster religious tolerance.
Religious pluralism is another political priority for Russia’s Protestants, but it’s becoming harder to come by.
The aforementioned William Yoder remarked:
“I think evangelicals have become more accustomed to Putin over time. They are very disappointed regarding the Yarovaya Laws, but they see no makeable alternative to Putin.”
Prior to the anti-evangelism laws, Christianity Today noted how most Russian evangelicals, including the official Congress of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, literally thank God for Putin and side with him politically, particularly on the Ukraine crisis.
“Putin is genuinely popular—and admired—by Russians across the spectrum: among believers as well as the religiously indifferent, among Protestants as well as Orthodox, and among academics as well as taxi drivers,” wrote Mark R. Elliott, editor of the East-West Church and Ministry Report.
Source: Christianity Today (edited)
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