Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls

Christian Century, March 21, 2001 by Walter Sawatsky

Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls.

Edited by John Witte Jr. and Michael Bourdeaux. Orbis, 353 pp., $25.00.

THE FACE OF Christianity in the former Soviet Union has been transformed several times during the past decade. When the Soviet Union dissolved, it was common to speak of a spiritual vacuum needing to be filled and to report on the "harvest of souls" in Russia. Then came warnings about the methods of ignorant and inappropriate evangelists/missionaries. A United Methodist video about this era was titled "The Struggle for the Soul of Russia." It showed contrasting images of nondenominational baptisms in swimming pools and of multigenerational families lined up for baptism by an overworked Orthodox priest. Then the 1997 Russian Law on Religion put in place new restrictions on religious practice. Russian Orthodoxy received privileged status, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism were recognized in various geographic regions, and the Catholic and Protestant (mainline and evangelical) traditions that could show that they had been legally recognized during the Soviet era were permitted to apply for reregistration.

The law's purpose was to stop missionary activity, especially by new religious movements and undisciplined independent groups. Proselytism was threatening Orthodoxy and Russian culture, said many prominent Orthodox leaders. The right to religious freedom was once more being threatened, said many prominent Western legislators and spokespersons for mission agencies.

This book of essays presents part of the research findings from a major project funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, "Soul Wars ... in the New World Order," managed through Emory University. That sponsorship accounts for the book's human and religious rights framework, though it transcends that Western legal viewpoint.

A shortcoming of the book should be noted from the outset: while the proselytism debate within ecumenical Christianity requires addressing the issues of missiology and ecclesiology, theologians and missiologists, especially from the Orthodox world, are missing from this work. The WCC theological affirmations of common witness, which included a rejection of proselytism as a "perversion of witness," were easier to formulate in 1961, when the point of reference was the distant Third World. Now a renewed decade of mission within Europe has brought to the fore the long legacy of confessional strife.

But while not the definitive word on this subject, Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia offers some rich perspectives. The essays by Philip Walters and James Billington provide numerous shrewd insights into the diversity of today's Russian Orthodoxy. For example, Walters notes the parallels between the pre-Soviet mission efforts that described Orthodoxy as a moribund tradition hopelessly tied to the state and the current descriptions of its tendency "toward schism ... exacerbated by particular aspects of the Soviet legacy."

Billington, who notes the essentially religious imagery surrounding the moments of political crisis of the past decade, draws attention to the popular notions of miracle, providential intervention and moral recovery that set the promise and limits for Orthodox leadership. He describes the authoritarian nationalists who are seeking some return to a mythic status quo, and the younger reformers who are "working for a parish-based renewal of Russian society independent of the government and aided by a revived Christian pedagogy centered on the vernacular Bible ... and a liturgy translated into modern Russian." This reformist vision has clear affinities with Protestantism.

The major Russian Orthodox voice from within is that of Metropolitan Kirill, especially in his speech at the WCC conference on world mission held in Brazil in 1996. Kirill spoke about the chaos and suffering his society has experienced this decade, and he articulated a missiology of inculturation whereby culture becomes "a bearer of the message of Christ." Kirill thanked Western churches for their past support but then complained about a "crusade ... against the Russian church, even as it began recovering from a prolonged disease." He noted that some missionaries "behaved as though no local churches existed."

Kirill's solution for getting beyond the "ecumenical disaster" of proselytism is to base mission on what he calls "the fundamental principle of the early Christian ecclesiology: the principle of the local church"--that is, "that the church in a given place shall be fully responsible for its people before God ... [and] that nobody anywhere shall ignore a local church."

The Witte-Bourdeaux volume is most fascinating for the way specialists on Soviet religion now read that history and assess the current situation. Aleksandr Shchipkov's review of recent sociological studies ends with charts and in-depth interviews demonstrating that a major portion of the population always retained some religious beliefs, but that these beliefs now cohere less along ethnic and confessional lines. According to recent mappings of religious adherence, more than 50 percent of the members of the Orthodox Church belong to national minorities other than Russian, and 43 percent of the practicing Catholics in central Russia are Russian, while around Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia, Catholic parishes are almost entirely Russian. The various Protestant groups are much more closely linked to specific geographic areas. And the Urals region is particularly susceptible to secularization and contains "an abundance of home-grown sects."