Protestantism in Russia

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Lutheran Church of St. Catherine (Vasileostrovsky District, Saint Petersburg).
Russian Baptists, Vladivostok.

Protestants in Russia constitute 1–2% (i.e. 1.5 million – 3 million adherents) of the overall population of the country.[1] Additionally there are around 15.000–20.000 Doukhobors and 40.000 Molokans in Russia, who have similarities to Protestantism.[2] By 2004, there were 4,435 registered Protestant societies representing 21% of all registered religious organizations, which is second place after Eastern Orthodoxy. By contrast in 1992 the Protestants reportedly had 510 organizations in Russia.[3]

Many missionaries operating in the country are from Protestant denominations.

Protestants.[5]

History

Catherine II of Russia by Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder. Herself born into a German Lutheran aristocratic family, she invited Germans
, who often happened to be Protestant, to settle in Russia.

The first Protestant churches (

Reformed
) in Russia appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries in major towns and cities such as Moscow in connection with expatriate communities from western Europe. The Lutheran churches, in particular, represented a sizeable minority in pre-1917 Russia.

In the 18th century, under Czarina

Mennonites
, Lutherans, Reformed and also Roman Catholics.

The first Russian

Baptist
communities arose in unrelated strains in three widely separated regions of the Russian Empire (Transcaucasia, Ukraine, and St. Petersburg) in the 1860s and 1870s.

From the information of Christian History Institute, the number of Baptists in Russia significantly grew after World War I. Some Russian prisoners were converted by German missionaries and returned home to preach to others. The 1920s saw new opportunities for missionary work as the Bolshevik regime initially seemed to offer an olive branch to those identified as ‘sectarians’. In the 1930s, Stalinist repression decimated church life, with many arrests and church closures, but this was not the end of the story. The Second World War saw a relaxation of church-state relations in the Soviet Union and the Protestant community benefited alongside their Russian Orthodox counterparts. The immediate post-war period saw the growth of Baptist and Pentecostal congregations and there was a religious revival in these years. Statistics provided by the leaders of the registered church suggest 250,000 baptised members in 1946 rising to 540,000 by 1958.[6] In fact the influence of the Protestantism was much wider than these figures suggest: in addition to the existence of unregistered Baptist and Pentecostal groups, there were also thousands who attended worship without taking baptism. Many Baptist and Pentecostal congregations were in Ukraine. Women were almost as many as men in these congregations, though the pastors were male.[7]

Although the Soviet state had established the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in 1944, and encouraged congregations to register, this did not signal the end to the persecution of Christians. Many leaders and ordinary believers of different Protestant communities fell victims to the persecution by Communist regime, including imprisonment. The leader of the

Pentecostals were given 20–25 year prison terms en masse and many perished there, including one of the leaders of the movement, Ivan Voronaev.[8]

In the period after the Second World War, Protestant believers in the USSR (Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists etc.) were forced into mental hospitals and endured trials and imprisonment (often for refusal to enter military service). Some were even deprived of their parental rights.[8]

Forerunners and local reform movements

The history of indigenous, Russian evangelical Protestantism was anticipated by movements such as the

Tolstoyan rural communes, who prepared the ground for the movement's future spread. The first evidence on some of the above communes' existence appeared in 16th – 17th centuries.[10] Many of the above communities emigrated to Canada, the United States and Latin America
in 19th and 20th centuries.

Molokan men, 1870s
Spread of the Strigolniki

The

laymen. Their sermons were full of social motifs: they reproached the rich for enslaving the free and the poor.[18]

The Molokans had multiple Protestant-like aspects, they rejected the Orthodox priesthood, icons, had their own presbyters, they held the bible as their main guide and interpreted the sacraments "spiritually", being in many ways similar to the Quakers.[19][20][21] The Molokans had multiple sects branched off them, including: Detei Khrista or Mokrye Molokane 'wet Molokans' were a Molokan group who practiced water baptism, the Sukhie Baptisty were Molokans who merged with Baptists, practicing spiritual baptism instead of water baptism, one congregation still exists in Georgia.[22]

The Dukhobors additionally had multiple similarities to Anabaptists and mostly to the Quakers, for example by holding to pacifism. However the Dukhobors also have major differences from Anabaptists, especially by denying sola scriptura, instead believing in continual revelation.[23][24] The Doukhobors have maintained close association with Mennonites and Quakers due to similar religious practices; all of these groups are collectively considered to be peace churches due to their belief in pacifism.[25][26][27]

Bible translation

St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Moscow.

The first attempts to translate the books of the Bible into the contemporary Russian language as an alternative to the older

Eastern Slavs
, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. But the mentioned works (by the deacon of Posolsky Prikaz Avraamiy Firsov, pastor E.Gluk, archbishop Methodiy (Smirnov)) were lost during political turbulence and wars.

