Orthodox churches and groups, BosNewsLife learned Wednesday, December 11.
Details of a 15-page draft paper to be discussed by a joint session of three government bodies in January, came a day after reports that foreign missionary workers are facing stiff resistance from local authorities.
Russian media reports say the document mentions first the Roman Catholic Church, as it allegedly "the territory of Russia to be an ecclesiastical province".
The Keston News Service (KNS), which monitored news reports also cited the paper as saying that the Catholics are "winning over individual priests and representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church as converts to catholicism [sic]." But it also singles out Protestants.
PROTESTANTS CRITICIZED
"Under the pretext of providing humanitarian aid, many new Protestant organizations are fostering self-alienation from the Russian state within various sections of the population," the Gazeta news paper quotes the draft paper as maintaining.
KNS quotes the Moscow-based Slavic Centre for Law and Justice and the Institute of Religion and Law as calling the draft paper "scandalously incompetent and anti-constitutional".
While the Russian authorities have said that the new policy is in the interests of "national security", human rights watchers are concerned that it will lead "to an increase in inter-confessional and interethnic tension within our country," KNS noted.
SECTS MENTIONED
The paper also mentions "foreign pseudo-religious communities," including sects such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies and Scientologists, Satanists and "religious groupings based on various strands of Eastern doctrines".
Fourth are Islamic extremists, who plan to "set at odds with one another the interests of Russian Muslims and those of the state and society". The fifth threat to Russian national security from the religious sphere is allegedly the attempt "to foist the ‘clash of civilizations’ idea – the supposedly irreconcilable contradictions between Christians and Muslims – upon Russian society."
The latest revelations come amid growing concern about a revival of Soviet era policies in Russia, where religion was long discouraged under during decades of Communism and an Atheistic leadership.
