Good News On Religion in Belarus

Forum 18 is reporting on a Belarussian government memorandum that it has gotten its hands on stating the concerns in the government that it is becoming increasingly incapable of cracking down on religious activity in the country.

Thus, referring to a subsequently Russian Orthodox Church Abroad parish in the village of Ruzhany, Marchenko writes: "A group of Orthodox believers who have broken away from [the Moscow Patriarchate] SS Peter and Paul Church have been meeting for services illegally for two years. In that time state representatives have found neither the time nor the opportunity to influence these believers or to assist the local priest in returning them to the fold of the [Moscow Patriarchate] church. In their stead, however, Uniate [Greek Catholic] missionaries and even a representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople have visited the aforementioned group and each attempted to form their own subordinate community. Moreover, priest I. A. Grudnitsky, who was prohibited from performing services by the Synod of the [Moscow Patriarchate] Belarusian Orthodox Church in 2002, has begun to visit the group regularly. And even in this case, Article 193 of the Administrative Violations Code has not been implemented."

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"An even more depressing situation," in Marchenko's view, exists in areas where groups of Council of Churches Baptists "have operated illegally for many years." (The Council of Churches Baptists refuses on principle to register with the state authorities in post-Soviet countries). He estimates that each of these congregations conducts two or three services a week, or 150 a year, "but in 2004 the regional law enforcement agencies brought only five charges under Article 193."

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In his January 2005 report, Marchenko points out that a group of Council of Churches Baptists "is freely and systematically distributing throughout Brest city and other populous parts of the region religious literature printed in the USA and Russia" in violation of Article 26 of the 2002 Religion Law. This allows only registered religious organisations to distribute religious literature – after it has been assessed by the state, if imported – at locations designated by the local authorities. "Thus," laments Marchenko, "every Saturday in the Vulka suburb of Brest, a group of three to six persons sets up a mobile library and distributes Baptist literature from abroad which does not bear any details of its origin, and this is well known to the city executive committee."

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..."an illegal water baptism near Vychulki village in August 2004 which lasted more than four hours and had over 300 participants, including spectators." Brest region's top religious affairs official also catalogues local authorities' failure to prosecute unregistered groups of Eastern-rite Catholics [Greek Catholics], Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists and Pentecostals, even though they are familiar with the locations of their meetings.

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Marchenko's report also expresses concern about "the unfavourable circumstances in which religious communities, especially Protestants, are situated." Thus, he writes, 121 religious communities have received permission from municipal and district executive committees to conduct services at residential premises, and religious communities have consequently developed "a practice of buying a residential building, usually in a populous area, with the intention of using it for prayer meetings." Without any form of official agreement, he continues, "such buildings are re-equipped as prayer houses, signs are hung up, services are conducted, while legally the house remains a residential property."

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In June 2005 Evangelical Belarus News Service reported that two registered Baptist communities in Drogichin [Dragichyn] district and Ivatsevichi (Brest region) were unable to obtain permission to build new prayer houses on the sites of their old ones, both located in residential areas. New Generation Church, which is affiliated to the charismatic Full Gospel Union, also reports being unable to change to that of prayer house the designated usage of a building it owns in Baranovichi.

After each of these reports were made by Marchenko, government police and security forces raided and fined each of the specific churches of which he wrote. Nevertheless, these are good signs. One interpretation is that the government is simply becoming more lax and trying to co-opt a number of these groups under its umbrella of influence. The Soviets and Communist governments of Eastern Europe tried this same tactic under the guise of "normalization." What this allowed the dissidents in the various countries to do, however, was get inside the regime and break it up from the inside.

The other possibility is that the Lukashenka regime has just overplayed its hand, and is literally unable to continue poking its nose into every aspect of civil society to ensure compliance with the regime. Either way, it's bad news for the regime. Religious institutions played a huge role in opposition movements in Eastern Europe, and in a way managed to almost secularize their message into a non-denominational appeal to all groups by stressing human rights and debate on the morality of the communist regimes. It certainly helped that they had a valuable ally in the towering figure of moral authority that was Pope John Paul II, something that Belarus obviously lacks, but no matter which way you spin it, this government report is bad news for the regime.