Russia's Crackdown on religion

[Fast Walker 52]

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/june/no-evangelizing-outside-of-church-russia-proposes.html

Update (July 8): This week, Russian president Vladimir Putin approved a package of anti-terrorism laws that usher in tighter restrictions on missionary activity and evangelism.

Despite prayers and protests from religious leaders and human rights advocates, the Kremlin announced Putin’s approval yesterday. The amendments, including laws against sharing faith in homes, online, or anywhere but recognized church buildings, go into effect July 20.

Though opponents to the new measures hope to eventually appeal in court or elect legislators to amend them, they have begun to prepare their communities for life under the new rules, reported Forum 18 News Service, a Christian outlet reporting on the region.

Protestants and religious minorities small enough to gather in homes fear they will be most affected. Last month, “the local police officer came to a home where a group of Pentecostals meet each Sunday," Konstantin Bendas, deputy bishop of the Pentecostal Union, told Forum 18. "With a contented expression he told them: ‘Now they're adopting the law I'll drive you all out of here.’ I reckon we should now fear such zealous enforcement.”

“There are potentially very wide-sweeping ramifications to this law,” Joel Griffith of the Slavic Gospel Association said in a Mission Network News report. “It just depends on, again, how it is going to be enforced, and that is a very huge question mark.”

This is from last July but I just heard about it. With all of the new found love for Russia on the right and by Trump, this is just shocking how extreme it is. I really had no idea.

[11cents]

1. Not a crackdown on "religion" but on non-Orthodox Christianity

Putin's hand-in-glove with the Russian Orthodox Church, as is very much in the tradition of pre-Soviet Russian rulers. This kind of thing, cracking down on evangelical activity by Western churches, is on the Russian Orthodox wishlist. In fact, this isn't the first law of this kind, though it looks like it's the most severe.

I gather, by the way, that there's a minor trend among "white nationalists"/neo-Nazis of converting to the Russian Orthodoxy.

[Fast Walker 52]

2. it looked to me like even Orthodox believers had limitations on where they could worship together

or "evangelize".


"that there's a minor trend among "white nationalists"/neo-Nazis of converting to the Russian Orthodoxy."-- that's really creepy.

[treestar]

3. How bizarre.

Thank God for the First Amendment.