On the first night of the August coup in the Soviet Union, Gleb Yakunin, a reform-minded Orthodox priest, defied hard-line Communist leaders by joining supporters of Russian leader Boris Yeltsin holed up in the parliament building. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksi II kept a low profile on the first day of the coup, but called the action “illegal” on the second day. Throughout the rapidly changing events, many Protestants watched in great fear of KGB retaliation for their recently stepped-up religious activities.
With the ultimate failure of the coup and the ensuing political changes, Soviet religious leaders continue to pick their way carefully through the rapidly changing landscape. And as the Soviet Union determines its future, Western observers say churches and Christians face both unprecedented opportunities and tough challenges in whatever configuration of republics finally emerges.
According to Kent Hill, executive director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the failed coup was “another nail in the coffin of the antireligious policies of the past.” Says Hill, “This solidifies the gains that have been made on behalf of religious freedom, and steps toward democracy should provide safeguards for those freedoms.”
End Of The Party
A major factor is the dismantling of the Communist party and the restructuring of the KGB. Many Soviet church observers say that while glasnost saw the high-level placement of reformers in the past few years, the KGB and Communist-party leaders still held the top positions, resulting in continued difficulties for the churches.
For example, Peter Deyneka, Jr., of the newly formed Peter Deyneka USSR Ministries (see p. 45), told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that while many high-level officials he met with during the past two years were sympathetic toward the evangelistic projects he proposed, Communist bureaucrats always gave a final veto. Since the coup, those officials have been replaced. “Now, for the first time, mass evangelization is theoretically possible because these hindrances have been moved aside,” Deyneka says.
Deyneka and his wife, Anita, believe this has resulted in a new spirit of confidence among Christians. “We are sensing in our discussions that [the failed coup] is giving the church, which has been so persecuted and pushed to a corner of society, a new feeling of … readiness to evangelize their nation,” Anita says. Peter believes the fear of a return to repression has been broken: “For the first time in their history, the church can look forward … and not worry about who is behind them.”
Changing Soviet attitudes also offer church leaders new opportunities, according to Paul de Vries, professor of religion and philosophy at the King’s College in New York and president of the International Research Institute for Values Changes (IRIV), a research organization looking into the effect of Judeo-Christian values in society. The institute is conducting the Ten Commandments research project in the Soviet Union, to study the impact of the commandments on the Soviet people’s attitudes (CT, Mar. 5, 1990, p. 34). De Vries says a Soviet “spiritual reawakening is now taking place.”
Recent statistics collected by IRIV indicate that the Soviet people are eight times more likely to trust a religious leader than a political leader. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would believe the word of honor of a religious leader, compared to only 10 percent who said they would trust a KGB officer.
“The church has a unique role in terms of people’s trust,” de Vries says.
New Challenges
Western experts agree that within the new context, the church faces some large obstacles, the biggest of which may be interreligious conflict. In many ways, long-standing tensions between Christian groups were held in check by communist domination. Those disagreements are now resurfacing. For example, on the last Sunday of July, an Orthodox priest and about 30 congregants stormed a Baptist church in Soviet Georgia in an attempt to keep the Baptists from assembling. The church pastor said this has happened at least five times in the past year. In Ukraine, tensions between Catholics and Orthodox have led to violent confrontations.
“There is a tendency in some of the republics for the dominant religion to try and exercise the new nationalistic atmosphere to discriminate against nonmajority religions,” Hill says.
Of particular concern to Protestants is the position of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the past, the powerful church body has used its influence to discriminate against evangelicals. “Unless these [dominant churches] … are tolerant and want equal rights for all religious groups, it could mean more persecution,” says Anita Deyneka.
As the various republics assert their independence, a “checkered pattern” of religious freedom is likely to emerge, says Mark Elliot, director of the recently renamed Institute for East-West Christian Studies (formerly the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Marxism) at Wheaton College. “If we look at a provincial center in Siberia where glasnost hasn’t permeated too deeply yet and compare that with Estonia, for example, obviously the two religious-rights pictures are going to be quite different,” he says.
Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Yeltsin, will you kindly state for the audience your personal religious beliefs?
Gorbachev: I am an atheist. But I—and I’ve never concealed this—I respect the feelings and the religious beliefs of each citizen, of each person. This is a question of personal sovereignty, and we have done a good deal so as to, in a legislative sense, guarantee each person the right to call himself what he wants, to allow each person to select his own religion.
Yeltsin: The services, the ritual aspect, I don’t really observe those, although I’ve been in church quite often, because during the service there’s a kind of internal feeling of moral cleansing, as it were. And I certainly make a point of attending church, not to mention my respect, of course, for believers.… I’m also superstitious, by the way.
From ABC’s “National Town Hall Meeting”: reported in the New York Times.
That checkerboard could pose logistical obstacles for ministry as well, according to Slavic Gospel Association spokesman Dwight Gibson. Will people now need seven or eight visas to travel across what was once the Soviet Union? How many languages will Bibles and Christian books need to be published in if people refuse to speak Russian?
Despite the confusion, Gibson and the other observers are optimistic that Christians can use the situation for good. Says Gibson, “When you have times of great change, people tend to call out to God.”
