Believers Push Forward despite Legal Limbo

At the Moscow International Book Fair in September, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) booth was a major draw. American sponsors recount with delight how hundreds of Soviets lined up every day—in a queue stretching past the nearly-always-empty booth of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her American Atheist Press—in hopes of receiving a free New Testament and a glimpse of Christian literature in both English and Russian.

Laws against religious literature, though unenforced of late, remain. Yet, in this and other areas of religious activity, Christians continue to take advantage of new opennness provided by glasnost. “The legal situation is in a kind of limbo,” said Michael Rowe, a Soviet church expert from Keston College in England, which monitors religious rights in the Eastern bloc. “Increasingly, people are going ahead … and acting in advance of [changes in] the law.”

Literature Explosion

Just a few years ago, the only Bibles and religious books entering the USSR were smuggled in. Now, the Soviets have been granting unprecedented permission for Bibles to be imported, and Soviet citizens are openly seeking information about Christianity.

In addition to ECPA, which represented 80 members at the fair, Multnomah, Tyndale, Lion, the Southern Baptists, and a coalition including the Mennonites, the Friends, and the Brethren in Christ set up booths and reported strong interest in their materials.

“There is a hunger there, a desire for change, for knowledge of the truth,” said Jeff McLinden of Bible Literature International (BLI). Millions of Bibles have been shipped into the Soviet Union over the last year, and recently, truck-loads of literature have been allowed in with little or no customs examinations.

The Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) and other Christian groups have begun mailing Bibles and other religious materials to Soviet Christians as well, although there are reports of returned packages, confiscations, and mail theft. However, SGA president Peter Deyneka, Jr., said his group has successfully mailed about 100,000 packets of Christian literature.

In another new venture, Western groups have begun cooperative projects to have Bibles and other religious literature printed on state presses within the Soviet Union. The 10,000 Testaments handed out at the book fair were provided by the World Bible Translation Center of Texas, which has just signed a letter of intent with the largest publisher in the USSR to publish 100,000 Russian-language New Testaments and distribute them through bookstores across the country.

Several American and British publishers have also entered negotiations with Soviet publishers for the possible publication of Christian titles there. Multnomah senior editor Al Janssen told CHRISTIANITY TODAY his company is working with a Soviet publisher on a contract for astronaut James Irwin’s book Destination Moon. The book would actually be a text used in Soviet schools, Janssen said. In addition, he said Multnomah is talking with another publisher about the possibility of publishing Love for a Lifetime, by James Dobson, and Growing Wise in Family Life, by Chuck Swindoll.

Other firms are also in negotiations. “I have one Soviet company alone who wants me to pull together several publishers and develop a plan to publish 20 Christian books over the next three years,” said ECPA executive director Doug Ross.

But while Bibles have been printed with relative ease, the content of commentaries and other books have proven to be a thornier problem, BLI president Jim Falkenberg said that government “censors” delayed the release of Luis Palau’s booklet What Is a Real Christian? printed in Kiev late this summer (CT, Oct. 20, 1989, p. 36), because of a reference to the fact that Karl Marx had once read the Gospel of John. The booklet was eventually released intact.

Problems are also arising in the distribution of Bibles and other literature. Within church circles, the issue of selling Bibles has become particularly sensitive. The All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB) has decided to give Bibles to nonbelievers and new converts and sell them to Christians “for a reasonable price.” The church body says it has no other source of income and needs millions of roubles to follow through with building projects and evangelistic activities now allowed.

The AUCECB has discussed this policy with Western groups. The SGA’s Deyneka told CT he has “no problem” with the policy. “It is a … wise move that will assist in evangelizing the Soviet Union,” he said.

But other groups have some concerns about Bibles intended as gifts being sold to raise money. The problem is especially acute within the Russian Orthodox Church, which sells Bibles at extremely high prices.

Mixed Signals

Within the past two months, at least three evangelistic groups have been established. In the western Ukraine, a group called the Light of the Gospel is setting itself up as a missionary society. The group has already been doing street evangelism, conducting meetings in churches and hired halls, and showing the film Jesus.

In Moscow, Christians formed the Center for Evangelism to hold Bible studies as a follow-up to the Palau crusades. And in Leningrad, a nondenominational youth group has begun to continue the work of Christian musician Valeri Barinov, who has emigrated. Rowe said that the Soviet authorities have so far done nothing to hinder these new groups, even though they are illegal under the current law.

At the same time, Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) executive director Kent Hill reports that authorities have banned outdoor preaching and evangelism in Moscow’s trendy Arbat Street district. Hill said unregistered Pentecostals in the South are also not being allowed to gather in parks for evangelical services.

“No one knows what the law really is, and individual local authorities just don’t know what they should do,” Rowe said. “And they’re obviously not getting any guidance from the top.”

