Siberian Mennonite pastor defends Jehovah's Witnesses

[Guest Kurt]

Religiia i Pravo, 13 April 2016

TOTALITARIAN SECTS: FABRICATIONS AND TRUTH
by Evgeny Spiridonov
Svidetel Berdsk, 7 April 2016
 
The Berdsk (Novosibirsk province) religious congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses is being checked out by the prosecutor's office these days.
 
It is said that literature of extremist contents was discovered there. A great diversity of rumors circulate about this religious organization, and often in news media it is called a totalitarian sect. However it is not only they. So what kind of thing are totalitarian sects and destructive cults and how real and dangerous are they? About this we had a conversation with Andrei Peters, a minister of the Novosibirsk congregation of Mennonite Christians and a specialist in the area of comparative theology.
 
--Andrei Vasilevich, just what is a "sect" in a scientific or theological sense?
 
--In ancient Rome, the word "sect" meant "party," "school," "fraction," and did not have a negative connotation. Sects usually are groups that have separated from already existing religious communities and have begun an independent life. This term also served for designating such religious groups that have maintained their own identity without breaking communications with the religious community to which they belonged before their separation from it.
 
--That's rather abstruse and gaudy. Tell us more simply: which of the currently existing confessions can be considered sects?
 
--Different churches and church communities attribute to this definition different meanings and each of them has its own understanding of what kind of thing a sect is. From the point of view of Orthodoxy, for example, all Christian confessions outside the bounds of the Orthodox church are sects. And we, Mennonites, with our centuries-long history and tradition are a sect in the eyes of the Orthodox. Well that would seem to be okay: call it a pot but don't put it in the oven. But for some time now more negative definitions have appeared: "totalitarian sect," "destructive cult." These definitions do not have any legal force. They are outside the legal field, but they have received extremely widespread use in our country.
 
--And where did that come from? I recall that in soviet times, with all the orgy of state atheism, such labels still were not hung on anybody?
 
--They were not. Because they did not exist. These labels appeared in the early 1990s, and they were dreamed up by a single person, a certain Alexander Dvorkin. Back in the soviet era he married an American, emigrated to the USA, and received citizenship of that country. In the early 90s he returned to Russia and proclaimed himself a mighty specialist on sects. As such he occupied a definite niche in the apparatus of the Moscow patriarchate. He dreamed up a separate theological discipline that nobody had ever heard of earlier—"sect studies." And he also dreamed up the aforementioned terms: "totalitarian sects" and "destructive cults." Somebody in the patriarchate liked them and so this bogeyman began roaming Russia.
 
--But perhaps this Dvorkin really is a major specialist in the area of sect studies?
 
--I have read his works; I have listened to his speeches. I can say one thing: the lion's share of what he has written and spoken are fabrications, lies, and slander. So he and his followers, for example, assign Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostals, and charismatics to the category of destructive cults. And they maintain that among the representatives of these confessions, supposedly there is an enormous percentage of suicides and insanity. But at the same time they do not produce concrete cases. Because they do not exist. For many years I personally have been engaged in comparative theology and I am acquainted with Pentecostals, charismatics, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and with many others. I have studied their literature and attended their worship services. On the basis of personal experience I can affirm: none of these are destructive cults, but they are ordinary protestant communities. And of course I have not observed there any mass suicides or lunatics. These are all fabrications.
 
--Nevertheless, there is in society an extremely negative attitude toward these Jehovah's Witnesses. In particular, people do not like their overly intrusive witnessing.
 
--I also do not like it. But after all that still is no basis for calling them a totalitarian sect or destructive cult. On the contrary, I see that representatives of this religious organization have many positive traits, and other protestant confessions perhaps are overly insistent in trying to draw people into their faith. They do not smoke or use alcohol, they do not curse obscenely or steal and lie, and they do not swap wives and husbands. Sure they approach people on the streets and knock on the doors of their homes. But they do not handcuff anybody or drag anybody by force to their congregation. They politely invited you to visit a service and you politely refused—what kind of problem is that?
 
--And the idea that they persuade their devotees to sign over their apartments for the benefit of the congregation—is that so?
 
--Well, have people often come to your newspaper's office who have signed over their apartment for some religious organization and then come to their senses and regretted this? Or is there a pile of statements from these people in the prosecutor's office? Of course it happens that an elderly and single parishioner from some religious community, for whom it is the whole sense of her life, bequeaths her apartment to this community. Such things happen both in Orthodox parishes and in other confessions. And sure it happens that single old women sign over their residences to municipalities. But there is such a selective attitude of society to such cases: if they signed it over to the municipality, that is good, and if it was to some protestant community, it is bad.
 
--You suggest that no destructive cults exist at all. Then what about the White Brotherhood, the Vissarion society, the society of the god Kuzya, and many other such organizations?
 
