20 Years of Religious Freedom

The Cathedral of the Transfiguration Diocese
in Novosibirsk. Spring 2011.

 On the evening of the December 16^th, the Roman Catholic Church sponsored a roundtable discussion - “20 Years of Religious Freedom in Russia.” At the Mass held in the Cathedral before the meeting and at the roundtable itself, Bishop Joseph Wert spoke of his own experience as an underground Jesuit and priest in Central Asia and Siberia. He spoke of the sacrifice that were necessary in order to be involved in the church and of the way Catholics at that time experienced great longing to be fed spiritually. Believers scattered throughout villages on the steppe would dream, he said, that somehow a priest might lose his way and happen upon them. Then, after years or even decades of waiting, they might be able to receive the Sacrament. Every opportunity to gather together and to hear the Word and to celebrate Eucharist was considered an amazing gift of grace.

The diocesan center is in the foreground
 

In the past two decades the situation has changed radically. The Catholic church went from having 3 priests in all of the Asiatic part of the former USSR to having more than 100 in Siberia today; Mass is celebrated at numerous Catholic congregations around Novosibirsk, including in the impressive Cathedral; the roundtable was held in a brand new diocesan center, and this building will be the home for many other public and outreach events in the future. For the Catholic Church, even more significantly for the Orthodox Church, and also (even if in a more limited way) for the other denominations represented at that meeting, the conditions of church life have improved tremendously. Even our small Lutheran congregation, despite its radically reduced numbers, is in many ways better off than it was before the 1990s.

Yet, as the Bishop pointed out and as stories from my congregation's members have confirmed, external repression did not always results in a loss of inner freedom. Bishop Wert knew why he was running through the forest to escape detection – it was to serve those who were waiting for them. The parents and grandparents of my congregation's members knew the value of the Bible and their spiritual traditions when they had to hide the Scriptures under floorboards and could sign hymns only by candlelight in isolated basements.

Church life today, in contrast, shows that external freedom does not always lead to a full flowering of the spiritual life. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the conditions have now been met so that a believer can be “perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.”^{1 2} Being free from is a reason for great joy and celebration – I hope and pray that in all Christian churches (whether here or in the West) this is something that is not taken for granted. At the same time, a challenge before churches wherever they are – to focus our ministry on freedom for. Quoting Luther again, “a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

Bishop Wert is to my left at the roundtable

The roundtable that night brought together Christians from Novosibirsk, but in reality, the circle is much bigger. Wherever we are, we are called to put our faith into action in works of love, to be our neighbors servants, both in these Advent days of waiting and in all the days that are to come.

1 Martin Luther. “On the Freedom of a Christian.”

2 The degree to which there is true freedom of religion in Russia is a matter of debate. My own personal experience is that there is still quite a bit of prejudice in society against any group that is not the Russian Orthodox Church. On the other hand, the law grants freedom of religion, and I personally have not had any experience with government officials breaking the law in that regard. Going on my own experience, then, it seems that there is not much of a problem, even if there are on occasion cases when government officials become too open in their aggression against other faiths (for example, the news story that has been coming out today about the banning of the Bhagvad Gita  in a neighboring state). However, if one reads the reports of an expert on religious freedom in Russia, Sergei Filitov, it seems that it is not possible to generalized based on my experience: “The last year and half or ttwo has been a time of constant growth in discrimination and pressure on the legal rights of religious minorities, especially Protestants. In all of Russia it has become unbelievably hard for Protestant to receive land for the construction of church bulidngs and renting space has become quite difficult. Persecution of Christians continues on all fronts – government officials create all sorts of difficulties for the work of protestant churches with children, campaigns are put together against drug rehab centers, missionary work is limited. Protestant congregation are en masse refusing to get registered since registration simply provokes problems with 'law' enforcement agencies. Official statistics about the number of members in protestant congregations are so distorted by government officials that it is impossible to come to any conclusions about their quantity.” (translation mine). http://www.keston.org.uk/_russianreview/edition49/01-autumn-2010-review.htm