Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 8, 1994 TAG: 9401110256
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
New religious movements and sects have established footholds in Eastern Europe, but their influence may be measured more in terms of the backlash they have engendered than converts won.
Traditional religious groups that suffered under communist oppression are trying to solidify their privileged position in the new era of religious freedom. Although conservative Christian missionaries are reporting the greatest success in converting Eastern Europeans, it is religious sects and cults who have made easy targets for groups lobbying for laws to limit religious freedom in several East European countries, according to two scholars who have traveled throughout the region.
``The visibility and fear is put on the new religious movements, who are really statistically insignificant,'' said Eileen Barker of the London School of Economics. ``Nobody gets any bad points for attacking cults. They're really fair game.''
Barker and J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., addressed a recent seminar of the American Academy of Religion on new religious movements.
Groups from the Church of Scientology to Hare Krishnas are trying to take advantage of the new religious freedom to spread their teachings throughout Eastern Europe, they said in interviews.
In a recent trip, Barker observed that several groups are offering people ways to succeed in capitalist ventures as a means of attracting new members.
For example, she said, Church of Scientology groups offer communication courses and Unification Church groups offer language lessons and trips to the West to potential converts in Russia and the Baltics.
But while there are no hard numbers, researchers say, new religious movements seem to be having little success.
Some Eastern Europeans are taking advantage of the classes offered and then are returning to their traditional religious homes. And critics of many new religious movements, helped by anticult organizations from the West, have left many Eastern Europeans forewarned, Barker said.
``On the whole, they're not particularly interested,'' Barker said. ``They know the cults are bad, and that's got through to them.''
The groups that are successful are evangelical Christian organizations that are flooding Eastern Europe with missionaries. Researchers report massive revivals, large churches being built and some evangelists, in a strategy used successfully in the United States, taking to the airwaves.
Some 40 million Bibles have been distributed in Russia alone, Melton said. Among the groups doing well, there may be as many as tens of thousands of Pentecostals in Eastern Europe, he said. Baptists also have been particularly successful.
In another sign of the times, 3,000 Russians became Jehovah's Witnesses in a mass baptism.
But the flood of foreign missionaries is not sitting well with religious groups that struggled to survive during the years of socialist rule. Many groups emerged weak, disorganized and badly financed, and argue members should not be stolen from them by better-financed groups from outside.
``We should have the first chance of regaining our faithful'' is the claim made by faiths native to the region, Barker said.
In Russia, Russian Orthodox leaders have been trying to restore the church's traditional role as one of the main pillars of society. Patriarch Alexy II, head of the church, administered the oath of office when Boris Yeltsin was sworn in as Russia's first president in June 1991, and it has become common practice for the patriarch to bless major political events, including praying for success at U.S.-Russian summits.
The ``turf war'' is evident in part in legislation that would limit religious freedom in various stages of consideration in Armenia, Russia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
In Hungary, legislation is being considered to change the religious registration laws to limit the apportionment of state taxes for religion to groups that have been in the country for a certain length of time.
``There's not only resentment, but there's money at stake,'' Melton said.
In Russia, Yeltsin forced lawmakers to drop the idea of a total ban on foreign missionaries, but parliament passed a law in the summer that would have granted the Ministry of Justice the right to deny permission for foreign religious groups to operate if they engage in ``coercive'' proselytizing or ``offend the religious feelings of Russain citizens.'' In part because of an appeal from President Clinton, Yeltsin did not sign the legislation.
If they are not outlawed, Melton said, the future is bright for evangelists in Eastern Europe.
In a nationwide poll in Russia, 22 percent of all respondents, and nearly a third of Russians under age 25, said they once were atheists but now believe in God.
Atheists, once officially approved of throughout Eastern Europe, are keeping a low profile.
``Generally speaking, it's more PC to be Christian,'' said Barker, former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
But the denominations that are politically correct change from country to country. And in part fueled by anticult sentiment, the windows of religious freedom only recently thrown wide open after decades of communist repression may be in danger of closing soon, scholars say.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist leader whose party was the top vote getter in Russia's parliamentary elections last month, has called for Russian Orthodoxy to have a ``dominating position'' in Russia.
``We can see the hands on the window right now,'' Melton said. ``In Russia, the hands almost fell before Clinton intervened.''
by CNB