Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations
The Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, also known as the 1997 Law is a Russian law passed and signed by President Boris Yeltsin on September 26, 1997. The law redefined the state's relationship with religion, as Soviet premierMikhail Gorbachev had defined in on the Law of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on Freedom of Worship passed on October 25, 1990, commonly known as the 1990 Law. After the fall of Communism, Gorbachev had given much-needed breathing room to the practice of religion in Russia, whose culture's heart is Eastern Orthodoxy, but had also opened the door indescriminately and generally to the practice of religion. The Russian Orthodox Church believed that a new law was needed to preserve Russia against what they considered to be the corruption of Orthodoxy. The law was formulated and pushed by the Russian Orthodox Church, secular nationalists, and communists alike, with such determination that though Yeltsin vetoed the bill once, he could not legitimately do so a second time. Written in the law was the upholding of separation of church and state, as well as an interdiction against a state religion. With that in mind, the following definitions and regulations are given:
Definitions
religious organizations: at the level of individual church congregations
religious associations: whole denominations
religious groups: groups without legal status, such as a bible study group
No organization may function until they have been registered with the government for 15 years, unless it affiliates with an existing association. During the wait, the following is forbidden:
* public worship services,
* distribution of literature and materials,
* the hiring of foreign clergy.
A religious group may be liquidated by the government for any of the following reasons:
* encouraging its members to disobey civic duties.
Effects
Religion under the new law became nearly as regulated as it had been in Soviet times, though without the official communist hostility. It did accomplish some expulsion of Western religious work, though it left room for some foreign churches to legitimately register. There had been on the order of 16,000 registered organizations before the passage of the law, and by 2004 there were 22,000. By regulating on grounds common among new, foreign organizations, it made it difficult for them to take root, and it succeeded in promoting and securing a privileged place for the Russian Orthodox Church. On June 22, 2005, debate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded, that the 1997 Law "creates a complex form of categorization of religions which has led to various forms of discrimination and to the stigmatization of 'non-traditional' religions."
