Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 16 – There are now
more than 15,000 Protestant congregations in the Russian Federation, according
to a Moscow expert, a figure that surpasses the total of Russian Orthodox
parishes and reflects in part Russian flight from the latter because of growing
anger about the policies of the Moscow Patriarchate and the approach of many of its priests.
An article in “Novyye izvestiya” reports
that a Levada Center poll has found that the number of people identifying as
Orthodox has fallen by six percent since 2009, a reflection of the anger of
many believers about such Moscow Patriarchal actions as the condemnation of the
Pussy Riot demonstration (newizv.ru/society/2013-04-11/180944-v-poiskah-vernogo-puti.html).
As
the paper’s Diana Yevdokimova notes, “there are no exact statistics in Russia on
the shift of people from Orthodoxy to other Christian confessions,” but there is
some indirect data which are suggestive, including the number of congregations
either registered by the Justice Ministry or operating without such
registration.
According to the ministry, as of
September 2012, there were 14,616 Orthodox parishes, 4409 Protestant ones, and
234 Catholic ones, but Anatoly Pchelintsev, a specialist on religion at the
Russian State Humanitarian University, says that for every registered
Protestant congregation, there are at least two unregistered ones.
Consequently, he suggests, the
number of Protestant congregations in the Russian Federation is “about 15,000”
or slightly more than the total number of Orthodox ones. According to Pchelintsev, “the number of
Catholic communities, unlike the Protestant ones, has remained at its former
level.”
Roman Lunkin, a leading Moscow
specialist on religious affairs, told the paper that Protestants and Catholics
are both growing and that this trend has “intensified over the last three years
or so.” And he confirmed Pchelintsev’s
estimates saying that “depending on the region from a third to half of the
[Protestant] communities are not registered.”
Polls show that from 56 to 80 percent
of Russians consider themselves to be Orthodox, but Pchelintsev notes, “the
majority of them do not know the elementary foundations of religion and call
themselves Orthodox as a way of asserting their national identity.” The number of real Orthodox believers is
between three and seven percent of the population, he continued.
Few of these committed believers
ever change denomination, Lunkin says, and consequently “the growth in the
number of congregants of other Christian churches is occurring among the
potential Orthodox Russian population which declares that it belongs to
Orthodox culture, is patriotic but chooses another faith.”
Lunkin says that the Russian Orthodox
Church has only itself to blame for such losses. “In the Orthodox Church
alongside faith or sometimes in place of faith in Christ is offered faith in
great Holy Russia, in the state, in patriotic values in ‘United Russia,’ but
just no in Christ. People who choose
another Christian church are consciously choosing simply faith.”
For many Russians, he continues, the way
in which the Moscow Patriarchate responded to the Pussy Riot scandal offended
them, not because they supported the girls involved but rather because “they
saw in Orthodoxy part of the state machine which does not display mercy or
follow the message of the Gospels.”
Pchelintsev agrees. He says that “we are
observing a small crisis of faith in Russia which is connected with the unethical
behavior of Orthodox priests,” something that he said is alienating the
faithful from the Church. The Moscow scholar added that if those who change
denominations see in their new churches, they may leave the latter as well.
Patriarchate officials like archpriests
Vladimir Vigilyansky and Vsevolod Chaplin, play down this trend, saying that
this is a two way street with believers shifting in both directions and that “over
the last two or three years,” most of those making a change have joined the
Orthodox Church rather than Protestant or Catholic ones.
The independent specialists disagree and
in fact point to deeper problems with Orthodoxy. Lunkin, for example, says that the Church
often tells its members that “You are baptized and you are Orthodox and that’s
all.” People want more from their churches,
and the Protestants and Catholics give them more.
The Catholics require catechism courses,
and both they and the Protestans make a point to involve their believers in
public activities. That makes them stronger not only as institutions on their
own, Lunkin argues, but means that they, unlike Orthodox congregations, form an
important element of civil society.
Pchelintsev points to another aspect of
Orthodox practice that is driving Russians away: the continuing use in services
of Old Church Slavonic which few if any congregants understand. “Nowadays, the Bible is sold everywhere. People
want to study it and know it,” and that is what happens in Protestant
congregations.
Lunkin says that the movement of people
from Orthodoxy to other Christian faiths in Russia shows that “the Soviet habit
of considering that all except the Orthodox are sectarians is gradually passing”
and that for at least a decade, there is no reason to equate Orthodoxy and
Russianness although many still do.
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