CHRISTIAN
PROSELYTISM IN KAZAKHSTAN
BACKGROUND:
There
are one or even several Baptist and Adventist churches in every town of
Kazakhstan. Pentecostal communities are also widespread, the most ubiquitous
being the community of Evangelical Christians called “of the spirit of the
apostles”, which has groups in Almaty and Karaganda. The Pentecostal movement
is also well represented inside the Korean minority, in particular by the Sun
Bok Ym church. The tendency called “Christian of evangelical faith” has
created communities in almost all the provinces of the country. As for Churches
known as “the Churches of God”, they are present in the provinces of
Kustanay, Karaganda and Kokchetau.
The Presbyterians churches consist of around twenty organizations. Among the
best known are Galbori, Onsezan, Korë, Nadežda, Sion, the first Presbyterian
church and the Assembly of Presbyterian Churches. The movement has particularly
spread among the Korean minority, who often make up between 80 and 90 percent of
the Presbyterian ranks. The group Grace - Blagodat’ is the largest with about
10,000 members. Several Presbyterian seminaries have been built up, for example
the Spiritual Presbyterian Academy in Almaty and the Kazakhstan Evangelical
Christian Seminary. The Methodist Church is organized into parishes that gather
an important number of believers. The Novoapostol’skaya Tserkov’, which is
independent from the Presbyterians and the Methodists, has considerably
developed and could gather about fifty groups and about 3,000 believers.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the groups who have seen the biggest
increase (at least 12,000 believers), managing to baptize almost a thousand
people a year. The movement has congregations in almost every town in Kazakhstan
and more than one hundred communities are registered. The charismatic movements
come under many designations : Agape, Novaya zhizn’, Novoe nebo, Illiya,
Blagaya vest’, the Charismatic Church of Jesus Christ, and so on. The
best-established movement is Novaya Zhizn’, which has shown real missionary
dynamism, has created subsidiary communities that exclusively consist of Kazakhs
and Uighurs, and even has a society in charge of evangelizing the Jews.
Kazakhstan could currently hold more than forty communities, that is to say
around 5,000 believers. Finally, the presence of Mormons, who declare only a few
dozen believers registered in Astana, should be noted.
IMPLICATIONS:
Since
perestroika, Christian proselytism in Kazakhstan has diversified its targets and
readjusted its strategies. The first goal was a proselytism of proximity, which
was targeted mainly at members who were already converted to Protestantism, but
who were given more substantial religious teaching that the missionaries deemed
urgent. The second target was composed of the population that was said to be
either atheist or indifferent to religious questions. The third and main
target in the 1990s was people who had converted to Christianity but belonged
either to other denominations, in particular to the Orthodox Church, or to a
lesser extent to Catholicism, if not to some Protestant movements on the decline
in the area, such as the Lutherans or Mennonites. The last and most
controversial target was the entire Muslim and indigenous population, in the
name of the principle of Christianity’s universality. Kazakhs, but also
Kirghiz and Uighurs, constitute, in the long term, the main targets of the
Christian presence in Kazakhstan. These populations have appeared to be easy
targets, since most practice a largely tolerant, traditional Islam, without deep
theological knowledge. Thus, in all those proselyte parties, there are
increasing numbers of communities that exclusively consist of locals. Religious
services are conducted in the local languages (Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uzbek, Uighur,
etc.) and several new officiating priests of the cult belong to the native
nationalities.
In 2005, a series of amendments to the religious legislation, which were
officially meant to preserve national security, might modify quite considerably
the situation of Christian proselytes. Every community must now be registered,
with participation in non-official religious groups and proselytism in their
favor thus becoming liable to sanctions. However, this law does not seem, for
the moment, to have really limited religious diversity in the country, even if
several movements, in particular Muslim groups independent of the Spiritual
Directorate, are deeply concerned about the government’s growing pressure. Yet
faced with these policies from the Spiritual Directorate, the Orthodox Church
and the authorities and in reaction to legislative tightening up of religious
legislation, proselyte Christian movements have had to adjust their policies.
A first category of missionaries does not accept any compromise with the laws.
This is the case of most foreign missions of Protestant persuasion, in
particular the Presbyterian churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose numbers
and missionary potentialities are greatly strengthened by external financial
support. They consider mission as consubstantial with their existence and with
the very principle of Christianity. As these groups fail to recognize any
legitimacy to Islam, they reason that the Muslim population must be converted to
Christianity. A second group is made up of movements whose presence is not
motivated by a proselytism alone: these are protestant movement that were
already present under the Soviet regime, like the Baptist or Adventist Churches,
as well as a certain number of Pentecostal denominations. This is also the case
of the Catholic Church, whose proselytism mostly affects populations of
Christian traditions but seldom the Kazakhs. These movements do not want to
endanger their traditional communities (Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians,
etc.) and have therefore slowed down proselytizing among Muslims.
CONCLUSIONS:
Whereas since the beginning of the 1990s, the emigration of the so-called “European” minorities has emptied Kazakhstan from almost half of its Christian communities, the issue of Christianity has profoundly evolved. The Orthodox Church remains, by far, the major Church but is losing its believers in favor of Catholicism and Protestantism, does not practice proselytism and maintains its belief in an unbreakable link between Russianness and Orthodoxy that makes the religion more national than universal. Today, the future of Christianity in Kazakhstan lies in the hands of the most dynamic Protestant movements. Although they are highly visible due to their activities, the new converts represent probably less than 1% of the population. However, they are the ones to suffer the heaviest pressure and who carry the future of Christianity in the region. This Central Asian Christianity – in a way similar to Indian or Chinese Christianity – is indeed bound to either disappear in the medium or long term as the religion of the former settlers, who have now returned home, or to gain a foothold inside the local population, which will not take place without serious community tensions if this movement of conversion increases in scale.
AUTHOR’S
BIO: Sebastien Peyrouse, Ph.D., French
Center for Post-Soviet Studies, (INALCO, Paris, France).