RUSSIA: PASTOR FINED BECAUSE CHURCH HAD MISSION EURASIA BIBLES
Voice of the Martyrs Korea has learned that a Moscow court fined a Russian pastor in June because scripture portions published by Mission Eurasia were found at his church ten days after Mission Eurasia was declared to be an “undesirable organization”. The court ordered the scriptures—178 copies of the New Testament and 74 copies of the Gospel of John—to be destroyed.
“These were just low-cost scripture portions containing the standard Protestant translations used by churches across Russia,” says Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr. Hyun Sook Foley. “There was no promotion of Mission Eurasia in the materials. The pastor and the church [name withheld for security reasons] aren’t even particularly active with Mission Eurasia. It just happens that Mission Eurasia has been a big producer of low-cost copies of scripture for use by Russian Protestants. As a result, many churches have their Bibles and scripture portions.”
Representative Foley says her organization believes the prosecution of the pastor was designed to “send a message”.
Russian language Mission Eurasia Bible
“The message is: ‘Even if you are a small church and you are not actively partnering with an ‘undesirable organization’, you will be swiftly prosecuted,” she says. “Authorities designated Mission Eurasia ‘undesirable’ in May, and within ten days a pastor was fined between 90,000 and 200,000 KRW just for possessing ordinary Bibles printed by the ‘undesirable’ organization.”
Representative Foley says that the defense attorney for the pastor argued that the scripture portions were the standard Synodal Translation used by almost all Protestant churches in Russia and were not being used to promote Mission Eurasia. “The judge disregarded the argument, and the pastor was forced to pay the fine,” she says.
The prosecution of the pastor follows similar cases in St. Petersburg in May, when authorities seized books published by Mission Eurasia from the St. Petersburg Christian University, the “Slovo” Christian Bookstore, and three other evangelical educational institutions in the city.
“Basically, when an organization is designated undesirable by Russia, it means that even if you are storing or distributing materials published by that organization—even a single copy of one material, like at a library—you can face criminal charges,” says Representative Foley. She says Russia’s recent designation of both Mission Eurasia and Child Evangelism Fellowship as undesirable puts many churches in the Russian Federation at legal risk.
“In the case of the bookstore, one day after Mission Eurasia was declared an ‘undesirable organization’, authorities seized about a hundred Mission Eurasia Bibles from the bookstore,” says Representative Foley. She says the bookstore was told that someone had filed a complaint against them for carrying the Mission Eurasia Bibles
“Both Mission Eurasia and Child Evangelism Fellowship have published and distributed many popular Christian materials to churches across the Russian Federation for many years. There are literally hundreds of pastors just like the pastor who was prosecuted simply for having Bibles printed by Mission Eurasia at his church,” says Representative Foley. “The fact that authorities moved against this pastor and the others in St. Petersburg within days of Mission Eurasia being designated undesirable shows us what a hostile situation ordinary Protestant pastors and churches are now experiencing in the Russian Federation.”