Religion Thrives In Russia, But Church Comes In For Criticism

MOSCOW - Eighty years after the Bolsheviks trampled on icons, turned churches into "museums of atheism" and executed protesting priests, religion is celebrating a revival not seen since Greek missionaries brought their orthodoxy to Russia a millennium ago.

At the very gateway to Moscow's Red Square, elderly babushkas - joined in the New Russia by men and women of all ages and from all walks of life - line up outside a tiny new chapel from which Orthodox music is pumped into the square. All are waiting for a chance to kiss a copy of an icon believed to have miraculous healing powers.

Similar scenes are taking place in churches across Russia.

But many Russians are troubled by the lingering question over how much the church enslaved itself to Soviet authority in return for being tolerated. Some also question whether the church is collaborating with the dark forces of nationalism and racism to expand its power.

What worries liberal Russians is not the racist rant of some clergymen but the hierarchy's outspoken support for a draft Law on Religion that, if passed by Parliament and applied indiscriminately, could outlaw Orthodox fundamentalists as "heretics" and all the West's Protestant denominations as "ungodly sects."

List of offenders ready

The Bishops' Synod has already approved a list of offenders the law should ban.

"All Protestant denominations are on this (list) circulated to all governing church bodies and the Duma (Parliament)," said Vyacheslav Polosin, a former priest advising the Duma on drafting the law. The legislation would set up a commission that would include church representatives and decide who is allowed to practice religion.

The proposed ban on religious rivals comes only decades after the Russian church itself was cruelly persecuted and just five years after glasnost guaranteed freedom of the faith.

The ranks of the faithful today almost equal those of pre-Bolshevik days. Professor Vyacheslav Lokosov, chief of research at the Institute of Socio-Political Research in Moscow, estimated that 40 percent to 60 percent of Russia's 150 million population can be classified as believers.

Although Soviet figures held that only 15 percent of the population had remained believers, Lokosov contends that the figure under communism was as high as 30 percent.

"In Soviet days, people were afraid to admit they were Christians. Today they are afraid to admit they are atheists," he said.

Priesthood under suspicion

But there remains the perception among some Russians that the priesthood has relapsed into the same habits that made it an easy target for the Bolsheviks in 1917: avarice, arrogance, hypocrisy, abuse of power, anti-Semitism and intolerance.

Requests for the church's comments on the perceptions and charges were not granted.

In its zeal to purify Russia of foreign influence and heretics, some clergy have allied themselves not only with nationalist fanatics but even nostalgic communists.

When former security chief Alexander Lebed recently described Mormons as "mold and filth come to destroy the state," some thought he was simply leaping on the bandwagon for a spiritual purge of alternative credos, especially those from the West.

The Moscow Patriarchy - the Russian Orthodox equivalent to the Vatican - is often criticized for its liberal choice of financial partners to restore Russia's 70,000 churches, two-thirds of which were ransacked and devastated in Soviet days.

Cathedrals such as the symbolic Jesus the Savior in central Moscow, dynamited by Stalin in 1931 but now under reconstruction, are rumored to be money laundries for Russia's Mafia.

Below the $500 million Jesus the Savior project, the patriarchy is building a residential complex equipped with saunas, sports facilities, restaurants, guest houses and garages.

News of such largesse has not diminished Russia's religious fervor, but it has bred distrust of a priesthood perceived as more preoccupied with collecting alms than saving souls.

Vladimir Soloukhin, 72, author of books on religion and an avid collector of icons, was asked whether the time had come to return such collections to churches. "No way!" he said. "The priests would only sell them."

Lokosov's institute has found distrust of the church leadership growing. Three years ago, 60 percent of Russians told his opinion poll they trusted the church above all institutions. This year only 40 percent expressed the same trust.

But the church is growing. Father Sergei Suzdaltsev, who runs the recently completed Church of Saint George in Moscow, is justly proud that since Boris Yeltsin came to power in 1991, the number of Moscow's reopened churches rose to 370 from 47.

He has no remorse about state-church collaboration and argues that if the church made any compromise during Soviet days, it was "to preserve its integrity."

No patience for critics

And he has no time and no patience for those who snipe at the church today and try to turn away its followers.

"All these sects from the Western world as well as our own Orthodox deviants must be banned. All of them sing psalms from the Old Testament, which means they are close to Judaism. Only the Orthodox and the Catholics are pure with a direct line to the apostles," he said.

His targets are not only breakaway fundamentalist groups but Baptists, Methodists, Buddhists, Mormons, Lutherans and the entire rainbow of Western and Eastern cults and sects.

He also says the church must use the new law to expel charlatans working under the guise of religion.

"We had people registering as a tax-exempt religion and then buying an oil well within two days. We had a group praying to a cupboard but buying rare chemicals to ship abroad.

"We had one lot venerating Trotsky but buying up military helicopters, and Japanese sects who sent their members to Russia for training. That all has to stop."