The full-scale

Russian Bible Society
since its establishment in 1813 and up to 1826 distributed more than 500 thousand copies of Bible related books in 41 languages in Russia. Several times in the 19th and 20th centuries the activities of the Society were stopped due to the reactionary policies of the Russian Government.

The Russian Bible Society was reinstated in 1990–1991 after an interruption due to restrictions under the Soviet regime.[29]

The opening ceremony of the Building of the Russian Bible Society in Moscow was attended by representatives of the

Roman Catholic
, and Protestant churches, who joined efforts in the cause of Bible translation and distribution. The publications by the Russian Bible Society are based on the shared doctrine of the early Christian church and include non-confessional commentary. Over 1,000,000 Bible-related books are printed every year. The Bible is also being translated into the native languages and dialects of Russia's ethnic groups.

Present time

Stamp of Russia 2001 No 690. Pentecostal House of Prayer 1999 Lesosibirsk.

The major groupings of Protestants in Russia today are the

Spiritual Christians
and the New Apostolic Church. Virtually all Protestant denominations are represented in the country.

Some Protestants (especially at provincial level) report encountering obstruction by local authorities of their activities and government restrictions. In April 2007, the

Salvation Army. In April 2017, the Supreme Court of Russia labeled Jehovah's Witnesses an extremist organization, banned its activities in Russia and issued an order to confiscate the organization's assets.[32]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Kremlin Official Says Protestantism Among Russia's Traditional Religions". RFERL. Retrieved 2022-07-22.
  2. ^ "Protestants in Russia: An active minority". New Eastern Europe. 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  3. ^ Protestantism in Russia, past, present, and future, Stetson University.
  4. ^ US State Department Religious Freedom Report on Russia, 2006
  5. ^ 2013 End of the Year Survey – Russia Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine WIN/GIA
  6. ^ State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), f. 6991, op. 4, d. 6 and d. 94.
  7. S2CID 59040712
    .
  8. ^ a b L.Alexeeva, chapter 13, Memorial society page, in Russian
  9. ^ The Dukhobors and Molokans, Spirit Christian Communities in Russia, Scrollpublishing
  10. ^ a b Molokans around the world, Molokan web-site
  11. ^ Simon Fraser University, The Doukhobor Collection, Dukhobor History
  12. ISBN 978-1-59884-204-3
    .
  13. ISBN 978-1-78368-126-6
    .
  14. ^ B. A. Rybakov, Strigolniki: Russkie Gumanisty XIV Stoletiia (Moscow: Nauk, 1993); David M Goldfrank, "Burn, Baby, Burn: Popular Culture and Heresy in Late Medieval Russia," The Journal of Popular Culture 31, no. 4 (1998): 17–32.
  15. ISBN 978-1-134-92102-7
    . in the middle of the fourteenth century the Strigolniki heresy broke out in Russia, chiefly in the cities in the north of the country, which gave this movement a proto-Reformation character
  16. ^ Каретникова М. С. Русское богоискательство. Национальные корни евангельско-баптистского движения
  17. ^ Petrushko 2019 page 456.
  18. ^ N. A. Kazakova and Ia. S. Lur'e, Antifeodal'nye ereticheskie dvizheniia na Rusi XIV-nachala XVI veka (Moscow and Leningrad, ANSSSR, 1955), esp. pp. 34–71.
  19. ISBN 978-1-62032-962-7
    .
  20. ISBN 978-90-474-0272-5
    .
  21. ISBN 978-3-643-80201-9
    .
  22. ^ Andrei, Conovaloff. "Taxonomy of 3 Spiritual Christian groups: Molokane, Pryguny and Dukh-i-zhizniki". www.molokane.org. Retrieved 2022-08-16.
  23. ISBN 978-0-7747-3128-7
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-7391-3241-8
    .
  25. ISBN 9780888644183
    . The English Quakers, who had made contact with the Doukhobors earlier, as well as the Philadelphia Society of Friends, also determined to help with their emigration from Russia to some other country—the only action which seemed possible.
  26. ^ Dyck, Cornelius J.; Martin, Dennis D. The Mennonite Encyclopedia. Mennonite Brethren Publishing House. p. 107.
  27. ISBN 9780802824172
    . The only contact with Mennonites was the period 1802–41 when they lived in the Molotschna, where Johann Cornies (q.v.) rendered them considerable assistance.
  28. ^ Russian Bible Society, in Russian
  29. ^ History of Russian Bible Society, in Russian
  30. ^ Russian Baptist Union web-site
  31. ^ Seventh-day Adventist Church Number Two in Russia, Worldwide Faith News, August 1998
  32. ^ "Russian court bans Jehovah's Witnesses as extremist". delfi.lt. Retrieved 20 April 2017.

External links

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