Subject: [CivilSoc] Salvation Army Pressured by Soviet-Era Bureaucrats
From: Center for Civil Society International (ccsi@u.washington.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 07 2001 - 19:43:06 EST
This item is from Johnson's Russia List #5011, 7 January 2001
<davidjohnson@erols.com>
#8
Analysis: Salvation Army under attack
By ARIEL COHEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) - As Russians plan to celebrate Orthodox
Christmas on Sunday, one Christian religious organization in Moscow
has no reason to be jolly. It is the Salvation Army, an international
evangelical religious movement founded in Britain in 1865.
The Salvation Army is famous worldwide for its uniformed,
bell-ringing, donation-gathering members who are guided by the
movement's slogan, "Heart to God, Hand to Man."
The Christian charity operated in czarist Russia between the 1890s
and 1917 and was expelled by the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka,
in 1923. Later on, some of its members were imprisoned under Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin.
The religious organization returned to Russia in 1992 after the
collapse of communism and has helped tens of thousands of homeless,
drug and alcohol addicts, and AIDS patients countrywide. It feeds
6,000 Russians a month.
The Salvation Army has been operating in 14 Russian cities, including
the "northern capital" St. Petersburg. However, under Russian law all
religious organizations must register with the state or risk
shutdown. The deadline for registration just passed on Dec. 31, 2000.
The Moscow authorities refuse to register the group.
The Moscow City Department of Justice, in a show of inanity rare even
for the Russian bureaucracy, is referring to the Salvation Army's
military-style uniforms and quasi-military "officer ranks" to deny it
registration.
As the organization's website explains for all too see, the words
"Blood and Fire" on its flag, which dates back to 1878, symbolize the
blood of Jesus and the fire of the Holy Spirit.
"The Army's weapons are Biblical: faith in God, truth, righteousness,
salvation, prayer and the Word of God. Its 'officers' are the clergy
and the members are 'soldiers," the website says.
Moscow officials have not heard this yet, but the Salvation Army,
active in 107 countries, was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize. "It is the most peaceful army on Earth," church officials say.
The roots of the persecution go back to the 1997 Law on Religious
Organizations, which was promulgated by the communist-dominated Duma
in cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy),
which is seeking a quasi-official status with the Russian State.
The Orthodox Church was the official religion under the monarchy --
it was headed by the czar since Peter the Great deposed the Moscow
Patriarch as head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the early
eighteenth century.
The Orthodox Church was persecuted under communist leaders Vladimir
Lenin and Stalin, and more than 100,000 priests were murdered -- but
later on it was by tapped by Stalin as a means of patriotic
mobilization during World War II.
Many of the current Orthodox Church hierarchs used to be Soviet-era
KGB secret police informers and even officers.
Under the 1997 law, only the official Russian Orthodox Church, Islam,
orthodox Judaism and Buddhism are recognized as "traditional"
religions of Russia. All the rest must undergo an excruciating
registration procedure with the state, and subject themselves to
official examiners often provided by the Orthodox church, which
referred to Protestantism and Catholicism in some of its publications
as "sects."
The Salvation Army had to spend $20,000 for two still unresolved
court cases demanding the right to register. One of the courts
disregarded an earlier Russian Supreme Court decision which all but
called the 1997 law illegal and unconstitutional, and granted
registration to Jehovah's Witnesses.
The legal expenses so far could feed thousands of hungry Russian
children for two months.
Russian courts and authorities have a hard time applying the law
liberally, wisely -- and constitutionally. In many cases, religious
organizations need to prove that they are Christian, or to present
extensive documentation to explain their creed. These were the cases
of the Salvation Army, of many Pentecostals, other Protestants, of
Scientologists and followers of new religions.
Col. Kenneth Ballie, the head of the Salvation Army's Russian branch
said, "We were asked whether we are Christians and how we can prove
it ... Since we have the word 'army' in our name, they said we are a
militarized organization bent on the violent overthrow of the
government."
Ballie, the U.S.-born Salvation Army pastor in Moscow, referred to
one city official who is particularly hostile. Ballie refused to name
him. But UPI learned it may be Vladimir Zhbankov, currently assistant
chief of the Moscow City Justice Department and formerly a senior
official in charge of legal propaganda in the Soviet Communist Party
Central Committee under Brezhnev. In response to a query by the
Keston Institute, a widely respected British-based religious freedom
watchdog, Zhbankov wrote that the law "does not require the
registering organ to divulge information concerning religious
organizations which ... have not been registered."
The Salvation Army case highlights what has become a chronic and
continuous affliction in Russia: disregard for freedom of worship;
heavy-handed government intervention in the functioning of religious
institutions; and an incestuous relationship between the Orthodox
Church and the Russian state.
Salvation Army officials pray and hope that in the end they will win,
and the Ministry of Justice will grant them official recognition and
registration, rendering Moscow's obstinacy null and void. In the
meantime, the Moscow city authorities denied the Salvation Army the
right to use formerly provided premises to prepare food, and ceased
allowing use of city vehicles to feed the homeless.
Thus, during the forthcoming Orthodox Christmas, many of the less
fortunate Muscovites will go hungry because the Salvation Army will
not be there for them. But the ex-Soviet bureaucrats will not care:
they will celebrate smugly, believing that they have defeated a
pernicious "foreign military force". At least for now.
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