This week in Christian history: Russia passes anti-missionary law, Mexican bishops suspend worship

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, July 07, 2024

Putin signs anti-evangelism law – July 7, 2016

This pool photograph distributed by Russian state-owned agency Sputnik shows Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (L) talking during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Monument to Minin and Pozharsky on Red Square on the National Unity Day in Moscow on November 4, 2023. | GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

This week marks the anniversary of when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that greatly restricted when religious groups, including Evangelicals, could preach or evangelize.

An anti-terrorism measure commonly called the “Yarovaya law,” after one of its sponsors, Irina Yarovaya, the proposal came in part to help the Russian Orthodox Church, which viewed non-Orthodox Christian missionaries as a concern.

“Since the fall of the Soviet Union, some in Russia have expressed concern about the perception of well-funded foreigners coming in to build their congregations at the expense of Russian Orthodoxy, weakened by the Soviet system,” wrote Elizabeth A. Clark for the Religious Freedom Institute in 2016.

“Protecting Russian Orthodoxy, however, has come to be perceived as being aligned with national strategic interests. In 2000, a Russian federal policy statement on national security stated that ‘[e]nsuring the national security of the Russian Federation also includes the protection of its ... spiritual and moral heritage’ and ‘includes opposing the negative influence of foreign religious organizations and missionaries.’”