NEW MISSIONS RAISE CONCERNS AS WELL AS HOPE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 11, 1992                   TAG: 9201110196
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
NEW MISSIONS RAISE CONCERNS AS WELL AS HOPE
Lines for ever more expensive bread in Moscow and civil war in Georgia have dominated recent news out of the former Soviet states.
There remains, though, a continuing expansion of interest there in matters religious. And while that generally has been a cause for celebration, there is a rising level of concern - particularly among evangelical Christians - about some of the groups that are gaining a new foothold.
The most recent issue of Christianity Today magazine, a conservative evangelical journal, details the growth of what it calls "aberrant and unorthodox groups" in the former Soviet states and Eastern Europe.
The statistics include both non-Christian groups and those who label themselves Christian but are outside mainstream Christianity.
For instance, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, an avowed anti-communist, met with former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev last spring, promised to send money to help revive the Soviet economy and was allowed to send 1,400 "elite students" from the Soviet Union to the United States to study Moon's teaching.
Moscow is teeming with UFO and astrology study groups, the magazine said, and Hare Krishnas have papered the subways with full-color posters.
Mormon missionaries are active throughout the region, and the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir last summer performed 20 times in eight countries, sharing not only their music but their religious faith.
Other groups that have found followings include Baha'is, Unitarians, yoga groups, Sikhs and Rastafarians.
Among the most successful evangelists, however, appear to be the Jehovah's Witnesses. Christianity Today said more than 370,000 Witnesses were involved in six countries' conventions last summer. Witnesses claimed more than 18,000 conversions last year.
Some traditional Christian groups, including indigenous Orthodox churches, worry that the "spiritual vacuum" existing in Eastern Europe and Russia is increasingly being filled by "wrong doctrine."
That is even spilling into existing, mainstream Christian groups. Said Bulgarian Pentecostal minister Ben Peevi: "Most young Christians in our country are totally ignorant of our [church's] distinction" from the new groups.

The Southern Baptist Convention apparently is continuing to feel the effects of its theological infighting in the denominational pocketbook.
The Cooperative Program, which funds national and international missions programs, last week reported that receipts for December were 5.5 percent lower than the year before. For the first quarter of the new fiscal year, receipts were 2.46 percent below last year.
The December total was $10.5 million, well below the "basic monthly operating budget requirement" of $11.7 million.
Designated gifts - which include items such as the convention's huge Lottie Moon Christmas offering for foreign missions - also were down: 4.8 percent.

In a related issue, a Virginia Baptist committee Thursday urged the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to reconsider funding of a Swiss seminary.
The Virginia Baptist General Board's Committee on Denominational Relations asked for a "resolution of the Ruschlikon Seminary issue that accommodates all Southern Baptists" and stresses Christian unity.
The Foreign Mission Board in October rescinded a contribution of $365,000 to the Swiss seminary after it discovered a moderate American professor had been hired to teach there. After a widespread outcry against the action, the board reaffirmed its decision in a December vote.
The Virginia committee urged the state's Southern Baptists to make monetary donations for missions through the state convention rather than the national Cooperative Program.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB