Christian leaders in Russia are concerned about a bill introduced in the Federal Assembly that would ban religious services in residential complexes, a publication based in Germany reported.
Such a ban would affect evangelical, Orthodox and other home churches that meet in such complexes, church leaders told the Evangelical News Agency IDEA, based in Wetzlar, Germany.
“For Russian Protestants, it may look like a hidden form of restriction on religious freedom,” Vitaly Vlasenko, Moscow-based head of the Evangelical Alliance in Russia (REA), told IDEA. “I really hope that this is not the case.”
The head of the legal department of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, Igumenia Ksenia Chernega, said the prohibition could lead to the closure of Orthodox house churches, according to Vlasenko. Chernega also said it could endanger religious ceremonies requested by seriously ill people at their homes.
The bill aims to protect housing complex residents from “inconvenience” and avert potential conflicts, and the authors expressed some concern about fire safety, but
Vladimir Provorov, bishop of the Lutheran Church of Russia, said Russia already has legal measures in place to prevent such problems without violating religious rights, the REA’s Vlasenko noted.
The New People party introduced the bill in the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, at the end of October. It is aimed at religious groups that meet in the shops or office spaces located on the first two floors of high-rise residential buildings in Russia, often rented by evangelical churches and other small bodies due to financial restraints, according to Vlasenko.
Vlasenko told IDEA that a decision about when the bill might be made into law was unknown.
Russia has tried to limit the number of Protestant places of worship by law in the past, including an attempt to ban services in private homes in November 2019, Vlasenko told IDEA.
“Thanks to the efforts of lawyers and human rights activists led by Vladimir Ryakhovsky, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has declared such initiatives unconstitutional,” he said.
The New People party, a centrist to center-right group formed in 2020, won 5.43 percent of the vote in the 2021 Russian legislative election with 13 seats.
The U.S. State Department has designated Russia as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom since 2021. It was redesignated as a CPC on Dec. 29, accompanied by previously existing sanctions under section 404(a)(2) of the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 and section 11 of the Support for the Sovereignty, Integrity, Democracy, and Economic Stability of Ukraine Act of 2014, as amended by Section 228 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, pursuant to section 402(c)(5) of the act.
“Multiple evangelical Protestant groups” were among religious groups and Non-Governmental Organizations that authorities investigated, detained, imprisoned, tortured, and physically abused persons or deprived of property because of their religious belief or links with groups designated as “extremist,” “terrorist” or “undesirable,” according to the State Department’s 2023 U.S. International Religious Freedom Report.
There were widespread reports of Russia’s armed forces, Russia-led forces and Russian occupation officials in Ukraine engaging in numerous abuses of religious freedom in 2023, the report noted. The U.S. ambassador and other embassy representatives and Department of State officials advocated greater religious freedom in Russia, highlighting the government’s misuse of the law on extremism to restrict the peaceful activities of minority religious groups, the report stated.
Vlasenko told IDEA that Protestants in Russia can act freely if they keep a low profile, such as declining to comment on the invasion of Ukraine.
“The Russian state is trying to create a form of unity among the population, especially now in times of war, for example by banning criticism of the war,” the REA secretary general said. “Most Christians try not to get caught in the crossfire and are rather quiet. In general, they are ‘not a big voice in society’ anyway.”
Expressing sadness about the war, he said he maintains contact with Christians in Ukraine and suffers with them, having publicly expressed his dismay in March 2022 at the invasion that began on Feb. 24 of that year.
Of Russia’s approximately population of 144 million people, 70 percent are Russian Orthodox, 6 percent are Muslims and 1 percent are Protestants, of which about a third belong to the REA, Vlasenko said.