Several drafts of new legislation on religion have been leaked to the West, but so far, none has been officially published in the USSR. “We need to force the public discussion of the laws being offered on religion,” said Alexander Ogorodnikov, who spent eight years in a Soviet prison for his religious activities. Ogorodnikov told a Washington conference sponsored by the IRD, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the National Association of Evangelicals that he has formed the Christian Democratic party as a vehicle to push for legal reforms.

Some Christians speculate that the delays in the new laws may actually be helping Soviet believers by allowing them time to go further than the new law may allow. But Ogorodnikov remains skeptical. “We are still dependent upon the will of one man,” he said.

By Kim A. Lawton.

WORLD SCENE

TURKEY

An Ark Sighting?

There has been little public discussion of the topic in recent years, but in September two American researchers claimed to have new photographs and video footage of the remains of Noah’s ark. Chuck Aaron and Bob Garbe of the Orlando, Florida-based Emmanuel Expeditions Foundation, showed pictures they said were taken from a helicopter flying over the southwest side of Mount Ararat, depicting a portion of the ark encased in a glacier.

The researchers appeared at a news conference held September 21 near Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish newspapers and television gave wide coverage to the story. The publicity also drew an accusation from a Turkish professor who claimed the two Americans were linked with a U.S. plan to base “Star Wars” weapons on the mountain. Aaron dismissed the allegations, published in a Turkish newspaper, as “absolutely, positively absurd.”

Aaron, who has made five trips to explore Ararat, said a hot spell that melted the glacial ice cover made the discovery possible. Other researchers have yet to examine and comment on the pictures. Aaron said he planned to continue his exploration through October, and hopes to bring another team of geologists, archeologists, and other scientists to the site next June.

MISSIONS

Overseas Force Grows

The International Foreign Mission Association (IFMA) has reported a gain in the number of missionaries serving with its 67 member agencies. The organization currently counts 8,887 missionaries, including 6,897 career overseas workers, 1,368 career home workers, and 622 short-term missionaries. After retirements, deaths, and resignations during 1988, this total represents a gain of 190 missionaries. During the past several years, the missionary force has remained relatively steady in number, said Jack Frizen, executive director of the nondenominational association.

Member agencies report more than 1,100 missionaries and candidates from countries outside North America. Among the largest IFMA members are the Evangelical Alliance Mission, with 934 missionaries; SIM International, with 590; and the Africa Inland Mission, with 525.

IRELAND

Evangelical Alliance Formed

Citing a significant rise in conversions and an improved climate for cooperation, a steering committee of church leaders has announced plans to launch an evangelical alliance in the Republic of Ireland. Committee members were drawn from the Church of Ireland (Anglican); Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal churches; Brethren assemblies; and house churches. The group met with representatives of the World Evangelical Fellowship, the Evangelical Alliance of the United Kingdom, and its regional body, the Northern Ireland Evangelical Alliance, to gain their backing.

According to a steering committee report, evangelism occurred in the past mainly among the Protestant minority in Ireland, but now most converts are former Catholics. House groups are spreading rapidly in Dublin and across the country, and there is an evangelical witness in almost every Irish community, something unheard of five years ago.

The Irish Evangelical Alliance will seek to include a broad range of evangelicals, the committee report said. The intent is to be more inclusive than the short-lived Association of Irish Evangelicals, which excluded house churches and Pentecostals before folding in 1985.

ROME

Runcie, Pope Pledge Unity

Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie and Pope John Paul II prayed together and signed a declaration committing the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches to efforts towards “visible unity.” The meeting was Runcie’s first official call on the Vatican as head of the 70 million-member Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal church in America. It was only the fourth visit of its kind made by an archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation.

Reports of the meeting indicated the two leaders agreed the Pope should have primacy in any reunited church, but differed on what would be the exact nature of his role. The ordination of women, permitted by some segments of the Anglican Communion but rejected by the Roman Catholic church, stands as a major obstacle between the two bodies. This was not discussed, however, during the meeting.

Runcie’s visit drew harsh opposition from Protestants who oppose any talks with Rome. Ian Paisley, the outspoken cleric from Northern Ireland, called Runcie “an ecclesiastical Judas Iscariot.”

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Killed: Australian lay missionary Jacquiline Hamill, 36, and four Filipino church members, by inmates of a Philippine prison. Hamill and a group from the Joyful Assemblies of God church were leading a Bible study in the prison when inmates seized and held them for two days.

Denied: Visas to evangelical missionaries trying to enter Venezuela. The situation has worsened in recent months, according to the Evangelical Council of Venezuela.

Died: Antiapartheid activist and Anglican Bishop Joseph Nkoane, of cancer at his home in the black township of Kwa Thema, South Africa. He was 60.

Raymond Davis, general director emeritus of SIM International. Davis began his service with the Sudan Interior Mission in Ethiopia in 1934. He was 78.

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