The Voice of America Beams Religion to the Soviet Bloc

There is a growing government awareness of the role of religion in international affairs.

For 45 minutes each week, the Rev. Victor Potapov has a chance to tell multitudes of citizens in the Soviet Union about religion in America. The soft-spoken Orthodox priest broadcasts a radio show, “Religion in Our Life,” from the Voice of America in Washington, D.C. It is beamed toward Russia six times during the week, with topics ranging from interviews with the recently released Siberian Seven to a book-by-book analysis of the Bible.

Potapov receives only a trickle of smuggled mail from his listeners. Last year, a letter arrived from a man who could not attend church during Holy Week and discovered a series of special worship services Potapov prepared. “You won’t believe it, but I was moved to tears,” he wrote.

Potapov believes “religion is growing by leaps and bounds” in the Soviet Union, and he tailors his broadcasts to encourage a Russian spiritual renewal. “The Soviets like to point out that religion and science are incompatible,” he said, so he concentrates on refuting that premise by broadcasting feature stories about Soviet scientists who have also adhered to their faith, such as helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky.

This year, under VOA’S new director, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Potapov’s programming responsibilities have expanded to include worship service specials marking each of the 12 festivals on the Orthodox calendar. He estimates he has between 20 and 30 million listeners each week, drawn primarily from the 50 to 80 million Orthodox believers and two to three million Baptists in the Soviet Union.

VOA, a branch of the United States Information Agency, broadcasts 960 hours of programming a week in 42 languages. Scarcely 5 percent of that consists of religious programming, but growing government awareness of the role religion plays in international affairs has brought about “a systematic and careful expansion,” Tomlinson said. In 1982, for the first time ever, VOA broadcast worldwide in English a Christmas Eve service from National Presbyterian Church in Washington.

The Christmas broadcast raised suspicions among church-state purists, but Tomlinson said, “I told them I’m Episcopalian, my deputy is Jewish, and so on. What we are doing is above all balanced, reflects all faiths, and reflects the real America, and that, I think, is absolutely central to VOA’S mission.” VOA is chartered to present to the world who Americans are and what they do—a topic of endless interest abroad.

VOA’S religious programming is sensitive to current events. Tomlinson explained, “When martial law was declared in Poland, the celebration of mass was taken off Warsaw radio and TV, so we expanded our 15-minute news program to include the presentation of a weekly mass from a Polish church in the United States.” Because of this and other Polish-language programs, Poland’s military regime fired off an angry letter to Washington that accused VOA of “destabilizing constitutional order” in that country. Tomlinson counts that a high compliment. “The reason we are effective is not because we are hitting the Polish people with distortions or with a product that has a great anti-Communist spin. We are going with truth, with facts, with what’s happening in the world. That’s a great threat to totalitarian regimes.”

The VOA tries to portray the diversity of American life and thought. For religious programming, this means broadcasting news and specials of Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. By doing this, Tomlinson said, “we convey something that is essentially an American, or a Western, principle: that we believe there is something mightier than the state.”

For VOA’S “America Today” program early next year, a major series of features on American religious life is being planned. It will cover the gamut: denominations, ecumenism, evangelicals, women in the churches, church-state controversies, and America’s religious roots, among other topics. Neither this, nor the more specialized programming done by Potapov, is intended to proselytize.

VOA first entered the airwaves just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. Today, the equipment they use is still largely of that vintage. Tomlinson said one-third of VOA’S transmitters are more than 30 years old, and broadcasts to the Soviet Union from Munich, West Germany, originate on equipment confiscated from the Nazis. Chronic understaffing and dated equipment in Washington inhibit VOA expansion. Its congressional appropriations are inevitably low because other priorities capture headlines and votes.

In the war of words, VOA is an essential though scarcely noticed front-line combatant. Its commitment to religious broadcasting is an acknowledgment that freedom of worship and belief is integral to a free society.

BETH SPRING

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