The Soviet Union may have changed its attitude toward peace negotiations at arms talks in Geneva, but there appears to be no change in Soviet efforts to stifle Christian activity within its borders. Of the 53 known arrests for religious reasons within the past year, three recent incidents have focused attention anew on the plight of believers in the USSR.
Ten members of an ethnic German Pentecostal community in the Soviet Far East were arrested last month after carrying out three hunger strikes that failed to win them passage out of the country. They threatened to begin another month-long hunger strike February 1. The U.S. State Department said 7 of the 10 arrested members were released, but 3 remained jailed under charges of resisting arrest. Viktor Walter, 34, the community’s pastor, was arrested in December and charged with conducting unauthorized religious services and not possessing an internal passport.
Eight of the Pentecostal families irritated Soviet authorities by removing their children from local schools, where atheism is taught. The parents said their children had been harassed, beaten, and taunted by classmates who ridiculed their religious beliefs and ethnic origins. The families, from Chuguyevka, near the Sea of Japan, told authorities they would educate their children themselves.
“The Pentecostals, like the Evangelical Christian Baptists [in the USSR], represent the early Christians in that their life is in the Christian community, and they cannot give the same kind of loyalty to the state as they give to Christ,” said Ernest Gordon, president of CREED (Christian Rescue Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents). Gordon said the Pentecostals have a strong aversion to cooperating with the government on matters affecting their religious beliefs. He said the recent harassment of the Pentecostals does not indicate a worsening of tensions between church and state in the Soviet Union. Instead, he said, it is “an expression of the continuous persecution of the dissident Christian movement.”
At press time, none of the arrested Pentecostals had been sentenced. But six families face the threat of losing their children because they pulled them out of school. In February 1983, authorities charged five couples with being unfit parents. After this warning, members of the Pentecostal community turned in their internal passports, paid the substantial fees necessary to renounce Soviet citizenship, and submitted a petition requesting permission to emigrate to West Germany on the grounds of ethnic origin and family reunification.
In September 1983, having received no response from the government, 70 Pentecostals went on a hunger strike. Some fasted for 10 days, according to Keston College, a British group that monitors religious persecution in communist countries.
The Pentecostals planned a second hunger strike for January 1984, but changed their plans when they were told by regional authorities that they could leave beginning in March. In April, however, their applications were rejected. The Pentecostals again turned in their internal passports and announced that they would go on a month-long hunger strike beginning September 15. Several were fined about $300 each for failure to possess proper documents. By the time the September hunger strike began, seven men had been fired from their jobs, and others faced the same fate if they did not work during the hunger strike.
A refrigerator repairman was the only one left with a job after the Pentecostals staged their third hunger strike last November. Most members of the community are reported to be living on what livestock they own and what food they can grow. Police searched the homes of 15 Pentecostals when they arrested Walter and two other leaders in December. Bibles, family items, pictures, and $400 in rubles were confiscated.
Other recent developments indicate that the arrests of the Pentecostals are not isolated exceptions to Soviet policy. In November, a Christian rock musician, Valeri Barinov, was sentenced to two-and-one-half years in a labor camp. One week later, he suffered a heart attack. Sergei Timokhin, a member of Barinov’s band, Trumpet Call, was sentenced to two years in a labor camp. He was charged with attempting to cross the Soviet border illegally. After the trial, the official Soviet news agency, Tass, reported that the two were attempting to send abroad slanderous information about “the position of believers in the USSR.” Several witnesses were called to testify at the trial, but none had any solid evidence to support the charges, according to Keston College.
Trouble with Soviet authorities began for Barinov and Timokhin when their band became popular among youth, especially those with drug and alcohol problems. In March, Barinov and Timokhin responded to an anonymous phone call from someone asking to meet them in Murmansk, in the northwestern corner of the country. When they arrived at the Murmansk train station, they were arrested by the Soviet police on grounds of trying to escape from the country.
Barinov, 40, is believed to be alive. During his trial, he announced that he would go on a hunger strike until he could emigrate with his family or until he died. Barinov has three teenage daughters. It is not known where Timokhin, 26, is being held. He is married and has two young children.
Another prominent Soviet Christian, Vladimir Poresh, had his five-year term in a labor camp extended for another three years. A researcher at the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, Poresh was active in a Christian youth movement that has gained momentum over the past several years. Two years before his arrest in 1979, he helped start discussion groups dealing with “questions of religious revival in the USSR.”
Poresh, 35, was notified of his new sentence one day before his original term was to expire in August. His extended sentence was meted out not by the Soviet judicial system, but by prison officials, a practice instituted by the late Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Poresh was originally sentenced for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” He received his extended sentence under the charge of malicious misbehavior in camp. Poresh also faced three years of internal exile in the Soviet Union and was given an additional three years of internal exile.