--Sure, they exist, and there are more of them every year. But such organizations do not have anything to do with Christianity nor with any other religion. Under the cover of pseudo-religious demagogy, their creators conceal an extremely mundane desire to live at the expense of their devotees—nothing more. Possibly somewhere the alienation of apartments for the benefit of leaders is practiced. I cannot say for sure; I have not encountered such incidents myself. But I admit that in those groups one may expect anything from such, so to speak, pastors. But I repeat, that does not have anything to do with religion.
 
--But how can an ordinary person who does not have a theological education distinguish such a pseudo-religion and clearly dangerous organization from a regular protestant community?
 
--In my view, there is a single criterion: the length of time of the existence of one or another community. If it turns out that the history of a specific religious organization has only a few years or decades, one should shy away from such an organization. Because theological disagreements and the search for truth have remained the cause of religious divisions in past centuries, but in the twentieth century all new religious movements, without exception, have arisen for purely mercenary reasons. Even such massive ones as the Church of Scientology or the Unification Church of Rev. Moon. Most likely they do not want to subject you there to psychological experiments or neuro-linguistic programming (here is another of those pseudoscientific terms that appeared simultaneously with "totalitarian sects" and "destructive cults")—but they will certainly empty your wallet.
 
--And are these sects?
 
--In past centuries, they called those groups sects that had separated themselves from already existing religious communities. But these did not even separate from anybody but they arose exclusively by the efforts of specific people with leadership instincts. Scientology does not have any roots; but it is the fruit of the imagination of one man, the science fiction writer Ron Hubbard. But this is not even a sect but something else, worse. Incidentally, to this same Hubbard is attributed the saying: "If you want to make a billion, create a new religion." So that is what he wanted and he created. And I remind you of one last thing, that according to the constitution our state is secular, where all religions are equal. By law, we do not have a state religion and consequently there are no sects. Sure, there are pseudo-religious groups, sometimes created even by psychologically abnormal people, and it is horrible even to imagine what can happen in such a group. However the identification of such organizations and the struggle with them is the task of law enforcement agencies and not by any means of home-grown "sectologists."
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Russian law enforcement plants evidence on Jehovah's Witnesses

WHEN ITS SINGLE GUILT IS ITS ABSENCE: THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
by Anton Chivchalov
Religiia i Pravo, 13 April 2016
 
Throughout the country, a massive campaign is unfolding, during which law enforcement agencies are planting on citizens incriminating evidence in order to then fine them and limit their rights. Samara, Sevastopol, Arkhangelsk, Tiumen, Birobidzhan, Saransk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, Saratov and Yaroslav provinces, Krasnodar and Primore territories, Kalmykia, Dagestan, and Karachaevo-Cherkesia—the list grows practically every day. All incidents, of which there already now are more than 20 throughout the country, are well documented.
 
We are not talking about a dangerous mafia grouping, whose semi-legal methods it has been decided to stop, like in a movie about brave policemen. You would be surprised, but in all cases the victims of the campaign are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, who have never been convicted of a crime or even suspected of criminal activity. The targets of the attacks are officially registered local religious organizations, and the only "crime" of their members consists in their professing the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. This is happening in a secular state whose constitution says that no religion or ideology may be recognized as uniquely true.
 
Law enforcement agencies, usually the FSB, are planting in Jehovah's Witnesses' houses of worship literature that has been deemed extremist, and then they themselves "find" it. As is evident in the above video tape, often this is done by "decoy ducks," who may even attend services for some time and simulate sincere interest. This may be done either shortly before a search, or directly during it. An officer simply puts the literature into a shelf and "finds" it himself.
 
The latest tactic. According to a well-developed scheme, a prosecutor's office issues a warning and a court liquidates a local religious organization, which is the owner of the building. After a series of liquidations of local religious organizations, it is possible also to liquidate the Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia, the central organization of the believers. And on 2 March 2016 the Administrative Center received from the Russian prosecutor general's office an official warning.
 
It is ironic that this warning demands the "elimination of violations" within a two-month period. What is understood as violations apparently is the distribution of "extremist" literature. Since the FSB is engaged in the distribution of such literature, by actively spreading it about Jehovah's Witnesses' houses of worship, it is this agency to which this warning should addressed. Although this will have no effect.
 
Why look for something that does not exist?
 
Falsification of evidence is an unpleasant affair, risky and dirty in all respects. It is always the last step to turn to when there remains no possibility of proving guilt by legal means. Then it is necessary to invent this guilt. It is amazing that law enforcement agencies, instead of protecting citizens from criminals, are spending resources in order to turn citizens into criminals. This is being done with energy worthy of much better use.
 
Not only in Russia but also in several other countries at various times attempts have been undertaken to prove the Jehovah's Witnesses' guilt of crimes against society or the state.  In Russia there is everything needed for this and even more. The law "On freedom of conscience and religious associations" gives very broad possibility for liquidations of religious organizations on the most diverse grounds: infringement on rights of citizens and the integrity of the family, calls for violation of laws, inflicting harm on morality, violation of public order, use of psychotropic drugs and hypnosis, and many more of the like. Take and forbid, the grounds for this are massive.
 
