Posted on 12/01/2018 2:25:32 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Even those who accept that unjust laws must be observed until they are repealed say that the actions of Russian officials in Naberezhny Chelny against a Baptist minister are intended not to enforce the law but to intimidate Evangelical Baptists...
A week ago, police in that Middle Volga city arrested Baptist minister Leonid Povorov for baptizing believers in public without securing advanced permission from officials even though they had not given him notice, brought the pastor in shackles to the courtroom, and imposed a 20,000-ruble (330 US dollar) fine.
Both locally and at the national level, Baptists have protested these actions. Lawyers for Povorov say they will appeal. But both Baptists and others are now calling this “Operation Intimidation,” a police measure designed not to enforce the law as such but rather to frighten non-Orthodox believers.
They warn that unless such actions are protested and contested, such official overreach could easily spread to other Protestant groups as well.
Mikhail Tyutnikov, a pastor of Kazan’s Faith and Life church, says that the authorities have the right to insist on registration; but they should not treat religious people as if they were common criminals by bringing them to court in shackles. That represents a dangerous act of “intimidation” against all Protestants.
(Excerpt) Read more at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com ...
Franklin Graham has spoke of this.
Putin only wants the Russian Orthodox Church allowed in Russia. He’s not very different from Stalin.
Stalin murdered 20 million + people, demolished churches, and shot orthodox priests and froze anyone of faith out of society if he didn’t murder them. (and did the same for any other faiths he could find).
Putin rebuilds Orthodox churches destroyed by bolsheviks and pushes that as their national faith. He is mostly trying to avoid foreign support for color revolutions, and the introduction of our western perverted ideas like lesbians and homos in protestant faiths, and boy buggery in the catholic church.
But yeah, besides all that, he’s -just- like Stalin.
This orthodox move, like everything else came from Hillary’s attempt to launch a Euromaidan/Color revolution movement after the 2011 Russian election.
After that NGOs of all types faced new restrictive laws. So did missionaries, so did people seeking to adopt Russian orphans.
The adoption laws were also the result of us refusing to restrict homos from adopting.
There is some stuff there that I am very glad our first amendment protects us from. But a big chunk of this was the result of Putin trying to stop a deadly cultural rot. The endemic prostitution where half the hookers in the worlds tourist areas were Russian, the orphans, the drug use rate, and the western promotion of homosexuality became a source of national humiliation and they have been moving to fix it.
I don’t agree in the “only orthodox” concept. But it’s coming from a less nefarious place than is being cast.
Its a rejection of “foreign” in a time when foreign means globalists coming to town.
Yep. Good post.
How is he like Stalin? Please elaborate.
At 2 plus decades in office: Putin is out-reigning even Stalin for starters. And not only does he mimic Stalin, but his entire top-down power vertical operates under Stalin-style mechanisms of power.
The difference being Putin has no need to resort to Stalin’s more extreme lengths to keep the population in line. All he and the Kremlin have to do is keep a tight control on the media, on free speech and flow of information on the internet, and make an example of a few dissenters by imprisoning or assassinating them and voila: you instill just enough terror among the public.
Even Russians readily admit that it’s likely Putin and the FSB who were behind the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings — the fallout from which catapaulted Putin’s rise to power under the promises of security and stability, over the freedom and chaos of the 90s.
It’s also important to note the cumulative effects of Stalin’s actual terror, which continue to linger in the collective Russian psyche. Simply put:
The Russian people are tired of upheaval. They don’t want a Revolution. (For now.) Their living standards are going down again, but certainly not to Soviet levels. So they are willing to put up with a lot...as Putin and his oligarchs fatten their pockets and lavish estates. (Much like Stalin and his cronies.)
And it’s a lot easier for the Russian people to expend energy rallying around a common enemy like the U.S. or even Ukraine than to stand up to one’s own draconian government.
But there is a reason why so many are emigrating.
He’s like Stalin because AntiFa has the rights to calling people Hitler.
I am glad Putin is not as bad as exceedingly evil Stalin, but whom he want to honor, and it is also good that he is against homosexual relations and the adgenda of the movement, but if Putin really wanted to avoid "the introduction of our western perverted ideas like lesbians and homos in protestant faiths, and boy buggery in the catholic church" then he would favor evangelicals, who are the most strongly unified and opposition to such in the West. .
Instead, the Russian Orthodox church fosters minimal commitment overall, and with its KBG past it is behind the censure of all other faiths, regardless if they are Russian or foreign, conservative or liberal, and I have little doubt the percentage of sexual abuse (as here ) and here is just as much as in Western churches, including Eastern Orthodox, but reporting of its is usually deterred.
Learning "if you can't beat them, join them," Putin uses the RO faith for his purposes of dominion, and thus fosters persecution of the body of Christ, and thus is Hell-bound unless he repents as Saul of Tarsus did.
Russia's Newest Law: No Evangelizing Outside of Church | News ...
Christians are Severely Persecuted in Putin's Russia – But That Could ...