A U.S. State Department official would not discuss what plans the United States may have to protest particular Soviet human rights abuses. “Our practice is to make our human rights concerns known to the Soviets on every appropriate occasion,” said the official, who asked not to be identified.
Maryland Church Defrocks A Gay Minister
A Southern Baptist congregation in Bel Air, Maryland, revoked the ordination of a self-professed homosexual after he refused to return his ordination papers.
Calvary Baptist Church had ordained Brian Scott in 1981, shortly after he graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The following year the church learned of Scott’s homosexuality after he helped found the Gay-Lesbian Christian Fellowship in Waldorf, Maryland. After Scott twice refused the church’s request that he return his ordination papers, the congregation voted 112 to 2 to revoke his ordination. Scott now is a pastor of the Gay-Lesbian Christian Fellowship.
James R. Cole, Calvary Baptist Church’s pastor, said the congregation “did not knowingly ordain a homosexual.… [Scott] has not directly harmed us, but the churches in the Waldorf area are embarrassed [that] Scott continues to call himself a Southern Baptist minister. We do not approve of homosexuality.”
In a letter to Fletcher Allen, editor of the Maryland Baptist news journal, Scott said he joined Calvary Baptist Church in 1976, but transferred his membership to another church in 1981. In the letter, Scott wrote, “[I] repressed my feelings prior to ordination in 1981, … [but] finally accepted myself [in January 1982].”
BAPTIST PRESS
Worldwide Church Of God Fires A Scholar After He Coauthored Book
In recent years, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) has banished a significant number of its top officials. However, the recent dismissal of George T. Geis is unique because it was not provoked by any of the usual reasons—insubordination, doctrinal disagreement, and financial or sexual misdeeds.
Geis was professor of business at the WCG’s Ambassador College. At 40, he was one of the sect’s top scholars. However, after coauthoring a book with former WCG executive Robert L. Kuhn, Geis was forced to resign his teaching position and his membership in the sect. Kuhn, also 40, was considered fourth in the WCG “pecking order” until his departure in 1979.
A WCG spokesman said Geis resigned voluntarily. But an informed observer asserted that he had been fired. Contacted by telephone, Geis declined to comment.
Geis helped Kuhn write The Firm Bond: Linking Meaning and Mission in Business and Religion (Praeger). The volume includes no references to the WCG. “The Firm Bond is about commitment in business and religion—how to build it and how not to break it,” Kuhn said.
Garner Ted Armstrong, son of WCG founder Herbert W. Armstrong, told the Los Angeles Times that the sect’s leaders “thought they saw themselves in the book.” The younger Armstrong was excommunicated from the sect in 1978.
Despite the WCG brain drain and adverse publicity (CT, Oct. 19, 1984, p. 51), the anti-Trinitarian sect continues to prosper. Membership rose 5 percent over the past year to 78,000 (725 congregations in 56 countries), and income increased 14 percent to $150 million. Circulation of The Plain Truth, the WCG’s free magazine, has soared to 7.5 million. Although radio broadcasts have been discontinued, Herbert W. Armstrong, 92, appears weekly on 425 television stations worldwide.
WORLD SCENE
The number of Jews allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union last year was the lowest since 1965. The National Conference on Soviet Jewry reported 1,314 emigrations in 1983, but only 896 last year. It is estimated that Soviet authorities so far have turned down requests from more than 20,000 Jews. More than 350,000 Soviet Jews have taken steps to emigrate.
The Church of England began 1985 with a drive to attract men into the priesthood. Although some four million Britons are unemployed, the number of men accepted for clergy training dropped from 350 in 1982 to 303 in 1983. Each of the country’s 12,000 parish clergy—as well as chaplains in hospitals, schools, colleges, and the armed forces—is receiving literature to stimulate interest in the Anglican priesthood. In addition, theological colleges with a shortage of students will receive temporary financial aid from the church.
The Sri Lankan government has singled out the Lanka Evangelical Alliance Development Service (LEADS) as a model for future relief efforts in that country. In 1983, violence between the Sinhalese and Tamils destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. The government commended LEADS for the quality of its relief program to 400 families from both factions.
As the Roman Catholic church increases its involvement in social problems, the number of young Latin Americans entering the priesthood is growing rapidly. Thousands of new candidates will help offset a chronic shortage of priests in the world’s largest Catholic region. The Latin American Episcopal Conference reports that the number of senior seminarians has increased from 9,283 in 1970 to 17,279 in 1982.
The Church of Scotland has called for an end to experiments with human embryos. The church’s Board of Social Responsibility said an embryo has a moral status and a moral claim on society. The board also condemned surrogate motherhood as demeaning and said infertility treatment should be confined to married couples. The church’s statement was released in response to a British government study.