But despite this, they never have managed in Russia to prove the guilt of Jehovah's Witnesses on any of these points. The Moscow trial in the Golovin court got bogged down and crumbled after several years of hard effort by anti-cultists. Moreover, the European court ordered the government also to pay compensation to the believers. And in 2011 the anti-cultists from Russia in the European court failed to prove a single point of their charges against Jehovah's Witnesses: destruction of families, mind-control, refusal of medical aid, and refusal to fulfill civic duties.
 
Here is what Anatoly Pchelintsev, doctor of laws, writes about the notorious "sectologist" Alexander Dvorkin:
 
"All publications which Mister Dvorkin has made are extremely emotional. As a rule, they do not contain representative data. They are not based on concrete facts but mainly on presuppositions. For example, he likes to maintain that in the sects they rape, kill, and effect alienation of property, but when we refer to official court statistics and statistics of law enforcement agencies, then we see that nothing of the sort exists."
 
It is for this reason that in Russia it was necessary to invent such a unique judicial (more accurately, pseudo-judicial) innovation as the article for "extremism," of which similar things do not exist in any other country. What is understood as extremism usually is that some religion considers itself correct and the others incorrect or at least less correct. Thus something that exists in all religions of the world, without exception, is selectively incriminating only for Jehovah's Witnesses and a few undesirable groups. It is absolutely illogical and immoral that peaceful citizens, who refuse on principle even to carry arms, are today put on a par with extremists, terrorists, and criminals.
 
Some journalists and officials sincerely believe that the Jehovah's Witnesses' literature is extremist and they are happy to describe how law enforcement agencies courageously seized one or another stash of literature, as if they were talking about drugs. Actually courts perceive "extremism" in such phrases as: "Although Josiah was young, he already understood that it is necessary to befriend those who serve Jehovah," or "People worship many things. But the Bible says that there is only one true God."
 
A report from the rights advocacy center SOVA says of illegal antiextremism in 2015: "Antiextremist legislation, with its vague wording, serves very well for persecution of political opponents or other groups that stand out from the mainstream. . . . Pressure is being increased . . . on the obviously harmless Jehovah's Witnesses."
 
After taking up such a dubious but effective trump card, the authorities at first tried to provoke Jehovah's Witnesses into themselves giving out to people "extremist" literature with their own hands. To this end they sent them provocateurs, as for example in Kirovo-Chepetsk in 2010 or Arkhangelsk in 2015. This tactic has been practiced for a rather long time now. However it has one drawback: believers never give out literature in massive quantity, and it is "mass" distribution that the law combating extremism demands. If one orders a box of literature, that is always suspicious.
 
So now this vicious tactic is been developed further. Having become finally convinced that proof of Jehovah's Witnesses' crimes does not exist (otherwise it would have been used vigorously in courtrooms) and it is difficult to provoke them to violations, the authorities have undertaken to falsify violations directly by planting literature by their own efforts. It is impossible to complain about such actions in court, as experience has shown, although law enforcement agents have carte blanche for any of the most aggressive actions with regard to believers.
 
Several sad conclusions
 
Fabrication of evidence is not a new invention. So how can one not recall here a gospel parallel when they first tried to find evidence against Christ, but not having found it they took recourse to false witnesses?  "The high priests and the whole Sanhedrin sought evidence against Jesus in order to put him to death, and they did not find it. For many gave false witness against him, but this evidence was not enough" (Gospel from Mark 14.55,56).
 
In soviet times Jehovah's Witnesses were accused of anti-soviet propaganda, spying for the USA, inciting imperialist wars, and other absurdities, which were invented in the quiet of KGB offices. Later these charges were dropped and the believers themselves were rehabilitated as victims of political repressions. But even then the KGB did not resort to such dirty work as plants in the homes of believers, and it tried to act, as they would say today, more creatively.
 
In some sense, the Jehovah's Witnesses have received a gift from the authorities, since the campaign of fabrication of evidence against them speaks to the fact that no proofs of their genuine, real crimes exists. The authorities have eloquently proven that they are not able to find any evidence against believers, and this with all their resources and opportunities. Journalists who want to cover this problem should take this into account. But at the same time the authorities have shown that to achieve ideological goals they again, as in the soviet years, are prepared to act by illegal methods.
 
The policy of plants leads to the moral degradation of law enforcement agencies, and the more widely it is practiced, the less room remains for honest people. When you are required to plant evidence on innocent people or to convict them, you are forced either to lay your badge on the table or fulfill a dirty and immoral order, inevitably compromising your own conscience. Alas, law enforcement personnel are more and more often choosing the latter.
 
This process, like gangrene, is capable of destroying and already has destroyed law enforcement agencies, which have practically ceased to be the preservers of law. This can have extremely negative consequences for the whole of society, which these agencies are supposed to protect. 

[JaniceM]

This was a very good article.  Thank you so much.  We're going to keep praying the brothers soon receive relief from the authorities.