Christian Persecution Increasing in Russia - Christian News Headlines
Report: Non-Orthodox Christians Face 'Strong Discrimination' in Russia
Russia, other former Soviet republics persecuting Christians, new ...
Moscow church destroyed in sign of new Russian repression Posted on Sep 26, 2012 | by Jill Nelson
MOSCOW (BP) -- It was in the early hours of the morning on Sept. 6 when Pastor Vasili Romanyuk's phone rang. A group of men backed by local police were demolishing his Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church, housed in a three-story building nestled in a Moscow suburb. As word spread, congregants arrived at the scene hoping to save the building, but their efforts were futile. By dawn the church was in ruins and some of its most valuable contents were missing.
An isolated incident? A misunderstanding? Analysts watching the current climate in the former Cold War country don't think so: "This destruction of the church is about as concrete of evidence as you can get that something very bad and very troubling is taking place," said Katrina Lantos Swett, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. "This could not have happened without the backing, support, and implicit blessing of the police."
The incident is just one sign of deteriorating freedoms in Russia, and behind the scenes a cozy relationship between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church has raised more than a few eyebrows. As President Vladimir Putin digs into his third term, a number of Kremlin crackdowns involving vague interpretations of the country's extremism law and other human-rights abuses are troubling signs that the country has slipped into a familiar, repressive era.
"When you have unknown people backed by the police coming out at midnight to begin tearing down a church, you know something doesn't smell right," Lantos Swett said.
Officials evicted Holy Trinity Church from its original building in 1995 and relocated the church to the eastern Moscow suburb. The congregation used its own funds to construct a new building and repeatedly battled officials over permits. The church demolition and its history reflect an emerging pattern: Authorities confiscate land from non-favored religious communities and force the congregation to relocate to a remote suburb, the religious leaders apply for permits that are subsequently denied, and officials confiscate (once again) or demolish the relocated congregation, citing lack of proper documentation.
Pastor Romanyuk and a small group of the church's 550 congregants arrived on site around 3:30 a.m. as about 45 men claiming to be civil volunteers blocked them from the building and threw stones. "When I arrived, I just burst into tears," 25-year-old Natalya Cherevichinik told The Moscow Times as she surveyed the destruction. "I couldn't believe that something that had been built over several years could be destroyed in a few hours."
Russian Evangelicals Leery of Orthodox Church, Friday, December 30, 2011:
class="adjusted">MOSCOW, Russia -- For decades, the Russian Orthodox Church was persecuted under the Soviet Union's Communist Party.
Since the early 1990s, the church has grown in size and influence as its relationship with the Russian government has improved significantly.
However, that cozy relationship worries the country's evangelicals.
Threats Against Evangelicals
For eight years, Yuri Sipko ran one of the largest Baptist organizations in Russia. Now, 20 years after the fall of Communism, he worries about the growing threats against the country's evangelical movement.
"The collapse of Communism was supposed to usher in an era of greater religious freedom, but I'm concerned we are moving in the wrong direction," Sipko said.
What makes the Russian evangelicals very concerned is an emerging relationship between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church.
"For example, the government recently introduced religious classes based on the principals of the Orthodox Church in public schools," Sipko said.
"Then late last year, the Russian president announced an initiative to appoint Orthodox chaplains to all army units," he said. "Our constitution clearly states no religion can be the state religion."
Russia Church-State Relations
Russia watchers credit two men, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, for elevating the church's prominence. The state media has also played a key role, often showing the leaders attending church services.
Sergey Ryakhovski knows both men well. As head of Russia's Pentecostal Union, he meets regularly with top government and Orthodox Church leaders.
Ryakhovski worries that the Orthodox Church's influence is coming at the expense of religious freedom, especially for minority groups such as Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists.
"There are so many laws and by-laws that regulate religious life in Russia," Ryakhovski said. "For example, evangelical Christians just can't go out and buy a church building or buy a piece of land to build a church."
"Plus, criticizing or challenging the Orthodox Church is not a task for all," he added.
Orthodox Church Revival
The Russian Orthodox Church on the other hand has had it easy in recent times after decades of state persecution.
Church buildings that were destroyed during the Soviet era have been rebuilt with Russian taxpayer money. In the past 20 years, the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars restoring some 23,000 churches.
Most Russians say they belong to the Orthodox Church. Yet CBN News found mixed reactions on the streets of Moscow to the growing bond between church and state
At Expense of All Others, Putin Picks a Church
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Published: April 24, 2008
STARY OSKOL, Russia —
It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.
First came visits from agents of the F.S.B., a successor to the K.G.B., who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.
There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir V. Putin.
Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.
Russia's De-Facto State Religion : Persecution : http://www ... www.persecution.org/?p=9350&upm... International Christian Co... Putin frequently appears with the Orthodox head, Patriarch Aleksei II, ... Baptists, evangelicals, Pentecostals and many others who cut Christ's robes like bandits, ...
Government Returning Land to Religious Organizations to Favor Orthodox Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009: An ambitious draft law on the transfer of property of religious significance to religious organisations may reignite a process begun in 1993.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.